Small businesses should be backed, not billed. Changing the goalposts will absolutely decimate small businesses around the country. We will see people being forced to shut their doors. I just do not think that that is right. I've heard from multiple speakers, and I've had some discussions with people, around how much tax people pay or how much tax businesses pay. I'm not a small business operator, but I can tell you now that, if I could minimise how much tax I pay because I know where this Labor government spends it, I would. It's wasteful. They spend more. Right now, they're punching down on businesses and those that are just having a go and trying their best. They're punching down on those that have trusts because somehow this Labor government doesn't understand how it works.

It is unbelievable that we're talking about small businesses—many of whom don't take a wage and who barely survive but who do things that they love—and that this government would try and impose more red tape, more regulation, shift the goalposts. This is all for, like the previous speaker said, somehow, equality. It's just not. We have a taxaholic treasurer that just goes after small business, goes after those battlers that are just trying to make it and trying to provide a future for themselves and their families. No-one here, no business, has asked for this. No small business woke up and went: 'This is a great idea, Treasurer. This is exactly what you should do.' The role of government is to listen, work and deliver, not shift the goalposts for a tax grab, not to punish small business. But that's exactly what's happening here.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of our community. They are where young Australians get their first job and a foothold on the ladder of economic opportunity. Small businesses employ people. It's not like we've got some small businesses out here just somehow trying to avoid paying tax. But I can tell you now, if they're trying to minimise paying tax, more power to them, because they see what this government does with their money. Labor's tax on trusts pulls up the ladder. The tradie, the travel agent, the local cafe, the family farm—that's who Labor's war on small business is aimed at. That's who's being targeted. These are tradies who are just having a go. They've finished an apprenticeship and started their own business. They're moving forward, moving in the right direction. This is who's going to be punished through this. The family farm that we rely on from the paddock to the plate and that fills this country's bellies, feeds the nation and feeds other nations through exports is who is going to be punished.

If you talk about the businesses in your own electorate that run through a trust, every one of them now has to sit down and work out what to do under Labor's tax—'Do I continue to operate? Do I take a hit and somehow try to restructure? Do I have to lay off staff, which will affect their livelihoods? Or do we fold?' Part of me thinks that the government wants small businesses to fold.

Well, this is the tax that you're doing. No small business in Bennelong asked you for this, did they? You can interject as much as you like, and I'm happy to take it, but I look forward to your speech where you can name the small business that said to you: 'Member for Bennelong, this is exactly what we asked for. Please move the goalposts. Please attack the family trusts.' I guarantee they didn't.

A trust is simple enough. The business earns the money, it goes into the trust and, each year, the trustee decides who in the family gets that. From 1 July 2028, Labor makes the trustee hand over 30c in every dollar of the trust's net income before anyone in the family sees it. That's schedules 1 to 3. The rates bill sets the rate. That's why we oppose both bills.

Schedules 4 to 6 are a different story. They keep trusts set up in wills and the income of vulnerable children out of Labor's other 30 per cent tax, the minimum tax on capital gains. They also define what a new home is for negative gearing and give workers a year's grace on the super cap now that payday super has started. Labor has bundled those fixes in with its trust tax. We support schedule 6, and we don't oppose schedules 4 and 5 because they pick up fixes that the coalition has called for, even if they don't finish the job. That's why we're moving to split them off—so the small business tax on trusts gets voted on by itself. Labor still hasn't finished the job. Schedule 4 leaves the divorce and death capital gains tax problem to a later bill. Schedule 5's definition of a new home shuts out granny flats.

Option 1 is to pay Labor's new 30 per cent tax. Option 2 is to restructure into a company. The bill waives the income tax on the move but not stamp duty. State stamp duty can still apply to the move, on land and, in some states, on the business itself. The Treasurer hasn't fixed that part. Option 3 is to lock the family into fixed shares for life in a one-off election in 2028-29. Nobody new can be added unless they inherit from someone on the list. The Financial Review's guide to all this calls it picking the least bad option. That's the best Labor is offering our small business—pick the best bad option. Get taxed twice, up to 60c in the dollar. If trusts income goes to a person, they get a credit for the tax the trustee has already paid. If it goes to a company, they get nothing. That's in Labor's own explanatory memorandum at paragraph 1.63. So, the same dollar cops 30 per cent at the trust and up to 30 per cent again at the company, up to 60c in the dollar. That's the government's own numbers, not ours. That's a lot. Treasury looked at giving every beneficiary a credit and said no.

