Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer inform the House about the Morrison government's ongoing commitment to keep taxes low for Australian businesses and families, helping generate more jobs in the regions and the cities right around the country, and, 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 Stirling for his question and acknowledge his background in the ADF and in the private sector. Sixty thousand people across the member for Stirling's electorate are getting a tax cut as a result of policies that we on this side of the House have supported. We on this side of the House, the Liberal and National parties, support more jobs and lower taxes. When we came to government, unemployment was 5.7 per cent; today it's 4.6 per cent. An additional 1.4 million Australians are in jobs as a result of the policies of this side of the House.

And we've lowered taxes, with more than $300 billion of legislated tax cuts. Indeed, in the last three budgets, as a result of the tax relief that we have legislated through the parliament, if you are a person on $60,000 a year—take a bus driver; take a, baker—you will pay $6,480 less tax as a result of the policies that we have passed through the parliament. And we're creating jobs right around the country with our 10-year infrastructure pipeline. There's Snowy Hydro, Snowy 2.0, with more 5,000 jobs being supported by that program; Western Sydney Airport, with more than 11,000 jobs—and, once it's up and running, 28,000 jobs; and the Melbourne-Brisbane Inland Rail, with more than 20,000 jobs across our regions as a result of that single infrastructure project.

I'm asked whether there are any alternative policies to our policies, which are creating more jobs and driving down taxes. We know the Leader of the Opposition has two big policy ideas: a national drivers licence to turbocharge the economy and a $6 billion conversation starter to pay people $300 if they have already had the jab—a policy that he asked us to support when his own shadow finance minister wouldn't support it. But we also know that the member for Rankin is cooking up another policy. Surprise, surprise; it's higher taxes. It's a $27 billion hit on family businesses—300,000 of them. We are told on the front page of the Australian that Dr Chalmers, the member for Rankin, told his senior colleagues that this tax increase would 'leave room for spending measures'. So those opposite will continue to spend more and will continue to tax more, while we on this side of the House are driving down taxes and creating more jobs.