New Australian Treasurer flags tax cuts, lower gov't spending

Australia's newly-appointed Treasurer Scott Morrison laid out the foundations for Australia's finances on Wednesday, signalling a raft of tax cuts as an incentive to kick-start the economy.

Morrison said the previous Abbott government was more concerned with the negatives of the old government instead of focusing on what positives it could bring to Australian voters.

He, under new PM Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, detailed a plan that would reward hard work, flagging tax cuts for families and hard-working Australians, telling News Corp that tax cuts for Australia's upper middle class had all but disappeared over the last decade.

"Clearly there is not enough reward for effort," he said on Wednesday. "That's why some people find it more beneficial to stay on welfare benefits than work."

"The first challenge in the tax debate is that the objective hasn't been set out, we want simple, lower, fairer taxes."

Morrison also took a pot shot at the last Labor government and departed Treasurer Joe Hockey, saying that government spending had spiraled out of control in recent years.

"Fundamentally we have a spending problem in this country," he said.

"It is something we inherited. There are plenty of people who come up with ways to have higher taxes ... and what follows is more ways to spend it."

"To make the budget stronger the economy needs to be stronger and spending must be reduced as a percentage of GDP."

Meanwhile, government frontbencher Wyatt Roy has said lower taxes were paramount to encourage innovative minds to call Australia home.

"It is very important that we are a low taxing country so we can get these entrepreneurs from all around the world to make Australia home," Roy told the Nine Network on Wednesday.

"We are not going to be a prosperous country and we are not going to have the jobs we need if we tax ourselves out of prosperity."

Morrison is set to head the Cabinet's Expenditure Review Committee with Malcolm Turnbull, in an attempt to provide the government with strategic direction. Endi