ALP to tax retirees to pay for refugees, says Morrison

Scott Morrison says Bill Shorten will “tax retirees” to pay for more refugees to come to Australia.

Labor has dismissed claims its push for an increased humanitarian intake would cost $6 billion. Picture: David Mariuz/AAP

Scott Morrison says Bill Shorten will “tax retirees” to pay for more refugees to come to Australia, after Labor dismissed claims its push for an increased humanitarian intake would cost $6 billion.

Government analysis shows Labor’s plan to bring in nearly 20,000 more refugees a year could cost the federal budget $6.2bn over 10 years. “They’re going to tax retirees through their retiree tax to pay for increased refugee intake in Australia,” the Prime Minister said in Perth yesterday.

“We have a very credible and very worthy program for refugee humanitarian intake here in Australia. Over 18,000 we take every single year.

“We’re not going to increase that intake because we want to invest in (infrastructure) projects.”

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said yesterday, before the Prime Minister’s comments, that the government’s costings were “nonsense” and “made up”.

“The government isn’t focused on governing. They are focused on putting out these nonsense ­reports; usually that get found out, that Treasury and Finance have nothing to do with them, and they were done on the back of a Wheaties packet,” he told Sky News.

“I don’t know why they don’t talk about billions. Why not talk about trillions, given they just make stuff up all the time?”

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann defended the analysis conducted by his department.

“This is done using the normal costings methodology based on the expert advice of relevant departments right across government,” he told Sky News. “Labor hasn’t updated their costings for three years … They don’t know the cost of the things they propose.”

The analysis, which covers settlement, welfare and health costs associated with the humanitarian program, shows a sharp ­deterioration in the budget under Labor plans to effectively double last year’s humanitarian intake by 2025. The annual cost of managing the program for new entrants beyond­ 2019-20 would rise from $624 million this year to more than $4.3bn a year by 2028-29. This would compound over time and degrade existing services.