Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

That's right—as a share of the economy, because the pie's growing but the government's spending as a proportion of that is declining, and we know what that means: that means smaller government; smaller services; less money going into key services like health, aged care, child care, education and veterans' health. All of these important areas of government expenditure, will be under attack by this government—have no doubt about it. We have argued that it is irresponsible to commit to stage 3 five years out. That remains our view. But, ultimately, we have not won that debate tonight, and we have not been able to defer stage 3 from this bill.

We will review stage 3 closer to the next election, and, of course, like every political party in this place, will propose our own policies, which will take into account the economic and budget conditions at that time. But we will not put ourselves in the position that the Greens are in—and we have been under consistent attack from them this afternoon. We will not refuse tax cuts to Australians on low and middle incomes just because we have failed to get our amendments up today. We think that would be irresponsible. We think it would be irresponsible in the short term. It's not what the economy needs. And we have to accept that stage 1 needs to get through. We've failed in asking the government to defer stage 3. When they failed to do it, we moved amendments to do it. When those amendments didn't get up, we were left with a decision about what to do. And our decision has been that we need to allow those tax cuts that are due in this parliamentary term to flow to those who need them the most. We cannot stand in the way of those, and we will not, and that means we will support the passage of this bill tonight.