Senator Lyn Allison
Parliamentary Leader and Democrats Senator for VictoriaSenator Andrew Murray
Democrats Senator for Western Australia
Australian Democrats spokesperson for Taxation, Finance & Corporate Affairs
| Dated: 14 June 2005
Portfolio: Taxation, Finance & Corporate Affairs
| More from Senator Andrew Murray on Taxation, Finance & Corporate Affairs
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Democrats Will Not Disallow Tax Schedules
| The Australian Democrats have announced they will not be voting to disallow the Taxation Schedules.
We remain strongly opposed to the Government's generous gift to high income earners and have proposed our own fairer tax cuts, Australian Democrats Leader, Senator Lyn Allison said. But we will not stand in the way of the Taxation Office trying to apply the law when the Government gets their majority in the Senate."
"The Democrat's Party Room today discussed the tax cuts. For practical reasons we have decided not to disallow the schedules but we will continue to push for a fairer tax system."
Australian Democrats Taxation spokesperson, Senator Andrew Murray, said with the money available for tax cuts, the Democrats would instead increase the tax-free threshold to $10,000.
This would provide all taxpayers with a $680 a year tax cut, or about $13 a week, Senator Murray said. "Our tax cut proposal is better and fairer than the either the Beazley or Howard proposals and, an additional 400,000 low income earners would not have to pay income tax.
The Democrats will have two amendments:
One opposing all tax cuts and raising the tax-free threshold to $10 000 instead;
If that does not succeed, we will split the tax cuts bill into the low income tax cuts and the high income tax cuts. We will then vote for the 17 to 15 cents low-income earners tax cut, and against the rest of the tax cuts
"We will be supporting the ALP tax amendments, if ours are unsuccessful, because they are fairer than the Governments, Senator Allison said.
We urge the ALP to continue their opposition so that the Government will need to rely upon their Senate majority in August to ensure their outrageous policy is implemented."
The Democrats are currently distributing 60,000 postcards across the nation showing Australians what fairer tax cuts look like.
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