This is an unfair Budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family.

Malcolm Turnbull has delivered a tax cut for millionaires and a tax hike for every working Australian.

The only people who will see better days from this Budget are big business and the well-off.

As a result of tonight’s Budget, someone on a million dollars will pay $16,400 less tax this year, while someone earning $65,000 will pay $325 more tax in two years’ time.

This Budget fails the jobs test – unemployment is going up.

It fails the Medicare test – the Government has delayed reversing its unfair cuts to Medicare for three years. 

It fails the fairness test – Australians just can’t trust Malcolm Turnbull to deliver a fair budget; he doesn’t believe it, his party doesn’t believe it.

Tonight, Malcolm Turnbull had the chance to fix the unfairness of the last four years. Instead, his Government has chosen to:

• Hand a $16,400 tax cut to someone earning a million dollars;
• Continue with its $50 billion tax handout for big business while increasing taxes on every Australian earning over $21,655;
• Delay reversing their cuts to Medicare for three years, putting bulk billing at risk;
• Do nothing meaningful to tackle the housing affordability crisis; and
• Cut $22 billion from Australia’s schools and make cuts to universities.

Malcolm Turnbull’s Budget also fails the economic credibility test:

• Gross debt will now pass half a trillion dollars in coming months, a total of $20,000 for each Australian man, woman and child;
• The deficit is ten times bigger for the coming year than was predicted in the Liberal’s first Budget;
• Growth is down, employment is down, wages growth is down and unemployment is up.

The Budget keeps unfair ‘zombie measures’ and inflicts new hidden nasties such as:

• Keeping the age pension age at 70 – the highest in the developed world
• New cuts to family payments
• New cuts to veterans’ health
• The abolition of the energy supplement, which will leave pensioners up to $366 a year worse off.

While the Government has finally removed some other unfair zombie measures from the Budget, everyone knows it will bring back these savage cuts as soon as they get the chance. 

Temporarily removing these cuts are only about one thing: saving Malcolm Turnbull’s job.

They’ve changed their tactics, they’ve changed their rhetoric, but they’ll never change their minds.

Budgets are about choices, and Malcolm Turnbull has made his choices tonight.

He has chosen big business over middle and working class families. 

He has chosen multinationals over Medicare.

He has chosen big business over battlers.

A Shorten Labor Government will make different choices. We will put people first, create more jobs for Australians, properly invest in schools and save Medicare from Malcolm Turnbull’s cuts.