Russell Broadbent here, your Federal Member for Monash.
Our ambitious Treasurer is keen to show off an achievement he claims as his own - a back-to-back budget surplus.
What you might not know: this was helped along by temporary windfalls and billions in deferred spending.
Australians expect responsible economic management – because it is their tax, their resources and their country that is at stake.
So don’t give the government too much credit. It’s your money paying for their parade.
Because even while the cost-of-living crisis persists, tax collected per person is at a record high and personal-income tax represented the largest share of government revenue since the introduction of the GST in the year 2000.
What I’d like to see is for the Government to be less dependent on personal income tax. Or at least consider tax reform that encourages Australians to have a go.
Less dependence on individual incomes means the money needs to come from elsewhere. Lucky for us, we are a rich country! Australia possesses an abundance of natural resources that can be monetised for the benefit of ALL Australians, but instead, green idealists want to shelve our natural resources in the name of ‘sustainability’.
Let me put this to you – sustainability is about maintaining productivity in the long run. So what could possibly be ‘sustainable’ about ignoring our wealth of natural coal, natural gas, natural minerals and exceptional conditions for all kinds of agriculture.
That’s justice as I see it.
