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

You obviously did not listen to my previous answer. The first and the most important difference is that, under the government's package, it is actually fully funded, because you know that the superannuation package, overall, actually delivers an improvement to the budget bottom line even after we introduce the low-income superannuation tax offset, whereas Labor said that it would fund its proposal to introduce the so-called low-income super contribution through, initially, resource super profits tax, which was then morphed into the minerals resource rent tax, which we said all along would not raise any money and which in the end did not raise any money. The money that it initially raised had to be refunded because of the way the deal was very badly structured by then Prime Minister Gillard and then Treasurer Swan, something that we asserted all the way through. In the end, only the Labor Party is able to come up with a supposedly multibillion dollar new tax which leaves the budget worse off. Having spent all the money they thought it would raise, and more, we had a situation where not only have they created massive uncertainty for an important industry for Australia and for investors in that industry, they left the budget worse off to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.

The government has worked over the last three years to put our budget on a more sustainable foundation for the future. We have pursued reforms that now enable this to be afforded in the context of this package. We are structuring it as a tax offset recognising that we do not want people at low income levels to end up paying more or the same level of tax as if they took their income as take-home pay. You structured it as a payment; we are structuring act as a tax cut. That is the technical difference, but the most important and fundamental fiscal difference is that, unlike the Labor Party when you were in government, we have actually found a way to pay for it.