Coalition’s bracket creep plan to cost tens of billions
The coalition's economic plan for Australia would hand back more money to workers by indexing tax rates to inflation at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
A PERMANENT tax cut would cost government coffers $22 billion but could be offset by paring back bureaucracy under a coalition plan.
Delivering his first budget reply speech on Thursday evening, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor promised to end bracket creep by indexing tax rates in line with inflation, claiming the move will deliver workers an extra $1000 a year, four years into the policy.
“(Bracket creep) drives up the average rate of taxation of Australians every single year. It’s an insidious tax,” he told reporters at a media conference in the affluent Canberra suburb of Red Hill.
The overhaul would cost $22.5 billion over four years, deputy opposition leader Jane Hume said.
“That has been fully costed and offset in our budget reply,” Senator Hume told ABC Radio National on Friday, arguing the measure could be paid for by cutting back government bureaucracy.
Under the coalition’s plan, the bottom two tax brackets – covering people earning between $18,201 and $135,000 – would be indexed from 2028/29.
The top two tax brackets would also be indexed from the 2031/32 financial year.
Mr Taylor also defended his plan to strip welfare payments from permanent residents, including JobSeeker and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, claiming a person was not Australian until they had become a citizen.
Pressed on whether permanent residents who’d lived in the country for years should be considered Australians, Mr Taylor said the government would commit to people when they chose to commit to the country by becoming a citizen.
“At the end of the day, you become Australian when you pledge … to our country, to our parliamentary democracy, to our system of law, to our freedoms in the citizenship ceremony,” Mr Taylor said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused the opposition of pulling its migration policies from One Nation’s playbook.
“I didn’t know that Angus Taylor had employed (One Nation senator) Malcolm Roberts as a speechwriter, but last night, that’s what it looked like,” he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
“You couldn’t have any answers about costings or anything else, they’ve just been a mess and haven’t been able to hold the line.”
The coalition’s plan also includes a broader crackdown on immigration, which would see Australia’s intake of foreigners tied to the number of homes built every year.
“This much I promise: the coalition will deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history,” Mr Taylor said, without providing detailed figures for his migration targets.
Barnaby Joyce, who defected to One Nation in December, said Mr Taylor was effectively reading off his new party’s script and said he’d never seen the coalition pushed further to the right on immigration.
“I think the Australian people … feel uncomfortable about where (migration’s) off to, and they’re demanding of governments of all ilks to give them a sense of security,” Mr Joyce told the ABC.
Migrant advocates responded angrily to the opposition leader’s speech, accusing him of attempting to “chase votes with fear and division”.
“Taylor’s comments tonight are inflammatory and desperate,” Asylum Seeker Resource Centre deputy chief executive Jana Favero said in a statement.
