Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Bill 2026, because it strikes at something quite fundamental. It's about the trust Australians place in their retirement system. Superannuation is not spare change for the government to raid when budgets tighten. It is deferred income. It's the product of decades of hard work, of discipline and of sacrifice. Australians make decisions about their future based on the rules set by this parliament and the government of the day, and they are entitled to expect that those rules will not be rewritten whenever it becomes politically convenient. This bill undermines that trust, and once confidence in the system is shaken it is extraordinarily difficult to restore. I've said time and time again that those on this side of the House would rather tighten the federal budget than the family budget. This bill is the consequence of a government that doesn't agree with that statement.

So let's turn to what the substance of this bill is, because, as a coalition, we have always said we will be constructive where we can be. There are parts of this bill that we do agree with, but there are also parts that we don't. The bill reintroduces Labor's division 296 super tax in a revised form. This has followed—and I'll give you the context—sustained pressure from the coalition and from industry. The government, as a result of that pressure, has corrected two serious design flaws: (1) it has abandoned the taxation of unrealised gains, protecting SMSFs, holding farms and small businesses from being taxed on gains that they have not made, and (2) it has agreed to index the $3 million threshold, which prevents bracket creep from slowly expanding the tax base over time.

These changes confirm that the original position that was taken by this government and by this Treasurer was fundamentally flawed. It also shows a broader issue with this government, and that is that Labor cannot be trusted with tax reform and that this Treasurer cannot be trusted with tax reform. So this bill now reintroduces division 296 in a revised form following the government's earlier proposal in 2023. Under the revised design, an additional 15 per cent tax applies to superannuation earnings attributable to balances above $3 million, resulting in an effective 30 per cent rate on realised earnings above that threshold. There is a new threshold of $10 million which applies a 40 per cent rate. The thresholds are now indexed, and the tax applies only to realised capital gains.

This bill exposes the fundamental difference between those on this side of the House and those in government. It is a difference that relates to our level of respect for Australians, our level of respect for those who work hard and save. We on this side of the House are not trying to create any sort of divide between those who are perceived to have and those who are perceived to not have. But at the last election Australians were not presented with any form of policy that longstanding superannuation settings would be fundamentally altered. They were not warned about these changes. These promises do matter in a democracy, and Australians do hold governments to account based on what they promise and what they don't speak about. Major structural tax changes should be put clearly and transparently to the Australian people. But this proposal appeared out of nowhere, with limited consultation and a rushed legislative timeline. That's why this debate has resonated so strongly with Australians and with Australians in my electorate on the southern Gold Coast, who speak to me time and time again about the issues they are facing under this Labor government.

We were told by the government that they were going to make life easier for Australians, for Australian families and for Australian businesses. But we've seen the absolute alternative, which is less flexibility and less choice. And life has been harder for Australians. It has been harder to pay the mortgage, to pay the bills, like the energy bill, and to make ends meet. The fact of the matter is that inflation and high interest rates have beaten this Treasurer and this government, and this legislation is a consequence of that, because we all know that, when this Labor government runs out of money, it comes after yours.

Many voices have spoken up against this proposal—many of which are not from our side of politics but from the other side of politics.

I'd like to speak in particular about the impact on small businesses and small-business owners because, make no mistake, this legislation is an attack on small businesses. They're looking at small businesses particularly closely because the reality is that so many Australians who own small businesses hold their assets in super.

As I've said, this legislation, this proposed bill, is the result of a government that has lost control of its spending. Labor's actually got a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The problem confronting Australia at the moment is that structural spending growth is outpacing sustainable economic growth, and, when governments spend beyond their means, they inevitably reach for new taxes to fill the gap—to fill the hole. That's exactly what we are witnessing here today. Rather than confronting that waste and confronting that lack of fiscal guardrails, this government is hunting for new pools of capital and wanting to tax those. This is an absolute breach of trust in Australia. It's also symptomatic of a broader pattern, which is that this government puts higher spending first and then new taxes to pay for it later. That's not reform; that's fiscal mismanagement.

I've heard some of the contributions of those opposite, and they've spoken about the low-income superannuation tax offset and said that the inclusion of that is evidence of balance. Now, we have been honest about our position on this, and we haven't gone against the government on this part. We have said that any measure that supports low-income earners building retirement savings is welcome. It's welcome from this side of the House of Representatives. But we do also need to be honest about the scale and the timing. The reality is that the low-income superannuation tax offsets do not put money back into household budgets right now, today. They don't lower the grocery bills now. They're not assisting in paying electricity bills now. And that's the problem—because Australians across the Gold Coast, across my electorate and across the country are all facing cost-of-living pressures right now, and future offset adjustments in superannuation do very little to relieve those stresses and those pressures.

Instead of coming after a new form of tax, if the government were actually serious about addressing the issues that matter to Australians, about addressing the cost pressures that Australians, their families and their small businesses are facing, they would tackle inflation at its source—instead of trying to impose taxes where they don't need to be imposed. They would focus on their excessive spending and on weak growth, rather than reshuffling offsets within the existing retirement income system.

This legislation is symptomatic of where Australia is going under this Labor government. Labor is taking this country in a direction—in fact, we're already here—of high tax and of high spending. This proposal should not be viewed, in and of itself, in isolation. It is Labor wanting to spend more and pour debt petrol on the inflation fire.

But, at its core, this debate is not about a balanced threshold or a revenue line in the budget. It's actually about whether Australians can rely on the long-term promises that are made by those who represent them. It is about whether we as a parliament choose to reward prudence or choose to punish it. It's about whether we strengthen self-funded retirement or slowly erode it. If we do believe in aspiration, if we believe in stability and if we believe that Australians who work hard and save diligently should not become an easy target for shifting fiscal pressures, then we cannot support this bill. For these reasons, I urge those around me in this place who are supposed to stand up for and represent their constituents to join us in rejecting it.

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