SUBJECT/S: Game-changing investments in education; tax cuts for small and medium businesses; polls.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Well this week marks the 10 year anniversary of the fiscal stimulus which did so much to save Australia from the worst impacts of the global financial crisis. Just as we struck the best combination of fairness and responsibility and put ordinary working people at the very core of our policy consideration then, so too are we doing that now. In the three weeks since parliament last sat, we have announced game-changing policies - in school education, in pre-school education right across the board in a whole range of areas. The Government has spent that three weeks brawling with themselves in the usual way as part of what Scott Morrison has described as the Muppet Show.
 
Now, we are looking forward to supporting the small business tax cuts which will be presented to the parliament this week. Unlike the Government, we have found a way to make room in our alternative budget for tax relief for small and medium sized businesses in this country.  Within one day of the Government announcing that they had changed their position on small and medium sized businesses and the tax that they will pay, within one day of that , Labor had convened our Expenditure Review Committee, convened our Shadow Cabinet, indicated our support for those tax cuts for small and medium sized businesses and most importantly of all, indicated how we would pay for them in our alternative budget. 
 
It has now been five days since the government shifted their position on tax cuts for small and medium sized businesses and we still don't know where the money is coming from. We call on Mathias Cormann and Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison to say where the money is coming from for these tax cuts for small to medium sized businesses in this country. Mathias Cormann has been pretending over the weekend that somehow this $3.2 billion package of tax cuts is not a cost to the budget. At the same time, Christopher Pyne has been out there saying 'well it costs us $3.2 billion and that's money well spent'. This mob is such a shambles. They are so dysfunctional and chaotic that they can't even agree whether these tax cuts for small and medium sized businesses are coming at a cost to the budget and they can't tell the Australian people where the money is coming from.
 
Under Labor, small and medium sized businesses will get the tax cuts without the cuts to hospitals and schools and without blowing out the national debt which has doubled on the Liberals watch.  All the Liberal Party can guarantee in refusing to identify where the money is coming from for these tax cuts is that under the Liberal Party there will be more cuts to schools and hospitals and more debt, and remembering that national debt has already doubled under the Liberal government over the past 5 years.
 
JOURNALIST: The latest polls out today has Bill Shorten still trailing Scott Morrison as preferred Prime Minister. Is that a concern?
 
CHALMERS: Well the polls today are incredibly encouraging for Labor and whether we have been up by a lot or up by a little or somewhere in-between over the last couple of years, we have always maintained our focus on people and on policy and on reversing Scott Morrison's cuts to schools and hospitals and penalty rates and that remains our focus. We are not obsessed by polls like our opponents are. We are focused firmly on the Australian people and what policies that they need to get ahead in their own lives.
 
Bill Shorten has been the leader for every single day of those 2 years when we have been in an election winning position in every singled published opinion poll and our competitive position reflects the fact that Bill, for years now, has led a stable and united and cohesive team. He has lead on policy and he has maintained his focus on real people and that's what matters. Thank you.
 
ENDS