Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) | Hansard source

Today we've seen scenes of high farce and calamity right here in the House of Representatives. It seemed to us, on this side of the chamber, that the government MPs weren't very keen to publicly back this government's budget. So the member for Wannon helpfully wandered in here with a motion that would require each and every one of them to front up and put their support for these toxic taxes in Labor's budget of betrayal on the public record. Well, the government weren't having a bar of that, and, in seeking to gag the member for Wannon, the member for Perth moved the wrong motion, so we had scenes of absolute calamity in here—which I think reflects the government's handling of this budget.

We've heard a lot from government MPs today about sound economic principles and the need to undertake tax reform. If only those important economic principles and that dire need for tax reform had been apparent to them before the election, they might well have fronted up to the Australian people with their real plans to reach deep into the pockets of Australians and tax their aspiration.

Of course, there is one little word that we're not allowed to say in here when directed at the government. It starts with 'l' and ends with 'e', and I won't break the standing orders. So I spent some time researching some alternatives that we might use. For the benefit of my colleagues who no doubt are looking for an expansion of their lexicon to describe this budget, here are just a few: falsehood, fib, untruth, fabrication, falsity, a story, a tale, a myth, deceit, deception, dishonesty, distortion, misrepresentation, perjury—if we ever succeeded in putting this man on the stand—perfidy, fudging, spinning, misstating, baloney, hogwash, poppycock, claptrap, bunkum, bull, codswallop or, my favourite, porkies. There are some more colourful alternatives that the Labor MPs are currently reading on their social media posts right up until the moment that they turn the comments off. It seems to me that that is now the default position of each Labor MP in this place, such has been the backlash to this budget of betrayal.

Central to it is a claim by the Prime Minister that he is cutting taxes. He is cutting taxes for Australians, as he tells us. But the reality is that this budget includes sneaky, hidden and toxic taxes that mean that his is just a charade of appearing to give a little while taking a lot. We all know people like this—people who come to a barbecue with a sixpack; they'll drink 12 and take a carton home.

Australians can see right through this budget and the tax grabs that it contains. Indeed, the central fib of the budget is the notion that it rebalances our tax system away from salaries and incomes towards investments and asset ownership. But, in the Treasurer's own budget papers, in Budget Paper No. 1, on page 140, there's a neat little chart that shows the share of personal income tax increasing next year, the year after that and indeed every single year after that out until 2062. That is the central dishonesty of this budget being exposed on page 140 of Budget Paper No. 1. This is not tax reform. This is a tax grab by a government addicted to spending.

Apparently it is the fault of the capital gains tax reform in 1999 that the housing market is so unbalanced today. But, when you pause to think about that for a moment, the fact is that the current housing crisis has nothing to do with those reforms in 1999, because the Labor Party have been in government for a full 10 years of the period since, and it never occurred to them in any of those 10 years to take a plan to reform capital gains tax to an election. Well, actually, it did. A former leader of the opposition, Mr Shorten, did take a plan like that to an election, and he got flogged because Australians were not going to stand by and see taxes on aspiration—the very thing that underpins the prosperity of our nation being attacked in such a way. But here we are now with a government reeling from a housing crisis of its own making because it failed abjectly to control migration to this country at the same time as it layered red tape and regulation on the construction sector, seeing housing completions fall quarter on quarter for the last year in my great state of Western Australia. At the same time, they have blown every single budget estimate of net overseas migration to this country since they came to power. But the fact is that there are fewer homes being built today in Australia than when the government took over. Is that about to change? Well, it is. It's about to get worse. The budget papers also contain, on page 158 of Budget Paper No. 1, the admission that there will be 35,000 fewer dwellings built in this country as a result of the tax policy changes contained in it.

But this is not actually a revelation. Prior to the election, when Mr My Word Is My Bond, the Prime Minister, was denying strenuously at every opportunity that he would touch these taxes, he was quoted before that election saying that changes to negative gearing would do nothing to boost the supply of housing in this country. It seems to me he had quite the epiphany after the election, and it is simply because, addicted to spending as he is and his government is, this is a prime minister who has run out of money. That's why this is not a budget of tax reform. It is a budget of a tax raid. Unfortunately, the targets are those families who save and sacrifice, who invest and work hard, the very Australians that have built this country into the sort of place that it is today.

Rather than seeking to contain his spending to limit the growth of government and to empower the private sector to do what it does best in lifting living standards in this country, he has presided over the largest collapse in real living standards in the developed world. There is a reason that Australians feel poorer today when they leave a shop, a cafe or a local business than when the Prime Minister came to office, and that's because they are. Real GDP per capita has gone backwards since this government came to power.

I've noticed that government MPs are now plopping the word 'real' in front of lots of different things, but it doesn't change the simple economics that, when inflation is outpacing growth, people in this country are going backwards. That's why we will fight these toxic taxes tooth and nail. If they become law under this government, we will seek to repeal them when, inevitably, Australians boot them out of office. Further than that, we will stop this happening into the future with our plan to index income tax thresholds. Self-starters are what built this country, and an Australian government should always look them in the eye when seeking to take more of their hard earned money and fritter it away on whatever else they're spending.

This is a budget that also contains $18.2 billion in new spending for net zero, including more than $1 billion for green hydrogen, which, I note, even the most prominent mining billionaires in this country who have had quite the infatuation with green hydrogen for many years now have walked away from.

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