Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say that whilst it is always a great pleasure to speak during an MPI, this one really puzzles me. The tacticians on the Labor Party side must have been a bit tired on Thursday. They were out at the Latika Bourke's party last night, had a few too many drinks and they started talking about a plan that I cannot find anything about. I cannot find anything about this plan. So, I went to the morning note—the morning note has been a bit thin over the last few weeks, but we are left to run on our own a bit more than perhaps we used to be—and I could not find anything about this plan. There was nothing there! Then I had a look at Google. I typed it in, and I looked for this plan. I could not find it there either. I went through every press release and every interview that we had done in the last two weeks, and there were no plans to raise the GST.

So, who does want to raise the GST? Who does want to raise taxes? I googled this, and I found that a number of premiers want to raise the GST. That is not surprising. Premiers love money for nothing—a little bit of Dire Straits is good for the premiers—because managing your spending is hard. Jay Weatherill supports an increase in the GST, and he wants to apply it to financial services—he wants the money. Andrew Barr supports a rise in the GST—he wants the money as well. Even Mike Baird favours the idea of a GST hike, but I could not find our plan anywhere.

I thought to myself, who else wants to raise taxes? I was confused about what those opposite might want to do, and it struck me that when the Treasurer was speaking earlier he pointed out that those opposite plan to spend $55 billion more than they have. Last time I looked, when you spend $55 billion, you have to tax $55 billion. So I started to think about what sort of tax those opposite might want to go with. Will it be a carbon tax? Will it be a mining tax? Will it be a smoking tax? We have heard about little bit about that this week—they want to have a smoking tax. Will it be a hike to the fuel excise on farmers and miners? Will it be a tax on everyone who has confessed to be Liberal voter? Will it be a tax on those who flush out corrupt union officials? We do not know but $55-billion worth of tax has got a come from somewhere, so we are looking forward to hearing about their plan.

Labor's view of the economy, I think, can be summed up in a wonderful phrase first brought to us by Ronald Reagan: if it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidise it. Because that is the kind of high-taxing, high subsidisation government that we can expect from those opposite—if they ever get back to this side of the chamber. On this side of the chamber, we want to grow the economy, we want to create jobs and we want to invest. Central to that is the need to contain taxes. I ask the government to innovate and deliver the sorts of productivity gains, particularly from government, that we have seen in the private sector for many years. Those opposite grew spending by five per cent per annum in their time in government. We are keeping it below two per cent. If spending goes up faster than income, you have to raise taxes and that is exactly what those opposite are proposing.

Most of all, we know that lower taxes will deliver a stronger economy and particularly lower personal income taxes. In the last 10 years, the average weekly earnings have gone up twice but tax paid has gone up three times. That is not good enough. It is time to look at lower taxes, not higher taxes and that is what we are focused on. We have heard from the Treasurer today that the average weekly earner now is going to pay 37 cents in the dollar for tax and that is simply too much. So we are the party of lower taxes. We are the party that can deliver that because we know how to control spending. It is time for those opposite to fess up on their plan for higher taxes and not to ask us about our plan for a stronger economy.

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