Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again addressed to the Prime Minister. Given that since May the Reserve Bank, the OECD and the International Monetary Fund have all downgraded Australia's growth forecasts for this year, will the Prime Minister agree to have a debate in this chamber today on the economy?

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

I understand from my colleagues that the debate the opposition have actually listed for the MPI today isn't about the economy, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why they want one but they're not prepared to table one! But I'll tell you what our government are going to do. It's not about debating the economy; it's about implementing the policies that make our economy stronger—and that's what our government are doing. We will continue to implement those sound, carefully managed, disciplined, stable and certain policies that, as I have said today, have resulted in three years of consecutive increases in employment every single month, the longest run of jobs growth on a monthly basis this country has ever seen.

So what we will do is not talk about it; we'll get on and do it. We were elected in May. We were elected to come into this place and ensure that Australians got to keep more of what they earned by lowering their taxes. The Labor Party sought to fight that at the election and they fought it tooth and nail. They didn't just fight it saying they didn't want to adopt our tax cuts; they fought it by saying they wanted $387 billion of higher taxes on the Australian people. I don't know whether that was just a mindless policy of the Labor Party, thinking that $387 billion of higher taxes wouldn't hurt the economy, particularly as we were facing the global conditions which we are all very familiar with. If that is the case then I think that speaks to their competence when it comes to framing economic policy. Or maybe they just hadn't noticed what was going on. That is a more generous view about why the Labor Party might say that, but what I know from the Labor Party is this: they will take any opportunity to argue for more reckless spending. The Australian people know this: when Labor spend more money, they take more money from the pockets of the Australian people. That's why Labor are never trusted with the budget, because people know they will always come after the budgets of Australians. Even now, even here at this question time, they are saying that we should be spending more money in a reckless way, in the same way they did when they were in government. Having not learned the lessons of their failures in government, they are saying that we should implement Labor's policies of panic and crisis. We will not.