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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House how the government's plan to keep our economy strong is guaranteeing the essential services Australians rely on without having to increase taxes?

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

I thank the member for Bonner. Our plan for a stronger economy, which we've had in place for five years, continues to work. It's working. It is built on some solid and fundamental principles that we, the Liberal and National parties, believe in to our core; that is, if you have a go, you get a go. Also, you don't lift some people up in this country by bringing other people down through the politics of envy that riddles every single policy proposal on the economy that you see come forward from the Labor Party.

Our plan for a stronger economy has got unemployment down to five per cent. It has got 50,000 people off the unemployment queues from before the last election. It has ensured that the budget that we will hand down before the next election, that the Treasurer will hand down, will be the first surplus budget in 12 years. It's a budget that will be supported by a growing economy, not higher taxes. Almost two million people have got a job in the last five years under the economic policies of this Liberal-National government. On top of that, over 100,000 young people got a job in the last financial year, which was the strongest year of youth jobs growth in Australia's recorded economic history. On top of that, our economic policies mean that Australians of working age in this country have the lowest dependence on welfare—at less than 15 per cent—that we've seen in 25 years.

Our plan for a stronger economy is working, and that means we can invest in the essential services that Australians rely on: an additional $37 billion for schools over the next 10 years; an additional $30 billion for hospitals over the next five years; some $7 billion has been made available to support our farmers in drought in rural and regional communities; 1,900 new and amended drugs listings, with $1.4 billion in the last budget to support new drugs listings; and an extra billion dollars going into aged care every year. We are doing all of that without increasing taxes. We're doing it because we know how to run a strong economy.

The $200 billion in higher taxes that those opposite want to impose on the Australian people, if they win the next election, is an admission that they do not know how to run a stronger economy and that they do not know how to run a strong budget. The Australian people know that they cannot trust Labor with money and they cannot trust them when it comes to letting them keep more of the money they earn. The Labor Party are the party for higher taxes. Higher taxes under Labor; lower taxes under the Liberals and Nationals. (Time expired)