Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister advise the House how a stronger economy enables the government to provide tax relief for working Australians while guaranteeing essential services, including in my electorate of Bonner? Is the Prime Minister aware of any alternative approaches?

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

I thank the honourable member for his question. I thank the honourable member and his constituents in Bonner, who provided the strongest support to the government's economic plan when we met them on my visit there last week. They recognised that a stronger economy is delivering stronger revenues and enabling us to deliver and guarantee essential services. They understood very keenly that a stronger economy is enabling us to increase funding to public hospitals in Queensland. Over the next five-year hospitals agreement, which is on the desk of the Queensland Premier waiting for her signature, there will be an increase of 34 per cent—$7.5 billion. Every year more funding is going into the hospital system in Queensland, just as it's going into Medicare, into the PBS, into all of the essential services that a stronger economy enables us to deliver.

Not only that, we have been able to pass through the House a personal income tax plan that will see hardworking Australian families keep more of the money they earn. It was good to see the Labor Party vote for it last night. It was. The Treasurer was so persuasive. He was so persuasive. He was! He won them over. I want to thank all of my colleagues who spoke in the debate, because they won over the Labor Party and it joined us. Of course, as the great mammalian himself, the member for Fenner, would say, they are only human. How could they resist the eloquence of the Treasurer?

Our tax relief is going to ensure at the end, when the plan is complete in 2024, that 94 per cent of Australians do not pay more than 32½ cents in the dollar in marginal tax—from $41,000 up to $200,000. That is an enormous reform. What it means is it removes the disincentive of people going into higher and higher tax brackets. In response to the falsehoods we hear from the Labor Party who say it's unfair, the fact is that those people who will still be in the 45 cent tax bracket—over $200,000—will be paying a higher percentage of overall income tax than they are today, and a person on $200,000 who is earning roughly five times the income of someone on $41,000 will be paying nearly 13 times as much tax. It's fair, it's progressive and it supports the enterprise of Australians that is delivering the record jobs growth our nation is seeing today.