James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need to protect the family home from Labor's "spare bedroom" tax.

The 'spare bedroom' tax came from Labor's productivity round table last week, and I use the words productivity and round table in the broadest sense possible. In fact, there was a table there, it was slightly round, and there was productivity there, but it was defined by the lack of productivity rather than anything positively adding to Australia's economy. Never in the history of humanity have so few people uttered so many words to achieve so little apart from proposing so many new or higher taxes.

What we saw last week was a three-day talkfest that achieved very, very little for the Australian people. But what it did show was that within the beating heart of this Labor government is a desire to increase taxes and bring in new taxes. We know this because, out of that 'productivity round table'—in inverted commas—a lot of proposals for new and higher taxes were put forward. In questions to the Treasurer or ministers in the Senate today, the word that was the loneliest word, the word that was not uttered by the ministers or indeed the Treasurer, was the word 'no'. So, when questions were put to the ministers, whether Senator Wong or the other ministers sitting on the front bench, asking them to rule out new or higher taxes, the word 'no' did not enter. It did not come on stage left or stage right. You will not find the word 'no'—those letters N and O—in Hansard at all during question time. Because the Labor ministers refused to—failed to—rule out the introduction of newer and higher taxes.

The one that Australians should be particularly concerned about is the tax on your spare bedroom. An idea that came out of the 'productivity roundtable' from last week is for there to be a tax on your spare bedroom. This is an outrageous attack on Australian families, and it is an outrageous attack on the family home, because few things are so sacrosanct to Australians as their desire, their right and their willingness to have some bricks and mortar or some timber and iron to call their own home—whether it is an apartment block or on a bit of dirt on the outskirts of Warwick where my place is.

What Labor want to do—they're refusing to rule it out, which is really quite suspicious when you think about it—is not rule out a tax on the spare bedrooms in your family home. Think about this. You might have a two- or three-bedroom home. You might have raised your family there. The kids have left and you've got a couple of spare bedrooms there for when their grandkids come or the cousins who you haven't met for a few years come along. But, no, Labor want you to be taxed for those spare bedrooms.

Just imagine this. You wake up at night because there is a bit of a nightmare going on: not only have you got a lot of red tape in your bedroom, thanks to what Labor have done to productivity in this country, but you've got Jim Chalmers in your bedroom because he wants to tax all the spare bedrooms in your house. This should scare the living daylights out of Australian people. This is what we in the business call a 'milk curlder'. It is a milk curdler of an idea, and the fact that the Labor government will not rule it out should say to every Australian—I challenge the speakers coming after me to say in very clear words, enunciate your words, shout your words, annunciate the words that rule out attacks on the spare bedrooms of Australians. Rule that out. It did not happen in question time today.

The danger is, where will this go? Where will this tax end up in terms of the war on Australian families, who are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis and dealing with a government who quite frankly have given up on caring about them because the election was a few months ago and they've got the votes of them. Now they're going to tax Australians. They're going to increase taxes. Rule it out.