Topics: Labor’s broken promise on stage three tax cuts 

E&OE   

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor is with me live on the line. Angus, g'day. 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Good to be with you.  

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

So firstly, alternative Treasurer, no way in the world you'll support the changes? 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

We are absolutely locked down on supporting the stage three tax cuts. We haven't seen the package that's come forward, there's more to come, apparently. But let's see. But what's very clear is they're ditching at least an important part of the stage three tax cuts. And who knows, by the time they've negotiated with the Greens, as you just said, they may well have ditched the whole thing. And keep in mind here, these tax cuts provide over 1000 bucks to the average earner. So it's not...I don't think the person on average weekly earnings is particularly wealthy. And right now, I don't think many Australians are feeling particularly wealthy, as you said a little while ago, and there's people in Western Sydney who have had to pay well over a million dollars for a house, just to raise their family. And frankly, the mortgage they're paying now requires them to have a big income just to get by. 

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

What is the - do you think there's a disconnect between income and wealth in this country? I sort of raised this proposition earlier in the show that just because you've got a big income doesn't necessarily mean you're wealthy? 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Well, absolutely right. So you'll have listeners and young families, particularly in, I see them in my electorate, in the edge of southwestern Sydney, who are working their guts out just to pay the mortgage to raise the kids. And there's not a lot of wealth there, most of the wealth is owned by the bank to be honest, their house is largely owned by the bank, and they're just trying to make ends meet. And of course, it's gotten a lot harder. We've seen around a 9% reduction in people's standard of living on average, many have seen much more of a dip than that. Rising prices, rising interest rates, and rising taxes Chris, 27% increase in personal income taxes paid by Australians over the last 18 months. It's really biting hard. And of course, the other problem we've got is an economy that is only now driven by immigration, nothing else, take out immigration, the economy's in recession. And we've got to get out of that. And you don't get out of that by declaring war on aspiration, which is what Albanese's doing. 

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

Fast forward, election next year, do you roll back the package once again, and reinstate stage three as proposed by Morrison and Frydenberg? 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Well, we clearly haven't seen the whole package. So I'm not going to put the cart before the horse here. And you know, it's reasonable to ask where this goes from here. But we've got to see exactly what it is. And the Prime Minister will be laying it out in the press club speech tomorrow, so we'll look closely at that. But what - our position is unambiguous on the stage three tax cuts, we support them. And we'll see where Labor goes from here. I mean, the position that's changed his Labor's. They committed, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer over 100 times, to the stage three tax cuts. They've been locked in for years. They're in legislation. 

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

But very, very briefly on the lower end of the redistribution from the top end to the lower end, as is proposed by the Albanese government, does the Coalition stand in the way of people who earn less than $150,000 getting more of a tax cut than they would under the current legislated stage three proposal? 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Well, we're in support of simpler, fairer, lower taxes. And that's where we start. So we'll look at that - that's not part of the stage three tax cuts. Of course, that's something they've overlaid. So we'll look at that, as we get the details. And we're only just seeing it now. What I would say and what we've already seen, at least as it's reported, there's still a $16 billion hole. So we clearly haven't seen the full package because they're promising that it's neutral to the budget. So there's clearly more to come in all of this. Let's see how it comes out. But our position on the stage three tax cuts is clear. We're not going to be part of a war on aspiration, we're not going to be cut part of Albanese creating a new class war in this country. And we think the reality is if people work hard, have a go, take risks, invest and employ people, we should reward that and incent that and that's what the stage three tax cuts were all about. 

CHRIS O’KEEFE: 

Angus Taylor, appreciate your time.  

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Great to be with you. 

ENDS.