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

My question is to the Prime Minister. On Friday, for the first time in Australia's history, gross debt will crash through half a trillion dollars. With debt at record highs under this government, how can the country possibly afford to give millionaires a tax cut in 18 days?

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

I thank the honourable member for his question. The honourable member is the leader who went to the last election with a policy that involved $16½ billion of more debt and, indeed, involved higher taxes. More debt, higher taxes: that was their policy. Of course, they did not want to give any tax cuts to business. The Leader of the Opposition used to believe, before he did his backflip, one of many—he is adept at that, I will give you that; he is a backflipper of Olympic proportions—that cutting company taxes and business taxes would deliver more investment, more productivity and higher employment. That is not an original insight—I have to give him that. That is standard, commonsense conventional economics. That is what he used to say. However, he has backflipped on that, and he opposes it. He says you cannot give tax cuts to business. He wants to roll back the tax cuts to small and medium businesses that have already been passed by this parliament. What is that going to do for jobs? Does he really think that making small and medium businesses, which employ half of the Australians in the private sector workforce, pay less tax is going to make them employ more people?

No, it will not. Just as we are giving them this incentive to employ and invest, he wants to put the handbrake on. But the money he claims he has saved from not having those tax cuts, he has already spent. He has spent it and was still $16½ billion more in the red.

Of course, this is the same Leader of the Opposition who in previous times used to boast about the great surpluses that the member for Lilley had achieved. He sent out a newsletter in 2012 claiming the credit for the great economic management of the Labor Party. He did that, and, of course, we have seen that with the member for Rankin at the member for Lilley's side in those days. There they were claiming surpluses that never existed. If the Leader of the Opposition was fair dinkum for one minute, he would recognise that it is the government's plan that will deliver us a surplus. It will deliver us the investment and the incentives for business. It will deliver us the growth that we need. There is not one element in the Labor Party's policy which would encourage one business to invest or employ a person—nothing! All they have is a recipe for higher taxes, and yet they still want to run up more debt. Whether it was in government or in opposition, the Labor Party is the party of low growth and high debt.