Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Prime Minister Albanese gave Australians a clear commitment that he would also make no changes to franking credits. One of the last things we did last year was to pass a bill in the Senate that carried those broken promises around franking credits. The broken promise of all broken promises is the decision to renege on the legislated stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3 tax cuts. And it's not just a broken promise. The Prime Minister did not wake up one day and break a promise. He went out to Australians over the summer on 12 separate occasions and did not give them a hint or a glimmer of an idea that on 11 December he had already asked the Treasury—through the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers—to begin work on cost-of-living relief measures. What were those cost-of-living relief measures? They were abandoning legislated tax cuts in the form of the third stage of the three-stage tax reform plan.

Labor wants to talk about the tax initiative itself, and that's fine. But by the end of this year there'll be only one matter on the minds and the lips of Australian voters, and that will be the catalogue of broken promise upon broken promise upon broken promise. So my challenge this afternoon is to Senator Polley from Tasmania and to Senator Grogan from South Australia to rule out changes to negative gearing, changes to taxes on people's homes, changes to franking credits. This afternoon, in your five-minute contributions, you can stand here and rule it out and you can say to your electors, 'I will challenge Prime Minister Albanese to not break another promise in in 2024'—your challenge. Do you accept it?