Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government is already boasting about the tax cuts that they're going to deliver in five years time. But the questions that I have, and the questions that lots of people have is: how are they going pay for it? What are they going to cut to fund these tax cuts?

In electorates like my electorate of Bendigo, what are we going to suffer to fund this government's planned stage 3? It's going to cost $95 billion—$20 billion a year. Just so people understand what the government has to cut to fund that, it is roughly what we're going to spend on aged care or public hospitals this year. To fund their tax cuts, is the government seriously going to take to the next election that they're going to cut every dollar from our public hospitals? It's roughly twice what we spend on Newstart. Maybe that's their plan: to kick everybody—every single person in this country looking for work—off Newstart. Is that how they're going to fund these big tax cuts in stage 3? It's also double what this country spends on child care. Maybe they're going to go out and say to all the mums returning to work, 'Sorry, we're scrapping the tax subsidies. You or your partner is going to stay at home.'

That's what this government has done. The economy is floundering and they have no plan to turn it around. They're delivering these massive tax cuts in five years time. They've got to come clean and tell us just how they are going to fund these tax cuts. Twenty billion dollars a year— (Time expired)