Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I will come to the cars question in a minute. It is worth actually calculating the quantum here. Through the tax cuts, a family of that nature—that is, with a $60,000 full-time worker and $27,000 part-time worker and two kids, one in child care and one in school—are delivered an amount equalling $1,050 per year for the 2008-09 year, that is $20.19 a week. That is the first thing. The second thing is that the childcare rebate delivers $1,255 for the year, $24 .13 a week, and the education tax rebate $375 per year. Add those together and that is $2,680 a year in extra disposable income delivered by the measures which have been introduced through this budget. That is what we mean by practical assistance to the family budget to assist them in dealing with all the challenges coming about through increase in the price of petrol, increase in rents, increase in mortgages, increase in grocery prices and the rest. That adds up to an extra $52 per week.

What have those opposite offered in this respect? If you are to believe that those opposite are serious about their policy on excise, given that the member for Wentworth has said he cannot guarantee that they would actually implement this policy if they were elected at the next election, on 30 litres being consumed a week that means you are adding $1.50 extra per week to the family budget, in contrast with $52 per week that we are delivering through these budget measures. Can I say that at the end of the day it is one family budget and the question is: where do you find the extra disposable income to help on these critical cost of living pressures? That is what shapes so much of our determination in this budget to make sure that we could deliver extra to the budget table. In the bill currently before this House, which I think has just been voted on, the Medicare levy surcharge alone assists families in the bracket of $50,000 to $100,000, who are currently regarded by those opposite as high income earners, because that was the basis on which it was established—high income earners. We do not have that view and we think it is better that we allow those individuals to have some choice when it comes to how their precious family budget dollars are spent.

So through the tax measures, the education tax refund, the childcare tax rebate and the measures which have just gone through the House of Representatives on the Medicare levy surcharge, we deliver extra real dollars to the family budget. It is $52 per week extra based on the cameo I referred to before against $1.50 a week extra on the basis of the excise promise which those opposite do not have sufficient confidence to say to the parliament they would actually deliver when they are in government.

I conclude on this: at the end of the day it is about responsible economic management, and responsible economic management means that, if you are putting downward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on interest rates, you have got to deliver a decent budget surplus. We have done that with a $22 billion surplus. Those opposite have conducted a $22 billion raid on the surplus, and what that is going to produce is upward pressure on inflation, upward pressure on interest rates and therefore upward pressure on prices when it comes to those in the Australian economy currently doing it tough.

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