Being locked in for life—Labor's workaround for the backlash is a one-shot election. Trusts that exists on 1 July 2028 get one chance in 2028-29 to name their beneficiaries and the share each one gets. Then it's locked in for life. Labor's birth tax is still in the bill. Shares only change on a death or relationship breakdown, not for a child born after 1 July 2028, not for a child left off as a minor and not for a new spouse. That doesn't really reflect the Australia that we now know. If there was a breakdown in relationship or if a new child was born, they would be left off. Depart from the list once and Labor taxes that year's income at the top marginal rate plus the Medicare levy. After that, the minimum tax applies for good. There's no second election. The Tax Office can let you off only for an error or a genuinely exceptional event. The explanatory memorandum own example is a trustee falling ill before 30 June.

The old saying is, 'there are three guarantees in life: birth, death and taxes'. This treasurer has turned it into birth taxes, life taxes and death taxes. The Treasurer still hasn't fixed the stamp duty, and I think that is a problem. Labor's own impact analysis quotes the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry—$36,590 to $55,000 of stamp duty on a $1 million transfer. There are two ways out of the tax: make the election or move the business into a company. New South Wales has promised stamp duty relief only for the election and, on that route, the Treasurer says duty is not accepted now.

Farms are not exempt. It doesn't matter whatever spin gets told. Labor says a farm's income is exempt. But if you read the bill, it exempts primary production income, and, in the explanatory memorandum, it says that broadly means cultivating plants, maintaining animals and fishing. Contract shearing, mustering, harvesting and crop dusting aren't covered. Neither is the income from a farm bed and breakfast, a wedding venue or the rent from powerlines for the farm. Plenty of farms have one trust holding the land and a separate business running the farm. Labor's taxes tax the rent paid on the land trust. I would hate to see our country become a country where our farmers are punished, where our farmers feel like they don't have any way out of this. If farms stop producing, we will have to import produce instead of having it provided by our cattle farmers, our sheep farmers and all those that provide essential nutrients and services to many Australians, as well as all the other primary produce. We need to be giving them more support, not changing things at the last minute.

I have farms around the electorate of Herbert, which is in Townsville. And many who sit on the opposition bench in the coalition are farmers. I haven't heard a farmer say a good thing about this part of the bill—quite the opposite: they feel let down, continually. Whether it's more taxes, whether it's more of this government going after your hard-earned money or changing the goalposts when you're set up, when you're operating, all for some sort of tax grab—it just shouldn't occur. We should be providing more support to those primary producers, more support to those who make this nation turn, who make sure this nation is fed—from the paddock to the plate. We should be backing in our farmers.

And we should be backing in our small businesses—those with trusts. We should be backing in those who work hard, who want to have a go—and do have a go—and put it all on the line. They risk a lot. And now they're seeing lots of changes happen—not going into an election, not before an election but halfway through a term. That's what we've seen continually from this government. They don't take bad policy like this to the election; they do it halfway through. And halfway through, they're trying to use smoke and mirrors so the Australian people won't remember come election time. But they do remember.

I've said it a few times in here: there's a reason people in the communities have lost faith in politicians and don't trust them. It's because of tricky accounting, or changing things, or because of those who can't tell the truth in this parliament. We've seen that from the Prime Minister. We've seen it from other members of the government. And we now get bills rushed through this place that are going to hurt Australians, that are going to hurt small businesses, that are going to hurt farmers. That's why the coalition will continue to stand up for small businesses, because we have small-business operators on the opposition benches. We have a small-business operator as the Deputy Speaker in the chair—Deputy Speaker Boyce. We have the small-business operators who come in here every single day and say, 'We're not going to be pushed around by the government making a mistake'—because they don't have small-business operators, because they don't have those who have run a small business sitting in their cabinet. I would like to hear government members being honest and saying, 'This will hurt small businesses, this will hurt farmers and we should have taken that into consideration, and we haven't.'