Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is it fair that this Prime Minister teamed up with One Nation to give themselves a $7,000 tax cut while giving a nurse in Caboolture a tax cut of only $10 a week and cutting $2.9 million from Caboolture Hospital at the same time? How arrogant and out of touch are this Prime Minister's policies?

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

The claim the honourable member made about Caboolture Hospital is completely and absolutely false. It is another one of those Labor lies that are being peddled around Longman, and it says a lot about the character of the Labor Party that it is prepared to tell such lies. As I described a moment ago, funding from the Commonwealth for public hospitals in Queensland is increasing every year and, in particular, to the metro north part of Brisbane, which is where Caboolture Hospital is to be found.

Under Labor's alternative proposal on tax, this is what would happen: a Queensland police sergeant would pay, in 2024-25, $1,253 more tax under Labor; a New South Wales senior school teacher—

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

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

The member for Sydney has been warned.

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

would pay $1,800 more tax under Labor; a coalminer working for BHP would be paying $4,061 more tax; and a South Australian police superintendent would be paying $6,204 more tax under Labor. The honourable member asked about nurses. A school nurse in Victoria would be paying $2,840 more tax under Labor. That is the difference: Labor has abandoned hardworking middle Australia. It seeks to describe people with the occupations I've mentioned as 'the top end of town' or 'millionaires'. These are the hardworking Australians who are aspiring to get ahead; and, over time, Labor wants them to move into higher and higher tax brackets so that more of the money they earn through their hard work will go to the government. But we respect their aspiration. We're not mystified by it. We want those hardworking families to get ahead and keep more of the money they earn.

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation. Will the minister update the House on how the government's income tax relief will benefit small businesses in Brisbane and around Queensland? What are the risks to small business from less aspirational proposals?

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Minister for Small and Family Business, the Workplace and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Brisbane for his question, and I sincerely hope he's not the only Trev from Queensland in this chamber in the not-too-distant future. I do thank him for his question on what is a great day for the taxpayers in his electorate. I note, for example, that a plumber earning $72,000 will save $530 a year. I congratulate the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance on the passage of the tax cuts. It is the latest in our plan and, at end of it, hopefully, there will be a great deal more money spent in small and family businesses. You hear the headline numbers all the time: the million jobs, with 420,000-odd in the last 12 months—the most ever and 80 per cent of them full-time. But the engine room of that is small and family business. Around 65 per cent of the private sector are employed there.

Since the election of the coalition government in 2013 we seen a net increase of 150,000 small and family businesses—businesses opening their doors and employing people. That's how you get the result. What was the comparable? In the last year of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, 61,000 small and family businesses closed. That's the comparison that you've got here. That's why the plan that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are implementing is so important. That's how you get the results. We often forget about unincorporated small and family businesses, but 350,000, along with 2.5 million people as wage-earners in Queensland, will benefit from this decision today, as of next year. That gets overlooked a lot. Those businesses too employ a vast number of people.

What will happen when there is more money in the pockets of wage-earners? This is the key. On this side of the House we believe that businesses that earn profits and wage-earners that earn their wage are the people best placed to decide how to spend it. What will wage-earners do with more money in their pockets? Over half of them, when surveyed, said they will spend it back in the local economy. What do the small businesses do? On average, of every local dollar spent in them, they themselves spend 42c of that back in the local economy.

What's the threat? What's the alternative? It is tax as far as the eye can see. Insert name of tax here, and the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition will increase it—be it on employees, be it on businesses, be it on retirees, be it on anyone that wants to get ahead. For anyone that's aspirational, they will find a way to stop it—along with their secret deals with their union mates, of course. For the sake of the country, the economy and the results that have been achieved, we must continue to deliver for those small and family businesses out there, not just in Brisbane but Australia wide.

Ged Kearney (Batman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that he teamed up with One Nation to vote for a tax scheme that will mean a surgeon on $200,000 will get a tax cut 16 times larger than a nurse on $40,000, despite having a salary only five times larger? How is that fair? Or is the Prime Minister telling nurses to just get a better job, too?

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

I thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond. The member for Batman is well known for saying that tax is not a burden—apparently, tax is something that people love; they think it's fantastic. Tax is a burden on Australians who work hard, because it's their money, and we think they should keep as much of it as possible. What the member for Batman and the Labor Party don't understand is that, the more you earn, the more tax you pay.

Over the period of the tax plan that we have had passed through the parliament today, someone earning $200,000 would have paid $458,809, and they will have relief amounting to a 2½ per cent reduction. If you're earning $50,000, over that same period of time you will pay $56,000 in tax and you will get a 6.3 per cent reduction in your tax—so more than twice the reduction in tax for those on low incomes than those on higher incomes, which the member for Batman and others on that side like to demonise. Those in the highest tax bracket pay 30 per cent of the tax in this country and they represent four per cent of the taxpayers in this country. At the end of the tax plan, they will account for 36 per cent of the tax paid. What the Labor Party doesn't understand is that you always run out of other people's money when you keep taxing them more and more and more.

What our plan does is fair. What our plan does is to understand that all Australians who work and pay tax work hard—not some more than others; they all work hard. And they all deserve tax relief, because that's how you create a stronger economy. Our plan is not based on creating winners and losers and pitting them against each other. The Labor Party's plan is to try to whack some with tax and try to con others that they're trying to cut their tax. Every time they try and buy an investment property—because one in five police officers do, and thousands of nurses and thousands of teachers do—you're going to whack tax up on them. Retirees who have done nothing more than buy shares in Australian companies—you're going to put $5 million in tax on them. Small businesses with greater than $2 million in turnover—you're going to whack taxes up on them as well. People who are making contributions to their super—you're going to put more tax on them.

It will be $200 billion in a tax avalanche coming from the Labor Party on the Australian economy.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

They laugh, Mr Speaker! They laugh and they giggle about tax, because they think tax is a privilege. It's a burden on Australians. Under this government, we're reducing that burden. And Labor wants to increase it.