Bill Shorten’s Budget reply focuses on tax cuts, education and health

Bill Shorten has delivered a Budget for the battler and Australia’s youth by cracking down on well-heeled excess and pouring a massive $36 billion into education, health, skills and the environment.

BILL Shorten has delivered a Budget for the battler and Australia’s youth by cracking down on well-heeled excess and pouring a massive $36 billion into education, health, skills and the environment.

With a war chest stuffed with cash by targeting negative gearing and income tax refunds, the Opposition Leader in his Budget-in-Reply neutralised some sting by unveiling a $2.3 billion plan to slash out-of-pocket costs for cancer patients.

Heralded as “the most important reform to Medicare since it was introduced by Bob Hawke”, the buoyant Labor leader declared, “cancer makes you sick and then paying for the treatment makes you poor”.

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Invoking memories of his deceased mother Ann, Mr Shorten lamented the emotional and financial costs of fighting the burden.

The big-spending, traditional Labor manifesto unashamedly targets more well-off Australians to help low-income earners, and diverts money away from some older Australians to give opportunity to the younger.

While many of the announcements had already been made, Mr Shorten built on some of his platform and revealed some new plans in his response to the Morrison Government’s Budget on Tuesday.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten focused on traditional Labor values in his Budget reply speech. Picture: Kym Smith

Mr Shorten said 3.6 million working Australians would get better tax cuts after being “ripped off by the Liberals”.

For this financial year, workers earning up to $37,000 a year will receive a tax cut of up to $350.

For those earning between $37,000 and $48,000 a year, the low-income offset will be up to $1080.

“By not providing a tax cut that is equal to Labor’s commitment, the Liberals are threatening over three million working class Australians, mostly women, with higher taxes,” Mr Shorten said.

“The Liberals’ priorities are all wrong. With the Liberals, low-income workers get less than $5 a week but an investment banker gets more than $11,000 a year in tax cuts.

“This is not a tax plan, it’s a ticking debt bomb.”

Mr Shorten reaffirmed his commitment to allocate an extra $2.8 billion for public hospitals and $14 billion for schools.

He said 700,000 children a year would be able to get subsidised preschool in the two years before they started school. That equates to almost 61,000 three-year-olds and almost 69,000 four-year-olds.

He announced more money for TAFE to help boost apprentices and more help for youth to get a head start.

The election pitch was primarily directed at younger Australians and women.

Labor’s biggest voting bloc are those aged 18-35 years.

“We believe the government has a responsibility to leave the place better than when we found it,” Mr Shorten said.

“That is why we are going to stop the intergenerational unfairness in our tax system.

“Now, if you’re currently negatively gearing, the rules won’t change. If you want to use it on new homes, you still can. But you cannot have property investors playing with loaded dice against our young people, Generation Y and the Millennials.

“Instead of patronising millions of young Australians with lectures about cutting back on smashed avo, why don’t we tell them the truth – getting together a 20 per cent deposit plus stamp duty is so much, much harder than it was 20 or 25 years ago.

“It is even more difficult when your government uses your taxpayer money to subsidise the property investor’s bidding against you.”

Mr Shorten said the intergenerational bias that the tax system had against young people must be called out.

He said Labor would legislate to restore cuts to Sunday and public penalty rates in its first 100 days and help the 1.2 million lowest-paid Australians by creating a living wage.

Labor said last night there were 367,856 Queenslanders affected by penalty rate cuts.

And in a direct appeal to Queenslanders, Mr Shorten pledged to boost infrastructure in the state by $6.3 billion, including a new announcement that a Labor government would invest $1.5 billion in Brisbane’s northside to upgrade the Gateway Motorway and Bruce Highway.

The speech comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison prepares to call an election, with speculation that he could call it as early as today.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann last night accused Mr Shorten of setting out a plan to hike taxes by $200 billion and harm the economy.

“Labor still haven’t learned that a strong economy is central to everything,” Senator Cormann said.