Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Thursday is the day that those opposite have to put their cards on the table. This Thursday is the day that you've got to come clean. And this Thursday is the day that you've got to level with the Australian people. Will those opposite vote down a tax cut for working Australians again? Will those opposite vote against the interests of young people who want to get into the housing market again? Will they vote against what Australians know needs to happen in this country?

Everywhere I go in my local electorate on Brisbane's south side, people know that the interaction with the housing market and the taxation system is broken, and we on this side of the chamber choose to do something about it. The Albanese Labor government is focused on delivering. It is focused on delivering cost-of-living relief. It is focused on making sure that the young people of this nation can once again have that Australian dream of being able to get into a home.

We know those opposite have form when it comes to diddling the Australian people. Students would've had 20 per cent more debt, apprentices would've been paying fees for TAFE, and millions of Australians would've been paying more taxes. We believe that young people in this country should get a fair crack.

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

Young Australians are sick of being told this is a budget for them, because they know it is not. This budget is not about helping young Australians get ahead. It is about making life harder for them. For generations, Australians were told: work hard, buy a home, invest wisely, build a future. The Prime Minister had the opportunity in his 20s to buy a home, invest and build wealth. Why would this government deny future Australians the same chance? Labor's own budget papers admit their changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing will mean fewer homes available and higher rents, making the dream of home ownership even harder to reach.

Young Australians trying to build a deposit through investing are also being punished. Nearly half of investors on CommSec are under 40. Young Australians are taking risks, building portfolios and trying to get ahead, yet Labor wants to tax them hard. What message does this send to the next generation of entrepreneurs? Why would a young Australian start a business when government acts like a 47 per cent silent partner from day one? What Labor is saying to young Australians is this: Labor doesn't want you to be ambitious. Labor doesn't want you to invest in your future. Labor says you should expect less. Well, you know what? I'm not having it, and neither is the coalition. We will get rid of these toxic taxes at the first opportunity.

Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The recent federal budget contained many measures designed to benefit all Australians. One area of benefit is a significant investment the budget makes into the management of fuel supply risks. This is a critical step taken firmly in the interests of the Australian people, and it takes the form of a nearly $12 billion commitment through the National Fuel Security Plan, with the aim of securing Australia's near-term fuel and fertiliser security. This involves the establishment of the Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility, designed to increase the domestic supply and storage of fuel and fertiliser by providing financial support—including loans, equity guarantees, insurance and price support.

Then we have the establishment of the Australian Fuel Security Reserve, which will reserve approximately one billion litres of fuel to increase long-term diesel and aviation fuel supply and storage, with the minimum stockholding obligation also increasing Australia's critical fuel reserves to 50 days. The focus of this is addressing potential supply constraints for essential users, including in the regions, in anticipation of further probable supply disruptions—which we will inevitably face. The fuel security features of the budget, including the establishment of a domestic gas reservation mechanism, are an efficient and effective step that respond to global challenges at the same time as acting in the immediate and long-term interests of the Australian people.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Young Australians are doing everything right. They're working, they're saving, they're sacrificing and they're trying to get ahead. But, Prime Minister, do you realise what's happening and what you're doing? Australians do. You're pulling up the ladder on an entire generation, and every member opposite is complicit. You're building a system where first home buyers compete against investors, big funds and a government that keeps making homes more expensive to build. Labor's own budget confirms it will build 35,000 fewer homes over the next decade, and it doesn't stop there.

Labor's industrial relations changes, red tape and protection racket for the CFMEU are not free. They show up in the price of every slab, every frame and every new home. These are taxes on builders trying to build, on families, trying to buy and on a generation trying to believe that hard work still means something. And here's the hypocrisy: the Prime Minister has protected his own right, and the right of 20 out of 22 members of his frontbench, to continue to benefit from the very tax rules that he now wants to deny the next generation.

Labor says it wants more homes, but its policies build fewer. Labor says it backs aspiration, but its taxes punish it. Labor says this is about intergenerational fairness, but its budget shows it's about intergenerational fraud. Prime Minister, you can't continue to claim to help first home buyers while building a system that makes them permanent renters.

Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, in my electorate of Aston and across the country, first home buyers are being locked out of the housing market by property investors that benefit from a tax system that no longer serves the needs of a new generation of Australians. This is why the Albanese Labor government is taking responsible action to change that. Labor is delivering sensible reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions to level the playing field for first home buyers and to restore fairness to our housing market.

The reality is this: too many young Australians have given up on the dream of home ownership. They've worked hard and saved carefully, only to watch the dream of owning their own home slip further away year after year. That is not the kind of place we want Australia to be. Our reforms are about fairness, opportunity and the future of this country. Young Australians deserve a fair chance to buy a home of their own, not to have to struggle with a system that's pitted against them. Yet instead of showing leadership, the opposition leader has once again chosen to burrow further down the One Nation rabbit hole, blaming migrants and punching down on vulnerable communities rather than addressing the real causes of Australia's housing challenges. My message to the opposition leader is simple. If he genuinely supports young Australians achieving homeownership, then he should back these reforms instead of cynically and shamefully exploiting division for his own political gain.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These aren't my words, but the words of Emily, a constituent who wrote to me the day after Labor's budget of betrayal. She began saying:

I have woken up this morning feeling battered, empty and abused. But my abuser is my government.

This is the lived reality of a regional family running a small business who work hard yet are unable to get ahead as Labor's taxes rise and the pressure builds. She described the cycle as:

… a payment plan for last year's tax, a payment plan for next year's tax. It never stops.

To break free, she got a job working 80 hours a week on top of her business. Instead of relief, she was pushed into a higher tax bracket, saying:

If you earn it, they take it.

The strain sent her to hospital, suffering stress related illness and ulcers. Her accountant said that she would have been financially and physically better off, having never taken that work. It says everything about Australia under this government.

What troubled Emily the most, though, was Albanese's, 'tone deaf, insulting, patronising political theatre'. On the $250 carrot, she asked:

What does it buy? Scattering pennies while taking winter stores.

Her question to me was, 'How does this stop?' Well, it stops by axing Labor's tax grab in its budget of betrayal.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll just remind members that even if you're quoting it doesn't mean that you don't refer to members by the correct title.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the weekend in Darwin and in Palmerston, I had plenty of conversations, particularly with young people—we're a very young jurisdiction—about the new rules for negative gearing and about our positive budget for young people's future to create a fairer playing field for those Territorians that have been locked out, that turn up to auctions and get crowded out time after time by property investors who want to do what many property investors have in the past, just like a former member for Solomon, from the other side of course, who had 14 investment properties while some young Territorians struggled to even get their own home. We're taking action to make it a fairer playing field.

But I need to be clear because those on the opposite side of this chamber are pretty happy with the misinformation going around. If you negatively geared a property before budget night, there's no change. You can still continue to do that. No problems. For future investment properties, it'll be for new builds, and that's good. That's good for our tradies, and that's good for people who want to invest in new properties. They can negatively gear those, no problems at all for those new builds. If there's one thing that Australians all agree on, it's that we're a fair country. We want to give young people a fair go, and that's what this budget is delivering.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's budget reveals a lack of judgement, a misreading of the times and an absence of practical wisdom. If Labor were to accept some advice, I would offer this. You don't restore trust in government by breaking promises. You don't make the life of individuals better by making government bigger. You don't solve a cost-of-living crisis by raising taxes. You don't solve a housing crisis by increasing rents and building fewer homes. You don't create a more productive economy by penalising those who invest. You don't make young people wealthy by making their parents poorer. You don't aid future generations by denying them the benefits enjoyed by previous generations. You don't support people creating a nest egg for their loved ones by introducing a death tax. You don't create a more dynamic economy by punishing those who take risks. You don't help working families build for their future by driving up income taxes. You don't help small businesses by whacking a big tax on the distribution of their assets. You don't build a nation by tearing down the pioneers and the entrepreneurs.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We on this side of the House believe every Australian should own their own home. It is clear that those opposite don't. Our government is getting on with the job of fixing our housing crisis, including fixing the tax rules that have made it near impossible for working Australians to be able to buy their own home. Since '99, house prices have risen 400 per cent, more than twice as fast as wages. The tax concessions introduced back then were meant to grow supply. They didn't; they grew prices. While the coalition is keen to entrench this, we've accepted the responsibility of doing something about it. We are here to make the system fairer.

