Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Given the Prime Minister has been backed into a corner by the former Prime Minister and the backbench on almost every other part of the budget, will the Prime Minister, today, rule out making changes to superannuation that will leave average income earners worse off in retirement?

Mr Dutton interjecting—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Mr Joyce interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration will cease interjecting.

Mr Joyce interjecting—

The Deputy Prime Minister will cease interjecting.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. The government's approach to the consideration of these important issues, tax issues in particular, is to analyse them with great care, to work through the implications of any change, to consider them through our traditional cabinet processes and then come to a conclusion. What we are not going to do is to make policy on the run, as the Labor Party has done. The consequences of the Labor Party approach are very clear. Under the cover of a document, 'A plan to help housing affordability' which refers to issues relating to real estate, the Labor Party has gone much further than anybody imagined. It is not simply going to send rents up, reduce housing availability, send property prices down—it is not simply going to do that. That is plain. Those impacts will plainly occur. The only controversial point would be to what extent—and, of course, the extent of the drop in housing values will, obviously, be different from one place to another. Closer to the city it will be less; in outer suburbs and regional areas it will be much higher. This will damage outer suburbs of our big cities and regional Australia the most. That is what their policy would do. But it is not simply limited to real estate. It beggars belief that, in a document that purports to be all about housing, what the opposition is proposing is that there can be no negative gearing in respect of any other asset class, including shares, other than new residential property.

We know the Labor Party has not modelled the impact of their policy on housing. Nobody would have ever modelled this proposal, because it is so inconceivable. It is so reckless. What possible relationship is there to housing affordability does a person's capacity, under normal income tax principles, to negatively gear an investment in shares or some machinery or a vehicle? What possible relevance to housing affordability does that have? It has none. What Labor is seeking to do here is dramatically restrict the economic freedom of Australians. This will impact, most directly, on small business. At a time when we need more investment, more entrepreneurship and more risk-taking, Labor is dramatically constraining, to the detriment of our future, the economic freedom of every Australian.