(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
The federal government has accused Labor of peddling false hope by dangling the prospect of a larger cut to the small business tax rate, without saying how it'll be funded.
The government reduced its small business tax rate by 1.5 percentage points in Tuesday's budget, and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has now proposed to cut the rate by five percentage points.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has dismissed the suggestion, saying it's an old policy dating back to Labor's proposed tax reductions that would've been funded by mining tax revenue.
Amanda Cavill reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
In his Budget Reply speech, the Opposition leader proposed to extend the government's Budget tax cut for small business, bringing down the tax rate to 25 per cent.
Mr Shorten also promised free university degrees for 100,000 maths, science and engineering students.
He says a Labor government Labor would create a new $500 million Smart Investment Fund to invest in new companies and set up a scheme to support entrepreneurs and turn ideas into businesses.
But his plan includes no new proposals to bring down the budget deficit which stands at $35.1 billion.
Mr Shorten says he's done what Treasurer Joe Hockey and Prime Minister Tony Abbott failed to do when they handed down the 2015 budget - provide a vision for the future.
"Australians want to know what the future looks like and they want to know does the Government or the Opposition have a plan to get there? I have made it clear that the creative ingenuity that science, innovation, engineering, has to be at the centre of our future. And that's skills, one lever the Commonwealth what pull. Another thing we can do to help give Australians a great future in the next 10,15, 20 years is take the politics out of a lot of the debate about infrastructure."
Labor insists it's offering genuine bipartisan support to give small business a bigger tax cut than the 1.5 per cent offered in the federal budget.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen has told the ABC he knows it won't be easy but Labor will work with the government to achieve the cut.
"Now the Labor Party is saying very clearly, we want to see the corporate tax rate get to 25 per cent. Now we don't assert that it's easy. We don't assert that it doesn't take some effort and what Bill said last night was look, Australian business want a bit of certainty and they want to see Australian politicians working together to get to this so if you want to go to 25 per cent, we'll come with you. If the Government rebuffs that bipartisanship, if they don't want to talk about it, if they are not interested in that sort of approach, well, okay, we'll have more to say in the future but that's the approach that we're taking first.
But Prime Minister Tony Abbott has dismissed the suggestion, saying Mr Shorten needs to say how he'll pay for his big ideas.
"None of this adds up. It was an exercise in Magic Pudding economics. What he gave us was an unfunded wish-list and this is typical of Bill Shorten. He makes promises, never delivers them, Labor promised a 5 per cent company tax cut back in 2010. They had three years in Budget, never delivered it. In fact, what they did do was, they offered a 2 per cent tax cut, they scaled it back to 1 per cent, and then they took that away as well."
Labor did propose to cut corporate taxes by five points to 25 per cent as part of its mining tax package in 2010.
But Mr Abbott's then-opposition combined with the Greens to vote down the package.
Share
