Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The opportunity I was giving those opposite was this: to put the budget into balance you need to ensure that your expenditure—are you with me?—is less than your revenue.

Opposition members interjecting—

Those opposite believe the way to balance the budget is to increase your revenue so that it is higher than your expenditure. That is why those opposite, when they have the opportunity, are constantly chasing higher expenditure with higher taxes.

Revenue this year is forecast to be 24 per cent of GDP, and currently expenditure as a percentage of GDP is higher than that. But what we are doing with our budget is we are increasing the strength of the budget by 0.5 per cent of GDP every single year. That is the pathway to surplus: ensuring that you get your expenditure under control and that your revenue grows with the strength of the economy, not by sucking more taxes out of Australians taxpayers' pockets to ensure that they can chase the ever increasing spending spiral of those opposite. This government is focused on getting expenditure under control and ensuring that we grow receipts based on a strong economy, not on the taxing appetites of those opposite.

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