WAYNE SWAN MP
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR LILLEY
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 2017
SUBJECT/S: 2017 Budget
WAYNE SWAN: I want to deal with the three lies behind Scott Morrison's budget, firstly the lie that the NDIS was not fully funded.
The NDIS was fully funded by Labor in the 2013-14 Budget and the notion that we would increase the Medicare Levy to fund the NDIS is nothing but pure fiction, what Scott Morrison is doing is increasing taxes on all Australians to pay for his budget mismanagement and in particular he's knocked off the levy on higher income earners and put another levy on all Australians.
That's just more trickledown economics from Scott Morrison.
The second lie is that their corporate tax cut, this $50 billion corporate tax cut, is not going to produce the jobs and growth that the Government claims, and proof of that is they've turned round and taken it away from the big banks. The truth is neither the big banks or the rest of the top end of town, are going to create jobs through their $50 billion corporate tax cut.
That's just more trickledown.
And what all that adds up to is that this is not, I repeat not, a Labor budget. This gives tax cuts to the top end of town, it attacks the social safety net, it still attacks Medicare, it doesn't fund education properly, and it's hurting people in the social security system. So as usual what we've got is another Liberal Party budget, more trickledown, tax cuts for the rich, wage suppression for the rest.
JOURNALIST: Chris Bowen seems to be in support of the levy on the banks?
SWAN: I support the levy on the banks, absolutely but it is totally inconsistent with their claims that their corporate tax cut will produce jobs and growth. The banks behaviour in Australia has been abominable and giving them a tax cut of $7 billion was not justified but the Government is still giving massive tax cuts to tax avoiders and tax evaders by keeping the $50 billion unfunded corporate tax cut in this budget. So this is yet another budget of extreme trickledown from the Liberal Party that exists to basically look after the wealthy at the expense of all other Australians.
JOURNALIST: [INAUDIBLE]
SWAN: I don't necessarily think this budget's going to produce the growth that the Government's claiming. The Government's claiming it's got a very big infrastructure package that I can't see necessarily how that kicks in and I can't necessarily see how their forecasts for wages growth are going to be met, so I think this is a budget which is highly optimistic in terms of its growth forecasts but nevertheless even given that it still forecasts higher unemployment so all round I don't think this budget meets the sort of objectives that Australians want. They want a strongly growing economy with good jobs for a great life.
This budget doesn't deliver any of that.
ENDS
WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 2017
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