Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk about a few things that came out of the budget this week, but, before I do, I think it's important, unfortunately, to remind not only this Chamber but also the Australian public that this budget is built on broken promises. It's important to remind this Chamber of that, because this is the whole issue that people have of trust in the House and trust in this institution of the parliament.

The Prime Minister was asked, on record, over 50 times before the last election—which was only 12 months ago, so we're not talking about a big period of time here—whether he would do the three things that he announced in this week's budget. You might say, 'Why was he asked about those three specific policies?' To at least give him credit for this, these were the three policies that the then Labor leader Bill Shorten took to the 2019 election. At least he had the decency to go to the Australian public and say, 'If elected, I am going to institute these three policies.' You may well argue and say, 'If those three policies were taken to the Australian public now at an election, then things have changed and the vote might change,' but we'll never know. We'll never know because this Prime Minister didn't have the guts, the transparency or the honesty to do that, and great shame on him for that. He doesn't just undermine his own credibility as Prime Minister, which I think he's done enormous damage to this week, and the Labor Party; he undermines the whole institution of the parliament because of how he's done that. I want to go through a few policies—in particular, the three policies that he did move this week with the budget—and I want to explain why I think the Australian public didn't vote for it last time and the damage that it will do, which the Australian public will never get to vote on before he institutes it through this parliament.

The first one is the capital gains tax. We now have one of the highest capital gains taxes in the world. If you are going to start a small business, a lot of small businesses—I know the member for Lyne would know many, and I know them myself—will invest in things and they, especially young people, will often forgo income. Why do they do that? Because they have this idea that they're going to create this asset that they're going to be able to sell and have a capital gain because of the work they do. There are countries like New Zealand, to name one—I name that because it's the closest country that is doing the exact opposite with capital gains. They're actually lowering capital gains taxes because they want to encourage New Zealanders to have a go.

It was said to me by someone yesterday that Labor wants you to take the risk, but they'll take the gain. They'll take the reward. 'You take the risk; we'll take the reward.' That's how it was referred to me, which is very apt. You take the risk but Labor will take the reward if you're going to have a go at trying to create wealth for yourself and your family. We want to encourage that. I say that unashamedly. We want people in our country to take a risk and get a reward for it. We want to encourage that, and this is doing exactly the opposite of that. There'll be ramifications of this that won't be seen today. They won't be seen next week. They won't even necessarily be seen within the next year or so. But over time the culture will change and the behaviour of people will change.

The other policy is negative gearing. This actually surprised me, though why would I be surprised? I was surprised by this. I was sitting in the budget lock-up. Page 158 of Budget Paper No. 1 says that, because of the tax changes that were announced Tuesday night, 35,000 fewer homes would be built in this country over the next 10 years. This is a policy that they sell by saying, 'We want housing to be more affordable and easier to access for young people to get into the housing market.' Their own documents refute that. Their own document refutes the idea that this is going to make it easier.

The other one, of course, is rents. The budget document also says that rents are going to go up. You can't make this up. The policies and the reasons they're saying are actually having the opposite effect. I don't think this is anything about what's going on in the economy. This is just about Labor's socialist ideology. They don't like people who are successful, they want to tax people who are successful, and they want to hurt people who are successful. I've got so much more to say, but I've run out of time.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a defining week for Australia, one where the Australian public has been able to see clearly where the people in this parliament stand and who they are fighting for. On Tuesday night, the Albanese government delivered a budget focused on national resilience, economic reform and cost-of-living relief for Australians. The budget confronted the challenge to Australia's resilience that followed the global oil shock caused by the conflict in the Middle East. Our $14.8 billion fuel resilience package will deliver more fuel for Australians and more fuel security for our economy. The budget also delivered a series of economic reforms designed to boost productivity, intergenerational equity and access to housing. Our changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts will deliver a better tax system and a fairer housing market. These changes will give more young Australians a fair shot at owning their own home.

The budget also recognises the pressures that Australians are under now and takes real action to deliver cost-of-living relief for all Australians and even more tax relief for Australian workers. The Albanese budget does all of this with lower deficits and lower debt, and we're delivering $63.8 billion of savings to help us pay down Liberal debt and fund the services that Australians rely on. It's responsible economic management at a time of global uncertainty, taking the pressure off inflation and building our fiscal buffers. It's a budget that delivers for all Australians, confronting immediate challenges to our resilience, delivering genuine economic reforms to make Australia fairer and more productive in the future and delivering cost-of-living relief for all Australians.

In contrast, the three right-wing parties of this parliament have been focused on the politics of division. The Farrer by-election revealed a number of fundamental truths about the Liberal and National parties. First, the campaign they ran in Farrer shows they have absolutely nothing to offer the Australian public on the issues that matter to them. Second, the result of this campaign showed that the Liberal and National parties are unable to beat One Nation in electorates like Farrer by imitating them. The Liberals tried to protect themselves from One Nation by preferencing them. It didn't work. As a result, there's now no way that the Liberal and National parties can form government without One Nation.

My community in Melbourne's west should know what this means for them and our country. Modern Australia is a nation where more than half of our population is born overseas or has a parent born overseas. It's the story of my community in Melbourne's west. More than two-thirds of my community are born overseas. I have a parent born overseas. Families that call my community home come from all corners of the world. Our doctors, our nurses, our researchers, our IT geeks, our aged-care workers, our entrepreneurs and business owners—they are an invaluable part of every dimension of Australian society and our economy. They are our friends and family, our fellow Australians. They contribute to Australia every day. They make our country a better place every single day. It's who we are. This is the modern Australia that the Albanese government proudly represents in this parliament with a caucus that similarly draws on the contributions of MPs whose stories began in every corner of the globe before becoming a part of our shared story as Australians.

We love modern Australia—the country that we've all built here together. The three right-wing parties in this parliament have a different view. In 1996, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said plainly that all Asian migration to Australia should be stopped. She said that Australia had been 'swamped by Asians', as though being Asian and being Australian were somehow different things. She declared that Asian people 'have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate'. She's never changed that view—20 years later, in 2016, she was again saying that we would be swamped by the Chinese. In 2017 she said:

I don't change my tune … If you look back at what I said 20 years ago—

in 1996—

it's exactly what I'm saying now.

This is the party that the Liberals and Nationals recommended that voters preference in the Farrer by-election. This is the party that the Liberal and National parties cannot govern without the support of.

In the 1990s, the Liberal and National parties made a different choice. People like Peter Costello and Ron Boswell chose to confront One Nation instead of collaborating with them. And thank God they did, because in the 1990s when Pauline Hanson first said that we should stop Asian migration she was talking about the Australians in my electorate who have arrived since then—she was talking about all of the Chinese Australians, Indian Australians, Vietnamese Australians, Bangladeshi Australians, Nepali Australians who make my community the place that it is today. Imagine if the Liberal and National parties of the 1990s made the mistake that the Liberal and National parties of today are currently making.

I'm proud of my community in Melbourne's west. I'm proud of modern Australia. I'm proud to be a part of an Albanese government that represents all Australians, that brings together Australians at times like this instead of playing the politics of division.