Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Stirling and congratulate him on an outstanding first speech. He comes to this place having represented Australia on the battlefield with distinction. He has a great passion for small business, and I had the opportunity to visit him in the electorate of Stirling and talk to small businesses. We know that around 20,000 small businesses in the electorate of Stirling will be able to access the extended instant asset write-off for businesses with a turnover of up to $50 million—it was extended in the budget to $30,000—and around 70,000 taxpayers in the electorate of Stirling will be getting a tax cut as a result of a tax package that we on this side of the parliament passed through the House. Around 70,000 people in Stirling will be the beneficiaries.

I can inform the House that 4½ million Australians have put in their tax forms for the 2018-19 year. The Australian tax office has provided over $6 billion worth of refunds. That's money that will be spent at local cafes and local shopping strips and with local tradies.

The Australian people were given a clear choice at the last election. They could have voted for those opposite with $387 billion of higher taxes, but they rejected them. They voted in favour of a coalition government, the Morrison government, that is in support of lower taxes for millions of Australians. We're abolishing a whole tax bracket. We're lifting the threshold of the 19c-in-the-dollar tax bracket, and we're lowering the rate, creating one major tax bracket between $45,000 and $200,000, where the rate will be 30c in the dollar. That is where the bulk of Australian taxpayers will be, and it will tackle bracket creep. If you get another job or a promotion, or you do some overtime, you won't necessarily pay a higher marginal rate of tax.

It goes back to the values we stand for on this side of the House. We want Australians to earn more and to keep more of what they earn. We believe in the aspiration of hardworking Australians—a term that mystifies the member for Sydney. We understand aspiration and we are delivering benefits to those Australians who have aspiration. It was a very clear choice at the last election. The Australian people could have voted for the superannuation tax put forward by the Labor Party and the retirees tax, the housing tax, the tax on family businesses and the tax on hardworking Australians, or they could have voted for tax cuts. They voted for our tax cuts, and now we're delivering them.

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