Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to our Treasurer. Will the Treasurer remind the House how the Morrison government's strong economic management and its commitment to lower taxes is helping to strengthen our economy and producing more jobs for families and businesses across Australia? Is the Treasurer aware of any alternative policies?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question, because she is a champion for her local community, with a background in small business, and she has supported policies that have delivered more than 70,000 taxpayers in her electorate with a tax cut. On this side of the House, we stand for more jobs and lower taxes. When we came to government, unemployment was 5.7 per cent. Today it's 4.6 per cent, and 1.4 million additional people are in work since we came to government. We have legislated, through the parliament, more than $300 billion of income tax cuts, abolishing a whole tax bracket, with 95 per cent of taxpayers paying a marginal rate of tax of no more than 30c in the dollar. We've cut taxes for small business down to 25 per cent and we've introduced and implemented the largest immediate expensing in business investment incentives Australia has ever seen. Combined with our 10-year infrastructure pipeline, projects like Snowy Hydro 2.0, the Western Sydney Airport and the Melbourne-Brisbane Inland Rail have helped create jobs across the country, as has our skills program. More than 450,000 places for JobTrainer and 170,000 apprenticeships are helping to create more jobs across the country.

I'm asked: are there any alternative policies? We know that the Leader of the Opposition has come up with two. There was the national drivers licence and there was the $6 billion conversation starter 'Paying people who've already had the jab'. And he asked us to support his policy that his own shadow finance minister will not support herself. We also know that the member for Rankin likes to tax a lot. So it was no surprise that we read recently, on the front page of the Australian,Greg Brown's story revealing that the member for Rankin is planning a $27 billion family business tax. Yes, that's right—300,000 small businesses to be affected. If you're a mum and dad running a cafe and you are earning $75,000 each from that cafe, under Labor's plan you will pay $14,000 a year more in tax. This is the Labor Party way. This is their playbook: higher taxes, more spending and, when they spend, you pay for it.