Russell Broadbent here. Your Member for Monash.
This is a just as I see it broadcast.
Today we learned the Labor government has ordered a review of hundreds of Australia’s nation-building infrastructure projects – the essential infrastructure that regions like ours depend on.
If money is an issue, why isn’t Labor reconsidering the stage three tax cuts?
There’s $243 billion sitting right there.
Three years into the covid pandemic, families across our nation are now grappling with the most dire cost of living pressures in decades.
We have a looming recession, skyrocketing grocery and heating bills, huge interest rate hikes, and now the threat of regional projects being culled.
It makes no sense that Labor has not at least reconsidered these tax cuts and whether they could be better utilised to help alleviate our country’s financial woes.
$243 billion is a lot of money. I’ve included a link to a clever ABC article and graphic that will give you a feel for what this money could fund.
Not that I’m suggesting all the tax cuts should be shelved – just the ones proposed for people like me who don’t need them.
These tax cuts will see the richest 1% of Australians get as much benefit as the poorest 65% combined. How does that fit with Labor’s promise to deliver ‘more money in people’s pockets’? It doesn’t.
If the $243 billion over 10 years will see $161 billion flow to men and only $83 billion to women. How does that fit with Labor’s pledge ‘to eliminate the gender pay gap’? It doesn’t.
And if the tax cuts mainly benefit Australians in inner city areas, how does that fit with Labor’s desire for ‘rural and regional Australians to receive a fair share of the prosperity they create’?
These tax cuts were dreamt up in rosier times more than five years ago. No-one could have predicted the way the world has been turned upside down since then.
The Labor party say they have inherited the legislation as if they have no choice about proceeding with these tax cuts but of course they do!
That’s just as I see it.
