Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The member for Gilmore was a school teacher. She has not only been a school teacher; she has trained schoolteachers. She knows that this budget delivers the needs-based funding that Australian schools and Australian students need, the needs-based funding that the Labor Party never delivered and the needs-based funding that David Gonski recommended. They took David Gonski's name in vain and plastered it up all over the country—an exercise in massive hypocrisy, because they never delivered what he recommended. As Ken Boston said, Labor's education policy was a 'corruption' of Gonski's recommendations. No less than that.

This budget demonstrates our commitment to securing Australia's future opportunity and doing so fairly. We are dealing with the big issues that we confront fairly. So, we are fully funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We are bringing the budget back into balance so that our children and grandchildren are not burdened with a mountain of debt. We are ensuring that we are making the big nation-building investments in infrastructure: the inland rail—$10 billion into rail—and the Western Sydney Airport, and another $1 billion into rail in Victoria. These are nation-building investments—Snowy Hydro 2.0. These secure the future for our nation. They secure the economic prospects of our children.

We are guaranteeing Medicare—securing Medicare. Every year the Medicare levy and the amount from income tax that is required to pay for Medicare and the PBS will go into the Medicare Guarantee Fund—every year. That will be the law. Medicare will be guaranteed by my government, guaranteed by the coalition—and the PBS. That is our commitment: to give Australians the security they need.

We believe—we know—that in order to secure investment you need lower business taxes. And what we have done is reduce tax on small and medium businesses, and we will go further to make Australian business competitive. But we do not believe, as Labor apparently does, that paying tax is optional. Who will forget, at the end of 2015, when the Labor Party voted against the multinational tax avoidance measures? They voted against them. If it had not been for the Greens, the measures would not have got through the Senate. We stand for fairness, opportunity and security, and this budget delivers all three.

See this speech in context