Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for O'Connor for his question and I'd like to publicly thank him for inviting me to his electorate, where I heard firsthand what a great job he's doing on the ground, particularly his role in providing important tax relief to the people in his electorate of O'Connor. He, like every member of the government team, believes in how important it is to provide tax relief for hardworking Australians, because we understand that Australians work hard for their money, and their money belongs to them. We get that, but plainly those opposite do not.

That's why we have delivered tax relief for small, medium sized and family enterprises, which employ around five million Australians, including 20,000 businesses in the member for O'Connor's own electorate. It's why we have also delivered personal income tax relief for more than 61,000 low- and middle-income earners in O'Connor and for around 10 million people right around the country, thanks to our legislated Personal Income Tax Plan. And we did that despite those opposite fighting us every single step of the way.

The member for O'Connor asked me: are there any threats? Standing in the retiree forums that he organised, I did hear a lot about threats, particularly the threat of the Leader of the Opposition's mega retiree tax, a $55 billion hit on retirees, those people who can least afford it. What that would mean is that, under Labor, around 6,000 people in the member for O'Connor's electorate would lose their tax refunds. For some of those people, I heard, that represents about 30 per cent—30 per cent—of their income. We know that it will hit around a million people right around the country. That's grandmas and grandpas. That's men and women. That's mums and dads.

Shame on Labor, shame, for wanting to steal the tax refunds of hardworking Australians—because these people are not the top end of town. They're not the millionaires that the Leader of the Opposition likes to pretend they are. In fact, 96 per cent of them have a taxable income of less than $87,000. These are low- and middle-income earners—

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

See this speech in context