Peter Dutton is in the ABC studios:

Q: Now, you have taken the highly unusual step for a Liberal leader of rejecting, rather than offering, tax cuts. Can you confirm that there will be nothing further offered on income tax cuts during the election campaign?

Dutton:

Well, Sarah, I would love to introduce tax reform and tax cuts, but the Labor Party has racked up what we now see in the Budget papers of about $1.2 trillion of debt. So we have to be realistic and understand the constraints that we have. Now, government put forward a plan which had relief for people who are really doing it hard now which starts in 15 months. It’s about 70 cents a day. Our plan is to reduce tax in another part of the family budget and that, of course, is in relation to the halving of the fuel excise which we think will be beneficial across the economy for pensioners and for uni students and for families running kids around and for small businesses. But we think there’s better economic bang for the buck. It’s also not baked in as a structural spend in the budget.

Q: To be clear, so that is an absolute no for the campaign?

Dutton: We have a great desire at some stage when we clean up Labor’s mess, but we won’t be able to provide tax cuts during this campaign and I think, frankly, the Labor Party’s low tax cuts are a cruel hoax on Australians.

This argument still makes no sense. We think the tax cuts are a ‘cruel hoax’ (which would suggest they are not real) so we are going to raise the tax rate again, but give you a one off fuel excise that won’t benefit everyone (biggest winners are those stupid giant utes). But also the tax cuts are real enough that they should be brought forward by Labor and also they are going to cause structural damage, but the fuel excise cut, which costs about the same (as a yearly cost) won’t. It’s bonkers, but the Coalition aren’t after sense here.