Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I'll continue within the exclusive parameters of the bill of how money is raised and how money is spent, under the Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Bill 2026. There was an interjection during the question from the member opposite, because she asked a question in the context of it, which is that NDIS corruption is also how money that is being raised through this bill is spent. I don't want NDIS corruption. I don't want a tax that raises money and then is spent on corruption. I'm shocked that this is an issue for the members opposite, but I think it reveals how many times there have been interjections from the members opposite about why they find people holding a mirror up to the government about exactly what it is they're about.

Precedent consistently shows that once you talk about changes to the superannuation system—which is Australians' money. Money in superannuation is actually income that is deferred into the future. It is given into a preferential tax treatment, but it is Australians' money. They own it, not us, not the members opposite. They own it and they own it whether it's in a self-managed superannuation fund or an industry fund or a retail fund. The tax treatment that applies is when the government comes along and says, we're going to take a chunk of that money and we're going to use it for a public purpose. And then the question then becomes, once we're introducing a new tax, how that money is spent. That money is spent on lots of different things, from federal defence—and I think we all accept that that's part of the relevance of this debate—to the NDIS. That is part of this debate, and so is NDIS corruption. That is part of this debate. Building public infrastructure is part of this debate. And if they spend money on other activities, including through the unions, that is also part of this debate.

This is the part of the problem of why this law is so problematic, as well as all of the other tax measures that this Labor government is going to introduce. They start saying that they're not going to touch superannuation, like they did before the 2022 election. They then betrayed their trust with the Australian community and introduced a new tax after the 2022 election. It was called the family savings tax on unrealised capital gains. Then, after the 2025 election, the Prime Minister enjoyed ritual humiliation of the Treasurer and got him to abandon that tax. As a consequence, we now have a new bill before the parliament, which is called the Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Bill 2026. This a new tax on the on Australian self-managed superannuation funds. What does this new tax do? It takes money from people's private savings and it then uses it towards consolidated revenue to expend in different ways.

We have a fundamental issue of trust under this legislation. We know that Labor has consistently broken its promise around tax at the 2022 election and the 2025 election, and we know in the lead-up to this budget they are now starting to put forward new ideas of new taxes that they can introduce and more trust that they can break. The clearest example of that is they say they're going to go after CGT today, but they're soon going to make sure that CGT is applied to Australia's private homes' principal places of residence. They say they're going to contain negative gearing over here, but we know full well that once they start doing that, they'll apply it to shares and every other type of asset class. The Labor Party has a long history of promising something in an election and then breaking their word once they've won. The scary thing is how many Labor Party members on the other side of this chamber are happy to go along with it. They have no concern about the consequences, and they have no concern about the impact it has on trust and integrity in public life. Even more than that, they use it as an excuse to justify spending that money in the most grossly hypocritical and damaging way, including making sure that money goes towards organised crime through the CFMEU Labor cartel.

See this speech in context