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January 25, 2024
SHARRI MARKSON: Welcome back. Well to talk about the top story tonight. Albanese's broken promise on stage three tax cuts. Let's bring in the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, James Paterson. James, welcome. Does the Coalition plan to support Labor's new version of the tax cuts?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, what we won't be doing is breaking the commitment that we made to the Australian people in the 2019 federal election and the 2022 federal election, which is also the commitment that the Labor Party with Anthony Albanese made. We will always look to reduce taxes where we can and keep our promises, and we'll look closely at this package and see what is sustainable and affordable.
MARKSON: Look, Labor claims that this is a political wedge for the Liberals, for Peter Dutton, that if you don't support their tax cuts, Labor will then argue you don't want low income earners to have more tax relief. How will you handle this?
PATERSON: Well, part of it's right. It's definitely political. I mean, it was so cynical that they briefed out to the media today, the number of households in Dunkley where there's an upcoming by-election, who will benefit and who will lose. So they had the Department of Treasury going and costing the people affected in a by-election must win seat. I mean, that's just shows how cynical this is. We'll call it out for what it is, which is a total lie by the Prime Minister, which shatters his trustworthiness for the Australian people. And it means you cannot rely on anything that he commits to in the future.
MARKSON: Well, he's counting on the fact that voters will forgive his broken promise because he's helping the majority of Australians with bigger tax cuts. Do you think that assessment has merit, or do you think the reverse could be true? That even if low income earners get an extra $18 a week, they could still no longer trust the PM?
PATERSON: Well, how can they have confidence in anything he ever commits to again in the future? He can't possibly commit more emphatically than he did to the stage three tax
cuts, which he and the treasurer did on more than 100 occasions, and he said that his word was his bond in relation to these things. So no promise the Prime Minister, or his government ever makes, can ever be taken at face value ever again.
MARKSON: Look, he also announced today a reheated version of Kevin Rudd's policy from January 2008 during the GFC, that there'd be an ACCC inquiry, yearlong investigation into supermarkets and their prices. Is this another political tactic to blame the supermarkets for the cost of living crisis we are in?
PATERSON: Well, he's not only reheating Kevin Rudd's policies, he's reheating Kevin Rudd's ministers by using Craig Emerson who was responsible for the failed grocery watch scheme in the Rudd years, which did nothing to reduce grocery prices. Right now, he's promising to increase prices paid to farmers, but decrease prices that consumers are paid. I'll be very impressed to see if he can carry out even one of those things, if not both of them.
MARKSON: Look, just 30 seconds, what is your reaction to the shocking vandalism of a Captain Cook statue in Melbourne today?
PATERSON: It shows shocking historical ignorance among many young people in our community. We're a great country, we're a better country because we were settled by the British on the 26th of January, 1788. And where would we be if we didn't have those great institutions of western civilisation? We're not a perfect country, but that's worth celebrating.
MARKSON: All right, James Paterson, thank you so much.
ENDS
