Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

People in Western Sydney are not living in some Canberra fantasy. They are tired of being treated like the districts in The Hunger Games, expected to do the hard labour, carry the economy on their backs and stay quiet. The people in the Capitol—that is, the Albanese Labor government—beat them down tax after tax, and nowhere is this more true than in my electorate of Lindsay. The people of Lindsay are worried about the changes to the capital gains tax and what it will mean for the workshop they built, the business they sacrificed for or the investment property they bought after hard years of labour—decades of overtime and work on weekends.

As I said, these people are extremely concerned. 'The more I have, the more I get punished,' says Aaron, from Penrith. He started plumbing at 17, worked three jobs to get ahead and sacrificed holidays, family time and weekends. His honeymoon was the only break he had. It broke my heart to hear him say about Labor's taxes, 'It makes you not want to get up in the morning and go to work.' When hardworking Australians start asking whether effort is still worth it, we have a serious problem.

This government has made it crystal clear: work harder, take the risk, build the business and, the moment you finally get ahead, the Capitol—that is, the Albanese Labor government—swoops in for its cut, and that is how aspiration dies. One extra tax, one extra penalty and more reminders that, in Labor's Hunger Games economy, the harder you work the harder it becomes just to survive the arena.

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