Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) to a question without notice I asked today relating to income tax rates.

At a time when Australians are labouring under a cost-of-living crisis, at a time when food prices, petrol prices, medicine prices, transport prices, rents, mortgages, electricity prices and insurance payments are all sky rocketing, it is a massive injustice that this government is even considering going ahead with quarter of a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts for the super wealthy. Even the International Monetary Fund, one of the absolute architects and cheerleaders of neoliberalism around the planet, has suggested that these tax cuts should be reassessed, yet this government, in its blind pursuit of lining the pockets of the already very wealthy people in this country, is ignoring the cries of working-class people who are struggling to make ends meet.

These stage 3 tax cuts used to be Mr Morrison's tax cuts. He conceived of them when he was Treasurer and he legislated for them when he was Prime Minister. But these are no longer Mr Morrison's tax cuts; these stage 3 tax cuts for the super wealthy are now Labor's tax cuts because Labor brought down a budget after the election that included these tax cuts and Labor have confirmed, as recently as Senator Gallagher's answer to my questions this afternoon, that these tax cuts are still Labor's policy.