Policy push: Liberal senator touts income tax cut

As opposition treasury spokesman Ted O'Brien prepares to deliver his first address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, zeroing in on tax and government spending, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg said his party needed to get a move-on.

"We need to be looking at pushing policies out over the next 12 months," he told reporters in Canberra.

"We can't be leaving it all to the last minute."

On the detail of the policy, the Liberal housing spokesman said his party should focus on tax cuts for wealthier Australians.

"We should be looking to cut the top tax rate as well as the rate for middle income earners," Senator Bragg said.

"Frankly, lower-income earners often don't pay a whole lot of tax in this country."

Mr O'Brien will use his press club speech to describe some of the key principles of the opposition's economic policy.

He will outline a new focus on intergenerational equity and criticise backsliding levels of productivity.

"Today, we are living off the productivity gains of the generations before us," he will say, according to advance excerpts of his speech.

"The generation before you builds your foundation; then you build on it for the next generation. That is the intergenerational compact.

"But that intergenerational compact is breaking."

He will also use the speech to reiterate the coalition's promises to cut income taxes and restore a Howard-era measure limiting government spending.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers lambasted Mr O'Brien's push to bring back formal budget rules.

"The coalition's fiscal rules were not worth the paper they were written on," he said at a press conference in Parliament House.

"All they delivered was deficits."

Australian Associated Press