Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regional Western Australians are hurting. Families and small businesses are all struggling to stay afloat, and workers are seeing their wages disappear with inflation. Labor's response is the same as it always is: more toxic taxes, more red tape and putting politics ahead of Australians. Australians are not stupid. The Prime Minister wants us to believe that their proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax are all about supporting the next generation of homeowners, when the government's own budget papers admit the tax changes will lead to fewer homes available to buy—not more, but fewer.

Labor has failed over the past four years to increase the supply of homes and was forced to do something at this budget just to make it look like they were doing something. Hasn't that backfired? These changes have not been well received, and now the government says: 'Oh, sorry. We always intended to create exemptions and carve-outs, but maybe it won't apply to the startup community. They're not going to be captured by capital gains tax.' What a nonsense. The only way to fix Labor's toxic taxes is to axe them. That is exactly what the coalition government will do. The coalition will end Labor's inflation tax, indexing income tax thresholds to inflation, giving hardworking Australians real tax relief. Australians deserve a government that backs them, not burdens them, and that is exactly what the coalition—

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the member for Bonner.