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PRIME MINISTER

FOR PRESS 25 MARCH 1979

ELECTORATE TALK

These days Australians understand that any call for Government  to spend money is nothing less than a call to dig into peoples  pockets. One way or another, the taxpayer foots the bill for  every governmentÂ·spending decision. Money for new programmes,

incentives, or special help, is money collected from the pay  packets of Australian working men and women. .

As Prime Minister I am often asked publicly, and privately in  my. office, to shell out dollars for this project or that. I  make the point this is a request not so much of the Government,   but of a neighbour. .

We learnt many bitter lessons from the Labor years. Above all,  we learnt that governments which throw money around with  abandon - taxpayers money - create a paralysis that strikes  at the heart of a nation's economy. They create a paralysis

that takes years to cure.

The Coalition Government has been responsible in the management  of taxpayers dollars. We have been prudent with Government  spending.  Compare our record against our predecessors. In  Labor's first year' in office Government spending rose by 20%.

In 1974-75 it went through the roof, jumping by 46%, while in  1975-76 it still increased by nearly 24%.. That's a 115%  increase in Government spending in three years.  .  .  .

By contrast, in our first year we controlled increases in  Government spending to 10%%, to 11% in 1977-78, and this  year the growth is estimated at under 8% - the lowest increase  for ten years. This prudent, careful use of taxpayers funds  has allowed us to implement wide ranging and substantial

tax reforms. In our second Budget we reformed the personal  income tax scales. This was a major and far reaching tax  reform, which we were able to carry out only because we had  been prudent with the way we spent your money. Ã¢ÂÂ

Under Labor the wage earner on $10,000 was taxed 45ÃÂ¦ in the  dollar, and the wage earner on $16,000 was taxed at 55ÃÂ¦ in  the dollar. Under our reform these rates have been cut to 33.5%

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Just remember the. days when people didn't want to work overtime. It wasn't worth their while because of the tax slug. Today,  under our tax scales, there is a built-in incentive because our  33ÃÂª 5ÃÂ¦ standard rate applies to incomes up to $16,600. On top  of that our Family Allowance Scheme, one of Australia's greatest

social reforms of the century means direct payments to mothers.  Family Allowances have meant that 300,000 low income families,  with nearly a million children, have been helped. Because of  their limited incomes these families had not qualified for the

inequitable tax rebate of earlier times.

In terms of take home pay, our reforms have meant that the  average bloke with a wife and two children, earning about  $230 a week - that's average weekly earnings - is $15 a week  better off. This tax bonus applies despite this year's tax .

surcharge.

What is a_lso often forgotten when we talk about benefits to  taxpayers is that we have protected the less well-off by  relieving them of the need to pay any income tax at all. . Under our scales up to half a million Australians no longer  have any need to pay income tax, because we lifted Labor's

tax threshold.

Bringing it all together, it means Australians are paying  $3,000 million less tax this year than they would have if the .   Hayden tax scales still applied. That is the fact that Mr Hayden  is unwilling to face. He won't admit that Labor allowed personal

income taxes to explode. In 1973-74 Labor increased the tax  take by more than 34%, in the next year it jumped by more .

than 40%, and in the next again it increased by a further 20%.

Compare that to the last three years. In 1976-77 taxes increased  by 14%, the next year by 8.7%, while this year they are estimated  to increase by a fraction over 7%.

That's not a bad tax record. It is a record of managing the  dollars we collect from taxpayers with care and responsibility,  and we flatly reject the big spending and high taxation approach  to economic management. .  ‘  .

Remember the last election when Labor was going to abolish our  tax reforms to cut payroll tax for big companies.  Their strange  ideas on tax haven't altered. Mr Hayden has refused to deny to  me that he would guarantee that no pensioner, no small businessman,

no householder, or no owner of a farm under 100 acres would not  be hit by his Capital Gains Tax scheme.  He also wants a  Resources Tax. He wants a special tax on oil companies. These  are the kinds of policies that brought development in Australia  under Labor to a dead stop. .

Our policies are getting Australia moving again, and we are going  to keep it that way.

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