Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week, Labor refused to rule out a tax on your spare bedroom. A tax on the room your kids grew up in, a tax on the roof over your head, or a tax on the home you worked your lifetime to build. A recent survey showed that over 60 per cent of houses are lived in by one or two people. Three-quarters of these properties have three or more bedrooms, with spare rooms. At the economic roundtable—surprise, surprise—it leaked out that Labor was discussing a tax on spare rooms.

This is who Labor are. If you own it, they'll tax it. Families using a spare bedroom to run a side hustle—a small business—are now being hit with land tax in Victoria. That is in Labor's DNA, and they're going to bring it to Canberra too. Hairdressers, PTs, physios and startups—for the privilege of working in their own spare bedroom, Labor wants a piece of them. The Prime Minister says no to new taxes before the election, but then the next day we hear Dr Chalmers say, 'We'll wait and see.' Who's telling the truth and who's lying? People in my electorate just want honesty. The coalition will fight this spare-bedroom tax and every tax they put on the family home. Because, under Labor, nothing is safe—not your savings, not your bills and not even the spare bedroom in your own house.

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