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

and 28 per cent of the benefits in kind, while paying five per cent of the taxes. The top 20 per cent of private income households received three per cent of cash benefits and 14 per cent of the benefits in kind and paid half—that is, 50 per cent—of total taxes in this country. We have a progressive tax system in this country, which ensures that those who have done better in life pay higher average rates of taxes and, indeed, higher marginal rates of taxes and they bear the majority burden of the tax burden in this country. The question for the Labor Party is: how much more do you want people to pay in tax? When is too much tax ever enough for the Labor Party? It's never enough because there's never too much spending for the Labor Party, and that's why they cannot be trusted to manage a budget or oversee an economy or ensure a stronger economy that guarantees the essential services that the very people that the member was asking about rely on.

Those people that the member was asking about depend on a stronger economy to ensure they can get the services that they rely on, and that stronger economy is driven by people who earn, who start businesses, who have success. And the Labor Party wants to set them up as the problem. They have set aspiration as the problem with Australia and success as the reason why Australia is failing on their terms.

But this is what we've had from the Labor Party just in the last 24 hours: the shadow Treasurer's policy of his own personal tax plan yesterday didn't last 24 hours. Since the budget, they've had four positions on the personal tax plan. First, they agreed with stage 1 only. Then they came in here and voted for the whole package. Yesterday, he stood up there proudly with the Leader of the Opposition and said, 'We are only supporting stage 1 again,' and then up in the Senate, the Labor Party has said they're going to remove only stage 3. This bloke cannot keep a position from one day to the next. We know the same thing when it comes to corporate tax. He wrote about how it's so important for companies to have business taxes that are competitive, and when he's asked to vote for it, he's not up to the task. This is a shadow Treasurer that does not have the ticker to run a stronger economy or manage a budget or hold a position on tax from one day to the next, and there's a simple reason: his new mentor on economic policy is the member for Sydney.

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