Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) and the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to questions without notice asked by Senators Gallagher and Ketter today relating to negative gearing.

I will start where the Prime Minister started back in September 2014, when he said:

It is clear enough that the Government is not successful in providing the economic leadership that we need. It is not the fault of individual ministers. Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs.

Today—just under six months since that press conference, which led to the doing over of Prime Minister Abbott—the coalition party room got some advice from the former Prime Minister in which he challenged the current Prime Minister over his lack of economic leadership.

What we have seen over the past six months is a complete vacuum of ideas—there is a blank page of tax policy for the Prime Minister and for the government. It is in that context that all of the issues which the government is having both internally and more broadly lie. Today's questions on negative gearing policy goes to just one element of that tax discussion. We have already seen the GST tossed out as a good idea, as something that should be pursued and something that should be talked about, discussed and on the table. It was removed when cracks started emerging in the position the Liberal Party had. Today, again, and this follows the GST discussion, we have had speculation and some indication that the Prime Minister is examining negative gearing. I understand, from today's answers, he will not rule out retrospectivity. While Senator Brandis is saying here that it has always been our disposition to not apply retrospectivity on tax changes, and in the House I understand on multiple occasions in question time there has been a refusal to rule retrospectivity out.

There is confusion about what the government is doing in a whole range of tax areas but in relation to negative gearing I think there is obviously advice coming from internally and externally. We see reports that John Howard is now providing advice to Malcolm Turnbull on tax policy, we have the previous Prime Minister offering advice on tax policy and we have a group of backbenchers—including Senator Seselja, I presume—providing advice to the government on tax policy. I have seen comments from Senator Seselja on not wanting to see any changes to negative gearing. It is in this vacuum that we are getting inconsistency and no direction and no leadership from the Prime Minister, whose main argument to take the top position was failure of economic leadership. Six months on, numerous ideas have been tossed out. One by one they get ruled out or argued about internally and what we are left with just a few months from the budget being handed down is a complete policy vacuum. We have the embarrassing situation where the Treasurer turns up for his prebudget address to the National Press Club with nothing to say—it is unprecedented in my time watching politics that a Treasurer, the most senior minister responsible for the budget, turns up to a Press Club lunch so we can hear some ideas about what is feeding into the budget without having anything to say.

The contrast could not be more stark: we have the opposition filling that policy vacuum with a whole range of ideas—more than 50 policies that have already been released. We have revenue measures as part of that and ideas around education—a whole range of areas, more than 50 policies. Our negative gearing policy is one of those. We think it is a very good policy. If you ask first home buyers today whether they can afford to enter the housing market, most of them will tell you that they cannot. People younger than that are not even thinking they are ever going to own a home. Our policy has been well thought through and considered, and in this area the opposition is in stark contrast to the government, which has absolutely no ideas at all.