Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I completely reject the Greens proposition that hardworking Australians earning between $80,000 and $87,000 a year are high-income earners. I completely reject that proposition. Secondly—and this just proves that we are going around and around in circles—the senator wrongly asserted again that no modelling had been done. That is wrong. I explicitly put on the record the modelling that had been done in terms of the economic impact of our tax reform package. The reason we pursue this particular tax cut for hardworking families—incidentally funded by a crackdown on, among other things, multinational tax avoidance—is we know that providing an incentive for Australians to work more, by ensuring that they are not penalised with higher marginal tax rates, will help growth.

An important way of repairing the budget is to increase the level of revenue that is generated by government and stronger growth. As we all know, stronger economic growth helps to deliver among other things stronger revenue flows to government. It gives people across Australia better opportunities to get ahead and it gives them opportunities to pursue better-paid jobs, which means that over time they will pay more tax. But, of course, you are the Greens—people often say that the Greens are really just the old communists in green cloaks—and we understand that you are the ultimate high-taxing party of Australia. We understand that you do not agree with tax cuts for hardworking families. We do. On this side of the chamber we are all in favour of giving hardworking Australians a fair go. We believe in providing incentives for people to work harder, to get ahead and to pursue opportunities to improve their quality of life— (Time expired)

Progress reported.