Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his and the Treasurer’s previous remarks that Professor John Taylor of Stanford was ‘an extremist’ and ‘outside the mainstream of economic thought’ because he argued that tax cuts, which increase permanent income, were a better economic stimulus than one-off cash handouts. I also refer the Prime Minister to the January minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s open market committee where, commenting on the tax cuts in President Obama’s stimulus, it is stated:

… unless the cuts were clearly perceived to be permanent, the boost to consumer spending might prove short-lived, as was the case with the tax rebates distributed in the spring of 2008.

Does the Prime Minister contend that the members of the US Federal Reserve are extremists or that the open market committee is out of the mainstream? Or is it just, in truth, that Labor’s plan is not to cut taxes but to raise taxes?

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