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

Not anymore. He's mystified by aspiration as much as the member for Sydney is. I've been wondering: why has the shadow Treasurer gone from supporting competitive tax rates for businesses to opposing them? Why has he gone from supporting personal income taxes based on aspiration to opposing them? Let's not make any mistake today: the Labor Party today is voting to cut in half a personal income tax plan that will deliver more than $140 billion in tax relief to Australians right across the country—to everybody paying tax. They want to cut that in half. That's what they're doing: they're taking a $140 billion plan and turning it into a $70 billion tax relief measure. That's what they're doing: they're cutting tax relief in half with this measure.

What has caused this massive change from the shadow Treasurer? He's clearly got another mentor. That mentor must be the member for Sydney. The other week he was going out there and repeating that ridiculous line that, somehow, in the tax system you have pink forms and blue forms when it comes to introducing income tax! He was embarrassed to repeat it, but he dutifully went out there making an absolute embarrassment of himself—and he knows he did. It was absolutely incredible that he could drag himself to be so humiliated, to put such a ludicrous argument out in the public debate. So we know who the shadow Treasurer's new mentor is: it's the member for Sydney, the professor of economics and tax policy known so well around the country—and let's not forget geography.

We're backing business to create more jobs. There is record jobs growth under the Turnbull government. The stronger economy is guaranteeing the essentials that Australians rely on. Those sitting up in Longman today, those sitting down in Braddon and those sitting out in Mayo, where the Liberal and National parties are with our candidates, know this—

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