Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

Like my colleagues, I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, on your election once more to this post.

Today's topic, just to remind the member for Hunter, is in fact that the Albanese government has failed to address the nation's greatest challenges and priorities. Interestingly, all we have heard from those opposite today—indeed, including from the Prime Minister himself in question time—is proud boasting and utter hubris, with the government congratulating itself for its sweep of seats at the last election—an election in which they received the lowest first-preference vote ever bar one, which of course was the 2022 election, where its first-preference vote was even lower.

I heard the Minister for Education talk about what people voted for, running through Labor's long list of policies for which someone else has had to do the hard work to be able to pay and for which only 34.6 per cent of Australians voted. Nevertheless, for the last 36 hours we've been listening to them congratulating themselves for achieving the second-lowest primary vote ever since 1910, beaten only by their record—a primary vote of 32.5 per cent last time. Based on what we have seen, we should get ready for another three years of self-congratulation.

This vote was not an endorsement of Labor's management of the critical issues confronting all Australians: cost of living; falling productivity; and abject failures when it comes to keeping Australians safe, whether that's a failure to oversee and institute rigour in our immigration system, a failure to stamp out antisemitic behaviour when it has raised its ugly head repeatedly over the last three years or, most recently, as we have seen so devastatingly, a failure to urgently work with states and territories in relation to the safety of children in our early learning and childcare settings. This last vote was not an endorsement of Labor's management of the critical issues confronting Australians, whether that be energy supply and affordability, housing affordability and availability or the ability to carefully and confidently provide for their future and, ultimately, their retirement.

The Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Nationals and the shadow Treasurer today raised a long list of Labor's failures—a housing program, for example, which promised 1.2 million homes but has only delivered 17, and a nonsensical superannuation tax which punishes those who have worked hard to provide for their own retirement and remove the burden from the state of the cost of providing for a pension. This superannuation tax, from the people who told you they wouldn't change settings relating to superannuation, will affect almost 2,000 people in my electorate of Flinders. And today, to add insult to injury, they failed to rule out any future taxation of unrealised capital gains.

Interestingly, I read in the Age yesterday, as I'm sure many of my constituents also did, an article by Shane Wright and Millie Muroi that referred to an analysis of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia which revealed that the median income for people slugged with Labor's new superannuation tax will be $110,000.

The analysis found:

Of the 80,000 Australians with super balances eclipsing $3 million, about 55 per cent are male, one-quarter have at least one investment property and about a third are still earning wage or salary income…Of those still working, most are in managerial or professional roles.

The article goes on to explain the impact of this tax on Australian farmers—a point raised by the Leader of the Nationals today—whose superannuation often resides in the family farm and who may or may not, in any one particular year, have the finances set aside to pay such a tax. My electorate, according to the Age, will be disproportionately hard hit—due, most likely, to the fact that 90 per cent of those hit by the new tax are aged over 60, and I have the privilege to represent an older electorate made up of people who have worked hard, saved up, started businesses, created employment for others, looked after their families and provided for their own retirements. The number of people hit on the Mornington Peninsula is higher than all of metropolitan Brisbane and close to the number affected in inner Sydney. In this, as in other measures, my constituents are right to fear that this government does not have their interests at heart, which is so evident from the Labor candidate's mere $3 million in commitments to the electorate of Flinders, contrasted to the coalition's almost $1 billion of commitments across public transport infrastructure, sporting facilities, support for veterans' mental health and the building of a world-recognised walking track around the peninsula.

To add insult to injury, the government's first move in relation to my electorate in this new term is to close the post office at Rosebud Plaza—the one most accessible to people who need to walk or catch public transport to get there. So my electorate, together with the rest of Australia, has good reason to fear what this government has in mind for its future and needs to look carefully at why they got the lowest primary vote ever, bar one.

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