This policy doesn't shut the door on young investors; it opens a new one. And here is where the opposition aren't telling you the truth. We are continuing to support property investment—in new builds, because, when taxpayer support is on the table, it should go towards creating a home that didn't exist before. Invest not just in your own wealth but in the wealth of the nation.

Now, those opposite are predictably rolling out the same old scare campaign to keep the broken status quo—a status quo that is locking young people, families and workers in my community out of homeownership. But this government isn't accepting the status quo. We are making sure every single one of them gets a fair shot of getting into their own home.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians are fed up with Labor's toxic new taxes, and they do not want carve-outs—they want them gone. In Capricornia, that is not just politics; it is real life. I've heard from a father in Sarina, a hardworking man raising two young children while working and running a beef cattle property with his partner. He told me:

We are not asking for luxuries ... we are simply trying to keep our family afloat and build some sort of future for our children.

Their mortgage repayments have increased. Electricity, fuel, groceries, insurance and farm overheads keep rising. Seven years ago, hard work would have helped them get ahead. Now, he says:

our money goes nowhere ... we are breaking our backs, yet things are not improving.

That is the reality for many families in regional Australia. When Labor talks about budget cuts, families like his do not see relief. They see more confusion, more uncertainty and more pressure. These families are not asking for special treatment. They want the chance to get ahead and policies that ease the burden instead of adding to it. He told me:

we are working hard, just to go backwards.

That should stop every one of us in our tracks. In Capricornia, people are proud to work, produce and provide for their families, but right now they feel squeezed from every direction. The only way to stop these toxic taxes is to vote to axe them.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Single mother outbids two rivals for $745,000 townhouse', 'We had given up on Yarraville: first home buyers win $955,000 house', 'First home buyer outbids seven others for unit in Mortdale', 'Laid some roots: new home owners celebrate unexpected auction success'—these are very real headlines in very real newspapers talking about the immediate impact of our difficult but very necessary reforms in the budget. A first home buyer buying a house should not be newsworthy, but so broken is our housing market that, yes, this is news—for now.

Like some pimpled adolescent science students at school mixing vinegar and bicarb soda, the Liberals mixed negative gearing with a 50 per cent capital gains tax discount on existing homes in 1999, and that little experiment blew up the housing market. That mistake, which was designed to get more people to invest in shares, backfired. In fact, fewer people invested in shares, and it locked out a generation from owning their first home.

On budget night, it took Labor to fix that mistake. When you partner our reforms with our five per cent home deposit scheme and more supply, we are clearly here to turn things around for young people. The Liberals and Nationals defend the status quo; we want to get more people into homes.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you know it's a bad budget when the government are taking credit for results on the weekend and they haven't even introduced the legislation into parliament. Gosh! And the member for Bennelong did criticise the legislation, because this is a budget that fails all Australians. It's full of broken promises and it's going to make the situation worse. Their own budget papers show that the tax changes are going to increase rents and they're going to decrease supply. It's so bad that unnamed backbenchers have spoken out against the policy. A few brave souls dared criticise the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, including the member for Bennelong, the member for Chifley, Senator Ananda-Rajah and also the member for Parramatta, the Cabinet Secretary, who was very happy to criticise the Treasurer and throw him under the bus. There's a nice little group of Ruddites there building a claim for the member for Parramatta. We can all see it. You know it's that bad when those opposite are prepared to talk out about it.

This budget has exposed this treasurer as big on talking points and low on economic literacy or detail. He's big on taxes, but he does not understand the detail. Now the question is: are the backbench going to blame the Prime Minister, or are they going to blame the Treasurer? We know the member for Parramatta is very much hoping they're going to blame the Treasurer.