Australian PM promises to keep tax cuts

CANBERRA, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Friday that he would keep his election promise of about 31 billion dollars (27 billion U.S. dollars) in tax cuts despite inflation being at decade-high levels.

He told Channel 9 on Friday that he took his pre-election promises seriously and would tackle inflation.

"It would be wrong to walk away from those commitments and we also made sure our non-tax commitments were very modest, costing much less than that being put forward by the government at the time, the Liberals," he said.

The prime minister said the government would take the pressure off the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates by targeting a budget surplus of 18 billion dollars (15.6 billion U.S. dollars) and establishing bodies such as Skills Australia and Infrastructure Australia.

Rudd originally promised 34 billion dollars (29.7 billion U.S.dollars) worth of tax cuts but shortly before the election announced he would defer about 3 billion dollars (26 billion U.S. dollars) of the tax for people earning over 180,000 dollars (157,000 U.S. dollars), who would receive a reduced amount.