Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

When we came into government we inherited from Labor a weakening economy, rising unemployment and a budget position that was rapidly deteriorating, after Labor in their period in government kept putting more and more lead into our saddlebags. What is very clear is that Labor have not learnt the lessons of the past. They are still at it. They are still wanting to tax more. In their year of ideas, all they come up with is more new taxes aimed squarely at the Australian families, families working to get ahead. Labor's so-called policy on negative gearing is all about making it harder for families across Australia to get ahead—families who are leveraging their existing income and their existing assets to invest in new assets and to increase their income by deducting from their existing income the cost of investing in housing or in shares, as they currently can. Labor's approach will be bad for the economy and bad for families, and we hope it will be rejected by the Australian people at the next election.