Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. That is the full plan. This is half a plan, a quarter of a plan—a 0.1 per cent increase in jobs. And how are they paying for it? There is a $3 billion cut to our universities, a tragic cut that will have a massive impact on my region, and a $22 billion cut to school education.

The Treasurer said one correct thing this morning. He got one thing right. A broken clock is right twice a day, so he is halfway to his KPI. He said that budgets are about choices. Budgets are about choices, and this is what this is. This is a choice, a choice to cut education by $25 billion to fund a corporate tax cut, a corporate tax cut based on discredited economic theories, based on the Laffer curve and trickle-down economics, based on all those flawed economic policies. And what is the pay-off? A 0.1 per cent increase in employment.

I would submit, and most credible economists would agree with me, that pumping $48 billion into education or into productive infrastructure would have a much more meaningful impact on economic growth and jobs than this cut. But this is what we are talking about: a government that has lost its way. In 2015, those opposite had just knifed the Prime Minister. They needed some sort of economic centrepiece to run to an election on, and they had 'jobs and growth'. Their one policy on jobs and growth was this hopeless corporate tax cut that will have an infinitesimally small pay-off for the economy, at best; will heighten inequality; and will blow out the budget bottom line, all to reward their corporate mates. It will go down in history as another flawed economic policy from this flawed government.

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