Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

This budget has not gone down like a lead balloon. It has gone down like a lead zeppelin. The best way of describing the attempts of the Prime Minister and Treasurer to explain it would be 'dazed and confused'. There are three main reasons why it has gone down like a lead zeppelin.

Firstly, it was predicated on a mistruth. The Prime Minister said 'for the 50th time' that negative gearing and capital gains tax were off the table. That was just over a year ago. Now, one year in, they've snuck it through the door. The Australian people do not appreciate that way of running an election campaign. You deceive them by saying you're going to do one thing and a year later do something completely different.

Secondly, they can't explain it. The member for Gippsland asked a perfectly reasonable question about farm trusts tax treatment and CGT, and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry couldn't explain it.

Thirdly, it's just unfair. People spend so much time and effort setting these businesses up. For the government to slug them with all of this capital gains tax is just not fair. As I said in this place yesterday, if the Treasurer and the Prime Minister want that money, they should be setting up the businesses. They should be helping out. They should be helping. They should be doing fencing on a farm. They should be pulling calves out of cows at three o'clock in the morning, planting fruit trees and doing all of that hard work that you have to do to get a capital gain. The government wants to treat them as a cash register. It's not good enough.

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