Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, this budget is an assault on aspiration, and the Prime Minister has never seen an aspiration he didn't want to crush. I wonder whether the Prime Minister and the Treasurer actually want to hear from the Australians affected by the budget—not the spin, not the slogans, not the carefully chosen lines from a Treasurer's presser but the real stories from people who are paying the price, who did everything right, who played by the rules, who worked incredibly hard to get ahead and who are having the rug pulled out from under them. Many of them are younger Australians who will be taxed far more than my generation and far more than generations that came before them. Behind every one of these Labor tax changes is an Australian who worked, who saved, who sacrificed and who invested. Behind every so-called reform is someone who made decisions in good faith, built a plan for themselves and often for their families. They tried to get ahead and are now being told by the government 'we're going to tax future wealth'.

Labor wants to talk about fairness. Well, let's talk about fairness. Is it fair to tell a young nurse or teacher that the taxes on the investments they built for their first home deposit are now being doubled? Is it fair to tell a retiree who spent decades saving and renovating their plan to stay off pensions that it's now under threat? Is it fair to tell Australians before the election that there would be no new taxes, and then, after the election, hit them with taxes on housing, savings and small business, and income taxes through bracket creep?

This government doesn't want to hear these stories because these stories expose the truth. Labor's budget is not about hitting a political stereotype. It's about hurting real people in real households around real kitchen tables. Their stories say more about this budget than any speech from the Treasurer ever could. I recently heard from Lyn in my electorate. I want to read her words on the record. She wrote:

I'm wondering if you have any ideas how we can object to the Labor Party's new budget regarding property investment?

It's totally unfair to bring these changes in against their election promises and to punish us for our hard work to buy and retain these investments.

It hasn't been a walk in the park with savings, renovating, managing, putting up with good tenants turning bad causing thousands of dollars of damage which we could not have endured if it wasn't for negative gearing.

Now we have retired our plan was to sell something to help while retaining a couple which would help us from requiring the pension and provide much needed homes for renters.

Our portfolio is not a multimillion dollar empire that was achieved without blood sweat and tears. The banks still own a major portion too. We worked hard for this and believe that Labor is going to ruin us.

This is the human impact of Labor's housing tax. This is not about some caricature of wealthy property barons. This is about people like Lyn, who worked hard, saved, renovated, took risks, dealt with the damage, dealt with the debt and tried to build a retirement that would keep them off the government pension.

Labor is punishing aspiration. It's punishing people who provide homes for renters, and, worst of all, it's doing so after promising to not do exactly this thing just 12 months ago. If it was such a good idea, why would you purposefully mislead the public about it just 12 months ago? You don't fix a housing crisis by attacking people who provide rental homes. You don't fix a housing crisis when your very own budget papers say that this policy will lead to 35,000 fewer homes.

Andrew, a young Australian in his late 20s, trying to build a future for his family, wrote this to me:

My name's Andrew and I'm Writing to you as help as an Australian citizen, Tax payer and Public servant. Life has been hard for someone in his late 20s to try and build a future for my family as with many other Australians. Inflation has made it difficult to keep up with saving for a house and my wife and I have been saving, investing, working hard to try and build a home and call our own.

Do you have a message for Andrew?

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