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

I thank the member for Forde for his question and the role he plays, with all of the government members, to ensure that we are able to deliver on our commitments to the Australian people. The most important one of those is that the Australian people know they can trust the Liberals and Nationals with money, and they certainly know, as they demonstrated at the last election, that Labor cannot be trusted with money. It's because we do know how to manage money—the hard-earned earnings of Australians and the taxes they pay. As a result of what we've done in this place, including in the member for Forde's electorate, they are paying less tax. They will always pay less tax when it comes to the Liberals and Nationals, because we believe, unlike those opposite, as demonstrated at the last election, that Australians should keep more of what they earn. This means that our government trust Australians to do the right thing and make the right decisions about the money they earn. They trust us with the hard-earned earnings they have provided through their taxes, because they know we'll manage that well. That's why we are bringing the budget back into surplus for the first time, as the Treasurer has said, in 12 years. We are doing that at the same time, and this enables us to do it.

When you know how to manage money, as our government does, it means you can look the Australian people in the eye and you can say to them: 'We have guaranteed record schools funding on the basis of student need and we are investing $310 billion in our schools over the decade to 2029. We can guarantee the funding will be there for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.' We can guarantee that because we know how to manage money. We can guarantee record health and hospitals funding, including an extra $31 billion through the National Health Agreement and record support for mental health and suicide prevention, because we know how to manage money. We're doing this by keeping the budget in surplus, not increasing the debt and not increasing taxes as those opposite proposed.

What is amazing is that at the last election the Labor Party came up with $387 billion of higher taxes. They say now that Newstart should go up, but when they were taking $387 billion of higher taxes to the last election they still couldn't make that commitment. There are no taxes high enough to satisfy the spending appetite of the Labor Party. But on our side the bulk-billing rate has now gone to 86.2 per cent—a record. There is increased investment in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—2,200 new and amended items. There's a $503 million youth mental health and suicide prevention plan, a further $496.3 million for an additional 10,000 home care packages— (Time expired)

See this speech in context