Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to Grattan Institute modelling into the government's personal income tax scheme released a short time ago. Can the Treasurer confirm that $15 billion of the annual $25 billion cost of the government's scheme will come from collecting less tax from the top 20 per cent of income earners? Treasurer, how is this fair?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I can confirm that, in 2015-16, those in the top tax bracket paid 30.3 per cent of all personal income tax collected, and, under the government's plan, Treasury estimates that those in the top tax bracket will pay around 36 per cent of all personal income tax collected in 2024-25. As the Prime Minister was pointing out before, someone earning $205,000 will be earning five times more but paying 13 times more tax. Under this plan, the progressivity of our tax system is well protected and well respected.

The problem with the Labor Party is they don't understand that this country was not built on envy and bitterness, and our tax system shouldn't be built on envy and bitterness either. Those opposite, the Labor Party, think that the only way that people on low and middle incomes can do better is if they make people on other incomes do worse. This is the flat-earth thinking that chokes economies. That's why the Labor Party cannot be trusted to run what is estimated to be, over the next four years, a $2 trillion economy. I wouldn't trust the Leader of the Opposition with $2, and yet he walks round here, thumping himself about on issues of rolled-gold guarantees. He might think he is the gold member of this parliament, but he is a rolled-gold failure as a member of this parliament.