Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Labor's plan to retain the budget repair levy and protect low- and middle-income earners from a tax increase is a fairer and more responsible way to raise more money. Does the Prime Minister object because Labor's fairer and better plan raises $4½ billion more revenue than his plan does? Or is it because, under Labor's plan, millionaires will not get a tax cut on 1 July?

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

There has never been a less convincing advocate for Australian workers than this Leader of the Opposition. He has sold them out again and again, and he has sold them out to the big end of town. Obviously they are listening to the member for Grayndler now, because the member for McMahon is not running the talking points of the big banks in question time today. So they have retreated in disorder now. And now, fresh from the drawing rooms of Toorak, fresh from the boardrooms of Collins Street, fresh from selling out workers' penalty rates again and again, he comes here and wants to talk about equity and fairness. Only a few years ago his Prime Minister, Julia Gillard—

Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Whitlam will leave under 94(a).

The member for Whitlam then left the chamber.

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

and the Leader of the Opposition himself argued for the essential fairness and equity of increasing the Medicare levy by 50 per cent so that the NDIS would be funded. Now, it was not enough to fund it entirely, but he called on our side of the House, the coalition, to support it, and we did. We backed it in, because it was fair. Labor knew it was fair then, and in their hearts they know it is fair now. The member for Grayndler does. The shadow cabinet does. The caucus does. Not even 14 minutes of torture could change their minds! They know that national disability insurance is a great national enterprise of which the Labor Party can claim to own at least half, because it was a bipartisan effort. Labor can say, 'It happened under our government.' They can make that claim. We do not deny the history.

But what shames the Labor Party today is that, having made the promise, they will not pay for it, knowing the justice that we are setting out, the justice of being able to ask Australians to pay the Medicare levy—with low-income individuals and low-income households of course protected by the threshold, as has always been the case. Labor knows this is just, but their leader, trapped in his own political bind of constantly seeking one cynical tactical advantage after another, is not going to look into the eyes of the people to whom he has promised so much and say, 'We will pay for it.' Well, we will, the parliament will, and Labor will be shown up as the makers of empty promises—frauds and fakes, betraying the very people they promised to protect.