David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Rankin says the Labor Party is the party of aspiration, one of the most ridiculous things that has ever been said in this chamber. Just today, the Labor Party said, 'Let's increase taxes on Australians by $70 billion.' That's just today. The government says $140 billion of tax relief to Australians across the spectrum; the Labor Party says no. They want to cut that by $70 billion. That is the exact opposite of supporting aspiration. They wouldn't understand aspiration if it came up and hit them in the face.

They also say that a business that has $2 million of revenue is some sort of big multinational that mustn't be provided with any tax relief, so they voted against that. A business with $2 million of revenue is a small, striving, suburban, regional business—precisely the sort of business that should be supported. These are precisely the sorts of businesses that create millions of jobs in this country. Yet they say, because they voted against it, that that business should not have any tax relief.

Fortunately, the rest of the Senate was sensible and supported tax relief for those businesses and, as a key consequence of that, we have rampant and record job creation in this nation—the greatest job creation in Australian history under this government, with some 415,000 jobs created in 2017. That was no thanks to those opposite, who seek to crush and sit on aspiration at every opportunity that they get. They want to put a $20 billion new tax on the housing market, going after the most important asset of the vast majority of Australian households. They want to put a $20 billion new tax on housing and, perhaps most shamefully of all, they also want to go and pick the pockets of Australian retirees.

What happened over there was that as they sought to finance their extravagant spending—because they can't control government spending; we've seen that before when they're in office—they said, 'Where can we get some money?' They said, 'We know where we can go; we can go to Australian retirees that have saved for their retirement and smash them with a multibillion-dollar tax increase.' That would come in immediately, basically, if those opposite came into government, affecting some 900,000 Australians—an absolute disgrace. They say that it is a bad thing to get to a position where 94 per cent of Australians pay a marginal tax rate of no more than 32½ per cent.

We say that's a fantastic thing, because it will encourage aspiration. It will mean that people earning anywhere between $41,000 and $200,000 a year will pay no more than 32½ per cent of their income to the government. That is good, because that means those people are going to keep more of their own money. It's their money, it's not the government's money; it's the employee's money. Those opposite want to take more of it and it is an absolutely inappropriate policy. We believe that people should keep more of their own money.

Under this policy, the people who earn over $200,000, who are in the top bracket, will pay an even higher proportion of tax than they do today. So it is a policy which is still progressive, but it is a policy which says to the average Australian worker who's out there aspiring: 'Go for it! Work harder! Work hard for that promotion. Work hard to take on those extra responsibilities and you will not go up into a higher and tougher tax bracket'. That's exactly the sort of thing that governments should be doing.

We believe in this passionately. Those opposite do not believe in it because they believe that all money resides with the government. They believe it's the government's and they believe that it's some sort of act of largesse if the government lets you keep some of your money. We believe the absolute opposite: money earned by employees is their money and we should take the bare minimum of that to finance the operations of the government. And we should encourage aspiration, we should promote aspiration and we should celebrate those people who go out, work hard and build the economy of this nation. We should not smash them with hundreds of billions in taxes, as those opposite would do.

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