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

Tax to GDP has now been reduced under us to 23.8 per cent of GDP and in the 2007-08 budget to 24.7 per cent of GDP. In 2004-05 it was 24.9 per cent of GDP—quite extraordinary. In fact, had we kept tax as a percentage of GDP at the Liberal Party level, do you know how much more we would have collected in tax? We would have collected $30.5 billion. So, had we maintained the spending discipline that we inherited from those opposite, we would have been hitting taxpayers for another $23 billion worth of outlays. Had we maintained the tax discipline of those opposite—which, frankly, is to tax the billyo out of the community and the business community out there—we would have whacked them with an extra $30.5 billion in tax. I would suggest that those opposite have a long, close, hard look at themselves in terms of their record.

I would again challenge those opposite as they contemplate their mission of economic vandalism in the Senate to instead join with the government in a strategy of responsible economic management to make sure that we, through fiscal policy, maintain the integrity of the budget surplus in order to provide Australia with a decent economic buffer in the uncertain global economic times which we face.

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