Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Australians voted at the last election and went into a ballot box thinking that they could trust their government and that the policy pronouncements that were put forward before the Australian people would be honoured on the other side. The Prime Minister said 50 times over—he was red hot with rage and indignant, as the member for Riverina said, about journalists having the hubris and the arrogance to keep asking the same questions of 'will you change the taxes on capital gains? Will you change the taxes on trust? Will you abolish negative gearing?'. The response was, 'For the 50th time, no.' And he consistently demanded that journalists stop asking the questions, because it was so impertinent and rude to do so. We now know why.

Last night the government provided their bad-faith budget that broke so many promises to the Australian people. It broke the fundamental promise from the Prime Minister himself, and it has shredded any integrity or trust that the Australian people have in him for the future. The government have broken promises so many times over, by promising they wouldn't change tax rules around homes, saying they wouldn't change tax rules around rentals and saying they wouldn't change tax rules around family savings. Instead, they simply got the knife and slit each one left, right and centre.

What's the story we now know? This budget, a bad-faith budget, is built on a house of broken promises but won't build any new homes. We're seeing this in their approach where they explicitly state, despite the denials from the Prime Minister in question time, that they are going to build 35,000 fewer homes. It's extraordinary! They come publicly into this House, with this budget, and say to the Australian people, 'This is all about intergenerational fairness because, as a government, we want young Australians to buy their own home,' but, instead, what they do in this budget is go through—measure by measure, step by step—and undermine the chance for young Australians to be able to afford their first home.

Deputy Speaker Claydon, you're looking at me almost in a state of surprise. The budget papers explicitly state that rents will go up under the government's tax changes. I don't know about you, Deputy Speaker, but I'm pretty sure that people tend to rent before they own their own home. So you're going to take with one hand and increase the rents for young Australians saving for their house deposit.

Then, the government is turning around and applying an increase in capital gains tax on the savings of first homebuyers trying to get ahead, trying to save their deposit. In some cases, it's almost doubling the tax on first home deposits when they're invested. So they're increasing rents and taxing people's first home deposits when they invest them to bring the future forward. And now they are building 35,000 fewer homes while, on the government's own projections, they continue to bring more people into Australia—beyond their targets. They're pumping in people to prop up their budget numbers. Australians will simply live under this budget with broken promises, higher taxes, lower living standards, fewer houses and higher rents. We've had a three per cent decline in real wages under this government, and their solution now is to kneecap young Australians through measures that will make it harder for them to save to buy their first home.

And we've heard story after story—there's been contact with us—of young Australians who buy shares, ETFs and crypto; they use that as their home deposit. According to the Australian Stock Exchange's own research, 43 per cent of Australians own their own shares at the age of 21, and now the government is coming with their tax agenda and going after their first home deposits. This is where this government is kneecapping Australians—they're constantly doing it, on the basis that they somehow think they're helping young Australians get ahead—and Australians can see through it.

We are seeing more and more stories come through our NOT THE TAX WE VOTED FOR website, www.notthetax.com.au. If you have a story, I encourage you to submit it because some of them are truly shocking. Here's one:

My brother and I are millennials. We both rent yet we have worked hard over the past 3 years investing all our savings in a tech startup. The business is in electronics/ edge AI space with onshore manufacturing. We have scaled the business quickly. We now employ people locally, and our devices are now sold to 12 countries across Europe and NZ. A true made in Australia sold to the world story we were proud of. This is a high tech product … We have each invested a Sydney-sized house deposit multiple times over in our business without taking a salary because we saw a problem we wanted to solve and we expected to see some upside. This is productive economic activity that help Australia build skills and competition. I'm all for changes to—

certain—

… taxes as we should be directing capital to things that boost productivity. However, Jim's changes kill younger people who try to start a business to get ahead …

There are other stories, like this one:

My wife and I started with nothng and have worked so hard to try to get ahead. We have both worked full time whilst raising a family, stretching ourselves and taking on risk, hassle and huge stress to buy and renovate investment property. To have Labor change the goalposts on CGT and negative gearing is heartbreaking and a huge impact on our plans for the comfortable retirement we deserve. Albanese—

the Prime Minister—

and Chalmers—

the Treasurer—

are breaking an election promise in a cynical tax grab whilst turning a blind eye to billions lost to CFMEU and NDIS corruption and giving handouts to others who haven't had a crack like we have.

Finally, here's another example:

Less than 18 months since I left PAYG to set up a business. The business has been structured in a way that will enable me to pay myself a salary—

the dignity of a salary—

but profits … will be earned by my family trust as the shareholder of my business. I'm subject to strict professional services rules and so I can't push all income into the trust to the benefit only becomes large when income for the business grows substantially above what is reasonable for a similarly qualified employed professional. So, if trust tax is 30% min, the incentive is gone.

This government has overseen record numbers of small-business insolvencies, and now their solution to all those small businesses who are struggling to get ahead, all those small businesses that are suffering under the crippling regulation and taxation of this government, is to—

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