Martin Ferguson says Labor must support government’s tax cuts
Scott Morrison has promised low- and middle-income earners a $1080 tax cut, but Labor is divided over whether to support it. A former party heavyweight says it risks ‘giving up its relevance’ if it doesn’t.
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Former union heavyweight Martin Ferguson says Labor is “giving up its relevance” and handing more power to the minor parties by refusing to pass the federal government’s full tax package.
The former cabinet minister has warned the party’s new leaders that Australian workers would “hold Labor to account” if it refused to wave through $157 billion in personal income tax cuts.
Labor remains divided over whether to support the Morrison Government’s three-stage tax cuts as parliament returns this week for the first time since the election.
The package is the only legislation due to be debated this week as the government tries to ensure low- and middle-income earners quickly receive the $1080 tax cuts they were promised in the April budget.
Mr Ferguson, a former Australian Council of Trade Union boss and minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments, said Australians made their choice on May 18 by voting for the Coalition’s tax cuts, “whether Labor likes it or not”.
“The Labor Party has put itself in a perilous position by refusing to back the tax cuts,” Mr Ferguson writes in Monday’s Herald Sun.
“The Coalition placed its tax package front and centre of the election campaign. The government has a mandate to deliver on it.”
Mr Ferguson said the Coalition promise that 94 per cent of workers would pay no more than 30 per cent tax on any of their income was “reminiscent of the nation-changing reforms by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments”.
“Businesses rely on people feeling confident to spend more,” he said.
“Passing these tax cuts will boost the confidence of everyone and stimulate the economy, and more jobs will follow.”
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Opposition frontbencher Katy Gallagher said on Sunday that Labor would wait to see what support the government received from the Senate crossbench before deciding how to vote on the full package.
“If and when the government is able to get a deal with the crossbench, and that’s not for certain at this point in time, we would have to take decisions based on what was happening at the time,” Senator Gallagher told Sky News.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Labor leader Anthony Albanese should drop his “losing strategy, cut his losses and stop denying the Australian people the tax cuts they voted for”.
“They are instinctively opposed to tax relief for hardworking Australians,” he said.