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

I'll just speak briefly following Senator Wong's contribution. Subject to what Senator Wong has outlined, the opposition's position on the Treasury Laws Amendment (A Tax Plan for the COVID-19 Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, which is part of this motion, and sitting on Friday to deal with those bills, is that the opposition will be supporting that.

Our view is that the government has decided to wrap up a range of tax measures in one omnibus bill and required that it all be put together. That does not allow us to separately deal with the rather significant tax measures that are included in this bill, which we would prefer to have the time to work through. However, we will not stand in the way of the income tax cuts, which we have been calling for since August last year, to be brought forward and for that money to flow as quickly as possible into the pockets of working Australians around this country. As I said, our preference would be that the government didn't choose to play politics and we are able to deal with these bills separately and allow for longer consideration of the large tax measures, including those that cost $27 billion, but that isn't possible. We're not in a perfect world; we're not in a world where we can choose some of these elements. As such, we will support the passage of those bills as outlined in the motion through debate on Friday.