Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The simple fact is the Labor Party chewed off far more than it could swallow in relation to its so-called negative gearing policy. Just a few facts: 840,000 Australians earning less than $80,000 per annum invest and negatively gear. They are not the filthy rich to whom Senator Dastyari refers. Indeed, 73 per cent of Australians who negatively gear have only one house investment. Another 18 per cent have only two houses. In other words, 91 per cent of our fellow Australians who negatively gear have a maximum of two houses. So where is this assertion of seven properties being owned? That might be by a very small proportion of nine per cent.

What the Australian Labor Party will not tell you is that out of the people who negatively gear 39,500 are nurses, 53,800 are teachers and 52,000 are retail workers. Why doesn't the trade union movement support these workers? No wonder the trade union movement is losing numbers and supporters day after day, because the Labor Party and the trade union movement simply cannot understand that there are good, hardworking Australians who are aspirational and who are willing to take short-term pain for longer-term gain for themselves. What this is by Labor is a mad rush for tax revenue today on the basis of greater welfare payments in the future and less tax revenue in the future, because the construction sector will not be as vibrant. This is typical of Labor's short-term politics: trying to rake in the money today and forget about tomorrow. Exactly what they did with Gonski. Exactly what they did in their previous term of government. They have no memory of the disaster that they left behind. It is as though they did no wrong in the last six years when they were in government.

In my home state of Tasmania, a state with some of the lowest incomes in the country, 18,000 of our fellow Tasmanians are involved in negative gearing. They are not the filthy rich. They are just hardworking decent Australians who are saying: 'We will forego lifestyle today for the benefit of self-reliance and self-sufficiency in the future. We will take the burden off the next generation when we get to retirement.' Let's not forget that the Australian Labor Party fiddled with this in the past. In the Hawke/Keating era they thought this was a bright idea and they abolished negative gearing. This has been part of our taxation regime for over 100 years but for that little hiatus when Labor experimented, and what did they find? If people could not negatively gear and have their gain later on, then what did the property owners do? They immediately jacked up rents, and what did that do? The low-income earners who rely on rental properties were confronted by huge rental hikes and as a result the Labor Party, quite properly, retreated, as they should have done.

They learnt their lesson in the Hawke/Keating era but what does Mr Shorten do but dust off a failed policy. Having promised us that 2015 would be the year of ideas for Labor, they came up with nought. He starts off 2016 with the dusted-off, old Labor policy that was absolutely repudiated by the real experience of getting rid of negative gearing. This is the politics of class envy. This is the politics of class warfare. This is the politics of division. This is the politics of seeking to ensure that the aspirational are stifled. We as a coalition support the aspirational.