Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Central to economic policy is the role of taxation, and the Labor government has pledged that taxation as a share of gross domestic product will be kept below the level it inherited: on average, 23.6 per cent of GDP in 2007-08. The next budget will be tough—we make no apologies for that. We will be imposing spending restraints that keep real spending to a cap of two per cent.

If we reflect on the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, I think that in his first day on the job he said that the Liberal Party is a party that lowers taxes in Australia. On a number of occasions, he said that there would be no new taxes and that he would be lowering existing taxes. What did we have announced yesterday? We had a big new tax. We have been hearing a lot about big new taxes, but the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, announced a big $2.7 billion new tax.