David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tuesday night was Labor's fifth budget, and they aren't getting any better. It was a budget that treated the Australian people like mugs. They came in and said, 'We want to change negative gearing, and we want to change capital gains tax, because young people can't get into housing.' Well, where were they three years ago? Where were they 12 months ago—before the election—in being honest with the Australian people? Have they only just realised that young people can't get into the housing market? They've only just realised that in the last couple of months?

I think the Australian people see them as the mugs and as trying to pull one over them. The reality is you do not need to tax housing. If you tax housing, you get less of it. In fact, their own budget papers say they're going to reduce housing by 35,000 homes because of this measure alone. What you need to do is use some common sense. What this crowd is going to do is bring in two million people over the two terms of their government. What they could do is reduce migration to reduce demand. That would actually help the supply and buy time for states and local governments to actually build some homes. That wouldn't cost a cent. That just shows that this budget was all about ideology. It's all about having this class warfare—about the haves and have-nots. It wasn't about common sense, and their own budget papers show that every Australian is going to be worse off. The standard of living of every Australian is going to continue to diminish. It's going to diminish to a standard below 2011. This is a treasurer that has looked over this for the last four years and brought Australia to its knees.