Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Right across the Fisher electorate there are tradies, cafe owners and small-business operators who are watching this government with deep suspicion. Small businesses make a vital and multilayered contribution to the Australian economy. As drivers of innovation, wealth creation and employment for millions of Australians, these businesses are built on personal risk, years of sacrifice and a genuine stake in the places and people they serve. Now Labor is telling thousands of them that the structure they built their livelihood around is 'a vehicle for avoiding tax'. The Prime Minister stood before the Victorian Labor conference last weekend and asked contemptuously whether Australians sit around the kitchen table thinking about setting up a trust. Well, the answer, of course, is yes. Many of them do. It's not because they are wealthy and not because they're rorting the system. They've done it because their accountant sat across from them when they were starting out and said, 'Here's your company structure and here's the trust that will protect your family home if things go wrong.' The ATO's own data shows that 60 per cent of all trust distributions flow to beneficiaries earning less than $120,000 a year. These are not hedge fund managers. They are mums and dads trying to keep their dreams alive and trying to protect their assets.

COSBOA has warned that the restructuring costs will fall hardest on the smallest operators, the very people who are least equipped to absorb them. The irony is that the genuinely wealthy, with their complex structures and advisers, will find their way through. The 30 per cent minimum tax does not distinguish between sophisticated tax planning and a family that uses a trust for the same reason they have a lock on their front door.

But there is a second group being caught in this net, and their situation is even more troubling. A wills and estates lawyer from my electorate has written to me about testamentary discretionary trusts. These trusts only come into existence because someone has died. They exist to protect inheritances for children, widows, disabled beneficiaries and vulnerable adults. There are fewer than 11,000 of them in Australia. This is a tax on grief, and the idea that traumatised families must now engage lawyers and accountants to restructure an estate while still processing their loss is nothing short of cruel.

The coalition will oppose these measures. The people of Fisher deserve a government that honours what they have built and protects what they have lost, not one that sends them yet another tax bill for it. This government, when it runs out of money, comes after yours.

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