Transcript of Doorstop – Canberra – Thursday, 4 July 2019

SUBJECT: Tax cuts.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Well this morning we’ll consider the Senate’s tax package. Labor will be pursuing our amendments before the Senate because they represent good economic policy.

We saw the Reserve Bank of Australia just this week lower interest rates to a cash rate of just 1 per cent. That’s one third of the lowest that interest rates got during the Global Financial Crisis, the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Now the fact is that if a tax cut by increasing the 37 per cent threshold is good policy from $90,000 to $120,000 in 2022, why isn’t it good policy in 2019? The Government should be supporting that amendment.

And might I say the crossbenchers are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t support the separating out of State Three of the tax cuts.

This has been a bluff by the Government saying, threatening to hold up tax cuts today because of something that might happen in 2024-25.

That’s why Labor has argued for more tax cuts sooner into every worker’s hand, right now. That’s what the economy needs. That’s what Labor will be pursuing in the Senate.

Thanks.