Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. By the time they are fully implemented, stage 3 of the government's personal income tax scheme and its big business handout will cost at least $25 billion a year. Where is the money coming from? Won't this government giving $25 billion to big business and the top 20 per cent of income earners just mean even more cuts to schools, to Medicare and to pensions?

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

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is mystified by aspiration, and the honourable member who has just asked me the question is mystified as to where the money comes from to fund government services.

Ms Butler interjecting—

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

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

The member for Griffith then left the chamber.

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

I'll let the honourable member know that it comes from hardworking Australians' income. It comes from Australian businesses making profits and paying tax. It is their energy, their enterprise and their aspiration which drives the Australian economy.

Nothing more clearly distinguishes the unreality, the disconnectedness, the out-of-touch nature of modern Labor than the fact that they do not recognise that everything we do here—every dollar we spend—comes from the efforts of hardworking Australian families. It is them—it is their work, it is their money. When we cut taxes, what we are doing is enabling Australians to keep more of their money. The Labor Party thinks it is the government giving them a gift. Well, that's wrong. It is not the government's money; it's hardworking Australian families' money.

We are able, through good budget management, to pay for all of those essential services, including the ones Labor neglected, like those pharmaceutical benefits listings which were deferred in 2011, as Labor's budget showed. Labor couldn't fund the PBS. Labor neglected those services. We're funding them fully with increasing amounts every year. We're keeping our nation safe, as the minister has just described; we're providing more tax relief to hardworking families and Australian businesses and bringing the budget back into balance a year earlier. That is the difference between strong economic management under the coalition versus the shocking performance—the debt and the deficit—and the failure and disappointments of the Labor Party.