The release of the Liberals’ mid-year Budget update will show they are still just as out of touch as ever.
The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook is expected to reveal huge cuts for students and universities, and a continued push for tax breaks for the top end of town and tax hikes for low- and middle-income Australians.
The test for Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann in MYEFO will be whether or not they’ve learned from previous failed budgets where they’ve prioritised big business over middle Australia.
Labor calls on Turnbull and his Liberals to drop their higher education cuts and their $44 billion tax hike on working Australians.
As it stands, the Liberals’ $65 billion handout to multinationals and the banks is effectively being funded by increasing the tax burden on low- and middle-income earners.
While the Liberals pander to the top end of town at the expense of those who work and struggle, they have no hope of fixing the Budget.
This year’s deficit is more than 10 times bigger than predicted in 2014; record net debt is expected this year and next; and gross debt has crashed through half-a-trillion dollars for the first time ever, with no peak in sight.
If the Liberals really cared about fixing the Budget in a fair way, they’d adopt Labor’s sensible reforms on trusts, negative gearing and capital gains.