Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer confirm that Labor's toxic tax bills grant him extraordinary powers to slash the $250 tax offset to zero whenever he likes, without taking it back to the parliament?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I wouldn't have given another question to the member for Goldstein either.

He did. I thank the honourable member for her question. When it comes to the tax arrangements in the legislation, what we are proposing is not different to what we've seen when it comes to other tax legislation. I know that there's been yet another beat up, today, about this from those who want the broken status quo in housing and tax to continue to lock young people out of housing. But the truth is—the fact is—that it's not unusual for tax laws to work this way or for definitions to be finalised by legislative instrument, which can be disallowed by the parliament.

I'll give you some examples. Under the Howard government there were the debt equity rules, subordinate rules overriding general allocation of debt or equity status. A similar example is superannuation valuation rules. Governments of both persuasions have done it this way. Foreign investment reform from Prime Minister Morrison left a lot of details and definitions to the subordinate laws. So it's not unusual for legislation to be progressed in this way.

I don't remember governments or treasurers of other political persuasions being subjected to the same sort of feedback about these standard arrangements. You had no problem with it when Mr Howard did it. You had no problem with it when Mr Morrison did it. This is the way that—

Milton Dick (Speaker) | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Flinders on a point of order? Leader of the Opposition, one of the members of the House is on their feet. I'd ask you to assist the House just by not interjecting. Just as, when you're raising a point of order, everyone's silent, I'd like that courtesy for everyone, including the member for Flinders.

Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance, I think what the Treasurer is trying to say is just yes.

Milton Dick (Speaker) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Flinders, that is not appropriate. That is an abuse of the standing orders. If that sort of behaviour continues, I'll be left with no other choice but to not take points of order. We can't have a situation where people jump up and not follow the standing orders, the traditions and the conventions of this House. I'm asking all members to uphold the traditions and conventions. So the member for Flinders is now warned.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

The point I'm making is this: those opposite want to pretend that these are unusual arrangements. They're not. And the reason they want to pretend these are unusual arrangements is that they can't defend their actual position, which is to go to the wall for a broken status quo that locks too many Australians—particularly, too many young Australians—out of the housing market. We know that that's the outcome they seek. We know that they want young people locked out of housing. We know that they'll vote against tax cuts, and all of this pretending that these are somehow unusual arrangements is designed to avoid coming at the actual objectives of this legislation, which are to cut income taxes for workers, to make it easier for first home buyers in the system and to better align the tax treatment of income earned from working and income earned from assets.

When it comes to this particular definition, we made it very clear in the budget papers that investments in new dwellings will be exempt from these changes where the investment genuinely adds to housing supply. We made it clear what that would be. That's set out in the budget papers. The legislation provides for these details to be finalised in an instrument, which is a standard approach for these kinds of details in legislation like this.