E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
CANBERRA
THURSDAY, 11 MAY 2017
SUBJECT/S: Malcolm Turnbull’s unfair Budget; deficit levy; Mathias Cormann too embarrassed to admit debt blowout; Cormann regrets reversing harsh cuts to families and pensioners; Medicare levy
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: The $21 billion in new taxes in Tuesday night's Budget is the price that Australians will pay for four years of debt and deficit blowouts, four years of chaos and confusion and dysfunction. Except if you're a multinational corporation or a millionaire, you get a tax cut. This is a Prime Minister who is so out of touch that he describes a Budget as fair when the core of that Budget is a tax hike for ordinary working Australians and a tax cut for millionaires. This is Malcolm Turnbull's version of fairness - a tax cut for the highest income earners in Australia.
Bill Shorten will be responding to the Budget tonight and one of the proposals that he will be announcing is to maintain the deficit levy on the highest income earners in the is country. We don't think it's fair that millionaires get a tax cut in Malcolm Turnbull's Budget at the same time as he asks ordinary working Australians to cop a tax hike. If this deficit levy was necessary when the deficit for the coming year - 2017/18 - was $2.8 billion in Joe Hockey's first Budget, it's more than necessary now that the same year's deficit has blown out more than 10 times to be $29.4 billion. If it was necessary in 2014, it's more than necessary now in 2017 given the substantial debt and deficit blowouts on this Government's watch.
We have three more years of record net debt. We've got that deficit for the coming year blowing out more than 10 times as I mentioned and we also have gross debt crashing the $500 billion mark - half-a-trillion dollars - before the end of this financial year, $606 billion by the end of the forward estimates rising to $725 billion by the end of the 10-year period with no peak in sight.
Mathias Cormann was asked six times last night what the gross debt figure was in his own Budget and he was too ashamed and too embarrassed to answer any of those six questions about what gross debt reaches in his Budget. The answer is $725 billion and rising.
The Government is desperate for the Australian people to believe that they've changed, that somehow they've had some big budget conversion, that they're sorry about the first three budgets and they have changed now. But a leopard can't change its spots. For as long as the Turnbull Government wants millionaires to get a tax cut while battlers get a tax hike; for as long as the Turnbull Government wants big multinational corporations to get a $50 billion tax cut, then this Government and this Budget will be all about looking after the top end of town at the expense of people who work and people who struggle.
One final point about the so-called zombie measures, which were taken out of Tuesday night's Budget. Mathias Cormann said yesterday that it was regrettable that they had to ditch those measures, which were too mean for the Parliament to pass. And what that means is that these zombie measures will be back. These harsh cuts to families and other cuts will be back because we know that the Government didn't take them out of the Budget because they stopped believing in them; they took them out of the Budget because they couldn't get them through the Senate and they will be back. For as long as they want to impose those harsh cuts on Australians, for as long as they want a tax cut for millionaires, a tax cut for big multinational corporations and a tax hike for battlers, this Government will be all about the top end of town at the expense of ordinary working people and all of their talk about fairness in this Budget will be a sham and I'm confident that the Australian people will see through it.
JOURNALIST: Should Labor support the increase in the Medicare levy?
CHALMERS: We're taking our time to work through what the Government's proposing with the Medicare levy. We make the point that at the same time as they're asking ordinary working Australians to pay more tax, they will have a tax cut for the highest income earners in this country. On 1 July, when millionaires receive Malcolm Turnbull's tax cut, that will be the same day that up to $700,000 Australians will cop a cut to their penalty rates. That shows when Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull talk about choices, these are the choices that they are making. When they talk about fairness, Malcolm Turnbull's version of fairness is a tax cut for millionaires, a tax hike for battlers and cuts to their penalty rates.
JOURNALIST: But don't you agree that Australians are generous enough that they're willing to pay a small increase in taxes to support the NDIS?
CHALMERS: We're working through that issue. We've said we've got an open mind to the Medicare levy proposal. We don't think that it should be accompanied by a tax cut for people at the highest end of the income scale. But we are working through the issues associated with the Medicare levy, understanding the impacts right up and down the income scale. But the point that we are making today is that that tax hike should not be accompanied by Malcolm Turnbull's tax cut for millionaires and big multinational corporations.
JOURNALIST: So is that going to be Labor's bargaining position? You won't support the Medicare levy unless they keep the deficit levy?
CHALMERS: I wouldn't read anything more into it than this: we don't think a tax hike for battlers should be accompanied by a tax cut for millionaires. That's the approach we take. That's what real fairness is, not Malcolm Turnbull's sham version of fairness - his market-researched, poll-tested, rehearsed lines about fairness and opportunity, which he just seems to have discovered. Under Malcolm Turnbull, when he says "fairness" he means a tax hike for battlers and a tax cut for millionaires.
ENDS
