Topics: Federal Budget

 

E&OE  

 

SALLY SARA:

You’re listening to Breakfast and we're going through last night's Federal Budget, giving you some analysis and getting some different views on what was announced last night. Well, with a federal election just around the corner, what is the Coalition's vision for the economy and reaction to last night's Budget? Angus Taylor is the Shadow Treasurer and is with me here in the studio in Parliament House. Angus Taylor, welcome back to Breakfast.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Great to be with you.

 

SALLY SARA:

Do you support the $17 billion in tax cuts that Jim Chalmers announced last night?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, can I say we don't because what we've got here is a budget that is for the next five weeks, not the next five years and beyond and we needed a budget which takes Australia back to the standard of living that we had when we were last in power. It's collapsed 8% in just two and half years, which is unprecedented and unrivalled, worse than any other country in the world and that collapse in our standard of living needed to be the focus of the budget. Instead, what we get is an election bribe, 70 cents a day in over a year's time. It simply doesn't cut it in terms of giving us the economic pathway we need to restore hope, which is fading fast for so many Australian families, to restore our standard of living and to re-establish budget integrity, which has been lost since Jim Chalmers threw out the rule book that Peter Costello put in place in the 90s. 

 

SALLY SARA:

So just so that I understand clearly, with these tax cuts, are you saying that they're not enough or they shouldn't have been given at all?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, what we need is a restoration of our standard of living. Let's put it in perspective and I think a specific example really helps to understand the challenge here. A typical family with a mortgage in my electorate or anywhere else, goes up into southwestern Sydney, has paid an extra $50,000 on mortgage payments and other things that they didn't expect to pay two and a half years ago, $50,000. That's in after-tax income, they had to find somewhere, and they've had to find somewhere.  And that is a function of the fact that our standard of living as a country has gone backwards like never before. When you say, look, we can't fix that, we've given up the ghost, and it's going to keep being bad, so in a year's time, we're going to give you 70 cents a day, it doesn't cut it. What the government needed to…

 

SALLY SARA:

So, because it's not enough?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well because they needed to actually focus on managing the economy. That is the problem. If you want to beat inflation, if you want to boost growth, if you want to back small business, if you want to fix housing, if you want to deliver affordable, reliable energy, you need to manage the economy and that's where this government has failed. That's where the focus needs to be. We've been in tough situations before as a country and we’ve got out of them by managing the economy well and it's not just Liberal governments that have done that. I've seen Labor governments do that, but this government is not doing that.

 

SALLY SARA:

So, in the lead up to this Federal election, are you saying that the Coalition would be more focused on managing and growing the economy? Are you ruling out tax cuts from the Coalition?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, we've already announced important tax cuts. So accelerated depreciation…

 

SALLY SARA:

Further tax cuts?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, it's important to talk about the ones we've already announced, and I know that's not as exciting for some, but many of your listeners won't have heard about these. Accelerated depreciation for small business. Why? Because we've got to back small business to invest. When small businesses invest in our communities, they create jobs, they create opportunities, they drive up real wages and our standard of living. It's so important we back that. We're not going to support taxation of unrealised capital gains. That's moving down a pathway we simply won't support. So, they're important tax initiatives we’ve already announced.

 

SALLY SARA:

So, when we’re talking about small business, Angus Taylor, the non-compete clauses that were announced by the government, do you support the crackdown on non-compete clauses?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, can I say we want free labour markets where people can move between jobs as easily as possible when it makes sense for them, and it makes sense in the marketplace. That's how you create opportunities, important to aspiration, and we don't want unnecessary barriers to that. There's a lot of questions about how this would all work, given it's a very complex area of employment law. It's unclear whether these changes would apply to non-disclosure agreements, for instance, so we need answers to those questions. We do know one of the big barriers in our labour markets right now is the behaviour of some of our very worst union officials, and the CFMEU should be deregistered, for instance. Bring back the ABCC, we've got to make our labour markets work for all Australians.

 

SALLY SARA:

And just coming back again, just so I understand on this issue with non-compete clauses, we had COSBOA on this morning, they were saying this is one of the worst budgets for small business. They’re shocked and disappointed. The non-compete clause they are rejecting the scrapping of that so is there a difference between what small business is saying. Sounds like you’re in favour of it.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

No, we don’t actually understand what’s being proposed here.

 

SALLY SARA:

They do.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, they may or may not you know the thing about the Labor party is there more likely to brief other people than us. That’s how they work, and they don’t seem to believe in democracy the way I do. So, we haven’t been briefed on the detail of it and I’m someone who knows that the detail of these things really counts. We want people to have options in the labour market, but we also want small business to be strong. I mean, we are a party of small business, and I’ve talked a lot about small business in this interview and I always do.

 

SALLY SARA:

I want to ask you about public servants. The Coalition has said that it wants the public service to go back to the size it was pre-Labor. We now know from the figures that would be around 41,000 jobs. Should 41,000 public servants be prepared to lose their jobs now under the Coalition Government?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, let me tell you this is a job market that’s strong. I mean, it’s as strong as we have ever seen, whilst we’ve seen a collapse in our standard of living, we’ve got a strong labour market and that gives us options we otherwise wouldn’t have. We know that the public service has got so big now, attrition rates are high. So, let’s be clear we would be relying on what we’ve been relying on. So, one of the things I’ve learnt in my career prior to politics and unlike many in this place, I had a significant career prior to politics in the private sector is that you don’t need to have a bigger team to have a better team. We have amazing people in our public service, truly tremendous people…

 

SALLY SARA:

But will they be losing their jobs?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, you know, as I said I talked about attrition a moment ago and there’s a natural attrition rate now in the public service which is high because it's big. And so, we can rely on that.

 

SALLY SARA:

Would that be enough?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, we’ll say more, as I said before, we'll say more about this over the coming weeks, but the point I'm making is we want a public service that delivers for Australians, where people are excited and empowered to work, where bureaucracy doesn't control everything, where people can get on with their jobs and that doesn't need to be a bigger public service.

 

SALLY SARA:

Angus Taylor, on this post-budget morning, it feels like the clock is going at a million miles an hour. We're out of time. Thank you for coming into the studio this morning.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Great to be with you.

 

 

ENDS.