Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Yesterday in question time the Prime Minister claimed Labor's revenue and savings measures 'do not raise $70 billion'. Given that Parliamentary Budget Office costings have our multinational tax policy at $7 billion, tobacco excise at $47 billion, closing superannuation loopholes at $14 billion, which, together with the abolition of the Emissions Reductions Fund, raise more than $70 billion, exactly which costing was the Prime Minister disagreeing with in question time yesterday?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The (—) (): I thank the honourable member for his question. Yesterday in question time the member for McMahon—hard to recognise with his handsome beard—was crowing about Labor's record on budget savings. He cited the $70 billion figure. This figure is stated to be over 10 years. Over the next four years, the forward estimates, the savings that have been announced by Labor are claimed by Labor to amount to $8 billion. That is around $2 billion a year, so on average their claimed savings would cover around 0.4 per cent of spending every year. The Labor Party would still need to find another $50 billion over the next four years to make up for the shortfall of the savings they are blocking, all of their spending promises and all of the savings they have promised to reverse. The reality is the Labor Party left a massive black hole when they were turned out of office, and when the coalition government has sought to repair that, to repair the fiscal damage Labor has done, they have done nothing except oppose it—they have opposed savings and even sought to oppose savings of their own. They are opposing in the Senate now $1.2 billion of savings and revenue measures—measures which Labor had previously proposed but are now blocking. The fact is the Labor Party has never seen a tax increase they did not like and never seen a spending increase they did not love. The fact is that their inability to constrain themselves in government—their inability to live within their means—has left us with the fiscal challenge we have today.

One of the elements in Labor's savings, so-called, is of course changes to the so-called thin capitalisation rules for multinationals. I refer to the answer I gave a moment ago when I reminded the House that when the coalition presented solid provisions to take on multinational tax avoidance, which are already reaping dividends for the ATO, which are already providing a measure of justice for hardworking Australian businesses, what did the Labor Party do? They opposed them. What did they have instead? A so-called thin capitalisation proposal which the Treasury has advised would hurt the economy, crimp investment and cost jobs. Labor does not understand fiscal discipline and they do not understand business.