Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On budget night the Treasurer said, 'From 1 July this year we will increase the upper limit for the middle-income tax bracket from $80,000 to $87,000 per year,' and then the Treasurer trampled to an election, stamping on the way the tax cut that he had promised to Australians earning over $80,000 a year. Today we have introduced into this House the legislation to give effect to this bipartisan tax cut. It could have been done before 1 July—it would have had support from the Labor Party—but the government chose not to do it. In today's bill we discover that the benefits of that tax cut from 1 July through to September will not come to Australians until after the end of the 2016-17 tax year.

This is another broken promise and another demonstration of the fact that the government are unable to implement the basic aspects of government. They cannot run a census. They cannot deliver an omnibus savings bill which actually has the maths done correctly. Now they have shown that they cannot deliver a bipartisan tax cut. If the Turnbull government cannot do the easy stuff, how can Australians think that they are going to be able to do the hard stuff? Australians should be rightly outraged by the fact that they are not getting this bipartisan tax cut simply as a result of the ineptitude of the Turnbull government.