Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is time to be bold. In six weeks, the government will hand down the 2025-26 federal budget. Many commentators are already calling it the most important budget of the Albanese government, and they're right because this is a moment that demands leadership and ambition. This is not a time for timidity. Long gone is the era where Australian governments could sit back and ride the wave of sustained economic growth. Our current environment is defined by compounding pressures, a housing system that's locking out a generation, stubborn cost-of-living pressures, an economy starved of productivity growth, deep and growing intergenerational inequity, and a world that is more volatile, more fragmented and more dangerous than it has been in decades. Incrementalism will not meet this moment.

Yet that is precisely what we have seen too often—a government that treats governing as an exercise in electoral risk management, focused on the last election and the next election, short-term politics and not long-term policy. Leadership is more than this. The Prime Minister often talks about making the Labor Party the natural party of government. If he's serious about this ambition, his government must tackle the hard problems head on, not avoid them. The great reforming governments of both persuasions did not wait for perfect political conditions; they made them.

So what would leadership look like now? First, it would mean tax reform so we're not relying so heavily on taxing the share of the population that works as the population ages. Australians need income tax and direct relief, particularly for people doing it toughest, but leadership demands articulating how we pay for that relief. There are obvious places to start. We should tax gas companies properly so that Australians finally get a fair share of their own resources. When global tensions push up gas prices, countries like Norway and the UK collect more for their citizens. In Australia, companies collect the windfalls while Australians pay more at home. That is a policy choice, not an inevitability.

We should reform our generous housing tax concessions. The capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, as currently designed, are worsening intergenerational inequity and doing nothing to solve the housing crisis. These concessions overwhelmingly benefit older and wealthier Australians and distort investment away from productive activity and towards property speculation. We should look carefully at other tax concessions that are overly generous to wealthy, older Australians at the cost of younger, working Australians such as family trusts and superannuation.

Second, leadership would mean treating housing as a national priority, not a political landmine. We do not just need demand-side tinkering. We need more homes faster and in the right places. That means sustained investment in social and affordable housing. It means planning and zoning reform to allow well-designed infill that builds communities, not just towers. It means prioritising construction workers and materials for housing, not crowding them out with lower priority infrastructure, and the property taxes I've already mentioned. None of this is easy, but leadership is not about easy decisions.

Third, leadership would mean preparing Australians for the productivity challenge of the next decade. Low productivity is the quiet crisis eating away at real wages and living standards. Structural tax reform is required, and we must capture the opportunities of artificial intelligence. Leadership here means investing in an AI-ready workforce and backing AI supercharged research and innovation while managing real risks like scams and disinformation and ensuring the gains from AI are shared across the economy, not monopolised by a handful of global firms. The government's hands-off approach to AI is just another example of its timidity. If not now, when? The government has a strong majority in the House, a crossbench calling for action, an opposition at its weakest in a generation, an energy shock creating windfall profits for gas companies while Australians do it tough and a housing crisis that's locking out young Australians in real time. There has never been a better moment for bold reform in my lifetime.

Many of us on the crossbench are here because Australians are tired of political game playing, of incrementalism and short-term thinking, and that is what they have seen from the major parties. I call on the Prime Minister to prove us wrong. Prove that you can put Australians first. This budget is a test, not of accounting, not of messaging but of courage. Be bold.