Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be talking on the motion that the Senate take note of the answers given by coalition ministers to Senator Brown and Senator Ketter. If you had been paying attention to the national debate since Prime Minister Turnbull's ascension to the leadership of the Liberal Party, you would know that the coalition is interested in a better tax system, you would know that the coalition was not interested in a bigger tax burden on ordinary Australian families and businesses. It is revealing that in the contributions this afternoon a particular quotation has not been referred to, and that is a quotation of former Prime Minister—indeed, former Labor Treasurer of this nation—Paul Keating, who said just three weeks ago that what this country had was a spending problem and what it did not have was a revenue problem. I will come to that in a moment.

The Labor Party has zero credibility on the issue of tax. We know that from the experience we had to endure with Labor's minerals resource rent tax; we know it from the misery that many Australian families and businesses had to endure as a result of the carbon tax. I will come back to the mining tax and carbon tax issues, but in the short time available to me I thought I might start by refuting some of the falsehoods that have been put out by Labor specifically in regard to negative gearing.

I am going to refer specifically to comments made by the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, on the Sunrise program of 14 February; to comments made by the shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, on Sky Newson 13 February this year; to Labor media releases; and of course to comments that Mr Bowen made in the Australian Financial Review on 14 February and in the Australian newspaper on 15 February.

Let me turn first to the shadow Treasurer's contribution to Sky News on 13 February, where he said that 50 per cent of house purchases at the moment are investments—false. In fact, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics housing finance data, the value of financial commitments by investors as a share of total financial commitments has never reached 50 per cent throughout the history of the series, which began in January 1985. Over the last three months of 2015, the share of investor housing finance commitments remains steady at 35 per cent.

Let us then turn to what Labor's media release says on the issue of Labor's negative gearing. It says that 93 per cent of new investment loans go to people purchasing existing housing stock—false; not true. In fact, according to the same ABS housing finance data, the average proportion for the past two years is around 93.4 per cent, with the proportion in December 2015 falling to 91.4 per cent.

Let us turn to the comments of Mr Bowen, the shadow Treasurer, made in the Australian newspaper of 15 February. He says that the top 20 per cent of income earners receive about half of all the benefits of negative gearing—not true; not accurate. He goes on to say, in Labor's media release again, that the top 10 per cent of earners capture nearly 70 per cent of the total subsidy of the CGT discount. That comment was also made in Labor's media release. It is not true. So we have a catalogue of comments and assertions being made by the Labor party in regard to negative gearing which are not true or cannot be substantiated.

Let us turn briefly to the issue of the carbon tax and the minerals resource rent tax. We know from Labor's previous commitments, when they made calculations of the revenue this would draw into the Commonwealth's coffers, those revenue projections were wrong. In fact they were so inflated—

Senator Conroy interjecting

Senator Conroy, perhaps you would like me to remind you that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd suggested there would be $50 billion in revenue from the mining tax. How much revenue was there from the mining tax? There was just $400 million of an expected $26 billion. (Time expired)