CANBERRA, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised a "comprehensive" legislative agenda when the parliament returns for the first time since the general election on Tuesday.
Speaking to News Corp Australia after the G20 meeting in Osaka, Morrison said that his signature 158 billion Australian dollar (110 billion U.S. dollars) tax cuts could be passed by the parliament as early on Thursday.
"Tax cuts are first cab off the rank. We want them passed this week... and we will use every procedural option to achieve it," he said.
Despite Morrison's optimism about his bid to pass the tax cuts, which is still facing significant hurdles.
The opposition Australian Labor Party and Greens remain opposed to the third and final stage of the package, which would flatten the tax rate for everyone earning between 45,000 and 200,000 Australian dollars to 30 percent from 2024-25 onwards.
They will instead join forces at the senate, the upper house of Australian parliament, to vote against the package, instead moving that it be split into three separate bills that can be voted on independent of one another.
Morrison has repeatedly ruled out supporting such a move at the lower house where his Liberal-National Party Coalition holds a majority of seats and on Monday accused Labor of "belligerent arrogance."
"(Not to support the package) would be an act of arrogance, which sadly the Australian people would expect," he said.
"It would be an act of belligerent arrogance... and only done because they can't agree among themselves."
Responding to the PM, Anthony Albanese, who was elected unopposed to lead the ALP after it lost the election, turned the accusation of arrogance back on the government.
"We want the government to have a bit of common sense, they won the election but there is this arrogance about them thinking that they can do whatever they want. Well they can't," he told Sky News.
"The idea that you would hold up tax cuts today in return for something that might happen in 2025 is quite frankly an economically irresponsible decision."
While the tax cuts will be the focus of the first week of the new parliament, the PM told the Australian Financial Review that he would outline a "comprehensive" legislative agenda for Australia.
"We're a re-elected government. We already have a backlog of legislation that the previous Parliament wouldn't pass. This is already part of an existing agenda," he said.
"I completely reject this idea that apparently we just went to the election with tax cuts.
"We will have a chocked program of leg from here until the end of the year."
Among the government's other legislative priorities are new digital economy measures, which the PM said were "critical to how the economy works", and changes to Australia's industrial relations system.
"That's the stuff that's going to drive productivity," he said of the digital payment platform that will deliver real-time payment of bills.
"If you're a small business and you're operating in an economy where people are working on real-time payments, your cash flow changes overnight and that changes your access to capital and that changes your ability to invest."
