Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take the interjection. The Commonwealth government has no fiscal rules. The Treasurer has decided there will be no fiscal rules, and, as a result, we have spending out of control, and we have a debate about tax increases to pay for Labor spending. In fact, we've seen just this week the expansion of the Home Guarantee Scheme, originally a government scheme designed to be for low-income earners which has now expanded to include anyone, without a means test. As I say, the children of billionaires can use this scheme. The Labor Party apparently once was for the workers. Now they're for taxpaying workers funding billionaires getting access to government programs. It's unbelievable. This is where we are.

There is a $62 billion contingent liability as modelled independently for the Home Guarantee Scheme, which apparently the foreign minister in question time today didn't know about. There is a cost to this largesse. What the nation is now paying for is the Treasurer's inability to restrain spending. That is the problem. In the last parliament, we saw an increase in personal income tax. Who would have believed that we would live through the last parliament, where the Commonwealth government reinstated a tax bracket abolished by the prior parliament? The 37c bracket was reinstated by this government, and that is now guaranteeing that bracket creep is part of the average worker's approach to their life. They have to now fund Mr Chalmers's excessive expenditure.

We've lived through the government reinstating a tax bracket which was abolished. We've seen new tax on superannuation. Apparently it will apply to unrealised gains. We've never had a tax like this in Australia, which would apply to paper profits. You might have a gain one year, but you could have a loss the next year. You pay your tax on the gain, on paper, which you don't materialise; you don't sell the asset. But, if you lose money in the next year, you don't get a refund. We've seen higher income taxes. We've seen a tax on superannuation. Now we see what is apparently part of their tax reform record—the build-to-rent tax concessions, which is all about giving foreign asset managers a tax concession to own houses that Australians will never own. What a warped priority! You must be so proud of yourselves to be promoting the idea that a foreign asset manager, maybe a foreign government—it could be the Abu Dhabi investment corporation, for example—will be able to avail themselves of a tax concession to construct and own in perpetuity flats that Australians will never, ever, ever own.

Maybe this is all part of the grand agenda to make Australians serfs to big institutions. When you look at the economic reform summit that happened last week, it's really big unions, big super and big government all in the same bed together. We're now getting to a position wherein the Australian people will have to pay for this, because it's going to be pretty ugly. Long story short, the reason we're having this debate is because the nation needs more tax dollars to pay for Dr Chalmers's spending. They're already paying more, and they'll pay more in the future.