AUSTRALIA PAYING FOR BROKEN PROMISES
DAILY TELEGRAPH - WEDNESDAY, 30 APRIL 2014
No surprises? No excuses?
In seven months, Tony Abbott has given Australians plenty of both.
And the Prime Minister’s broken promises keep on coming.
This week it’s a new tax on income.
A tax increase for every Australian earning more than $80,000 – a new tax that the Prime Minister repeatedly ruled out before the election.
Tony Abbott is out there playing word games, but he cannot escape the truth.
A tax increase is a tax increase. A broken promise is a broken promise.
After seven months, the Australian people are onto him.
They have woken up to the Liberals’ phoney ‘Budget emergency’.
Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott spend lots of time talking about debt and deficit – yet they’ve added more than $68 billion to the national debt since they came to office.
$68 billion. The Liberals have more than doubled Australia’s deficit – and now they’re trying to use it to justify their broken promises and their new taxes.
But none of the Prime Minister’s slippery attempts to rewrite what he said before the election can disguise this budget for what it is: a budget of broken promises and twisted priorities.
The Australian people aren’t mugs.
When Tony Abbott said ‘no new taxes’ there was no asterisk, no fine print.
The Prime Minister can use all the weasel-words he likes, his new deficit tax is nothing but a deceit tax.
The deceit tax is a price that working Australians will pay for the Prime Minister’s broken promises and twisted priorities.
It is a tax grab that puts the politics of a manufactured ‘Budget emergency’ ahead of the welfare of millions of hardworking Australians.
It is a tax hike to pay for an extravagant paid parental leave scheme for multi-millionaires who don’t need an extra $75,000 to have a baby.
In the weeks ahead, I’m sure Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey will keep lecturing us about the need for heavy lifting.
There will be more sanctimony about ‘sharing the pain’.
Everyone knows that the Liberals desperately want this to be seen as a brave Budget.
But there is nothing brave about slugging ordinary Australians with an increase in their income tax.
There is nothing brave about forcing pensioners to wait longer for less.
There is nothing courageous about taking money from Australian families who feel like they are losing the battle with cost of living. There is nothing brave about deception.
Keeping promises takes courage, breaking them takes none.
Standing up for vulnerable Australians takes courage, picking on them takes none.
Governing for all Australians takes courage.
Labor is determined to stop Tony Abbot’s deceit tax.
We want nothing to do with a new tax on the income of ordinary Australians, and we will fight the Government every step of the way.
This piece was first published in The Daily Telegraph, p27, Wednesday 30 April 2014.
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