Coroner & Legal
Budget 2018: Coalition touts $24.5bn infrastructure spend as pre-election sweetener
Treasurer also flags modest personal income tax cuts and return to surplus one year early
The Turnbull government has confirmed an infrastructure spend of $24.5bn in the states that will determine the outcome of the next federal election as the treasurer, Scott Morrison, prepares to hand down his third budget on Tuesday night.
Tuesday’s budget will contain the big infrastructure spend and what Morrison is characterising as modest personal income tax cuts – as well as a return to surplus one year early, in 2019-20 according to speculative media reports, rather than in 2020-21 as forecast in the midyear economic outlook.
The budget will position the major parties for a political fight on tax between now and the next federal election. Labor has positioned itself to match the government’s personal income tax cuts itself while rejecting the Coalition’s “arbitrary” 23.9% tax-to-GDP cap to raise revenue in other areas and deliver higher social spending.
Morrison has sought to massage voter expectations by cautioning the tax cuts will not be “mammoth”, but the minister for urban infrastructure and cities, Paul Fletcher, has boasted the budget will deliver “$24.5bn of infrastructure commitments around Australia”.
On Monday Fletcher confirmed the budget will contain $1.75bn for the North-East link motorway in Melbourne, $475m for a rail connection to the Monash precinct, $132m for the Princes Highway East and $50m for the Geelong rail line.
Those announcements come on top of the announcement in April the federal government will invest $5bn in the Melbourne airport rail link if the Victorian government puts forward the same amount …