Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) despite the Prime Minister's commitment to transparency and integrity, the Albanese Labor Government has become the most secretive government in recent memory, proposing new freedom of information laws which force Australians to pay a truth tax to access and share information, and

(ii) after repeated opportunities, the Government has refused to rule out a spare bedroom tax to plug Labor's economic black hole and fix its housing crisis; and

(b) calls on the Government to abandon its plans to implement a truth tax and immediately and unequivocally rule out any spare bedroom tax.

One of the great highlights of Labor's three-day, taxpayer funded talkfest, the so-called productivity round table, was the proposal for a spare bedroom tax—a penalty on Australian homeowners with spare bedrooms, a tax on owning your own home and a tax squarely aimed at older Australians, particularly those whose children have moved out of home. This is a radical proposal which has sent shockwaves throughout this country. Under Labor, nothing is off limits, including the family home. That is why so many Australians have genuine fears about how they will be hit by another Labor tax in an attempt to plug its economic blackhole and fix the housing crisis.

The spare bedroom tax proposal was put forward by the analytics firm, Cotality. It came off the back of a study which showed just over 60 per cent of houses are lived in by one or two people but more than three-quarters of properties have three bedrooms or more. Cotality's head of Australian research, Eliza Owen, suggested a tax could encourage people to downsize and fix the mismatch. As reported on news.com.au, she said:

"Governments could make it more expensive to have more housing than you need and cheaper to live in smaller housing …

"Strides are already being taken on the supply side to establish well-located apartments in our larger cities that can accommodate smaller households. But shifting demand through tax reform could help the take-up of these news homes."

I have to say—and there's been an astounding response on social media right across this country—this is a pretty outrageous proposal. Thousands upon thousands of people have expressed their outrage, and they've raised a whole number of concerns. The concerns include the cost to older homeowners of downsizing to a smaller home. It's not that simple of course. There's a very big stamp duty penalty whenever anyone sells their home and buys another home. There's also the right to have a spare bedroom for visitors. So many people are concerned that, if this gets traction, you're saying that we cannot have visitors in our own homes. There's also the right to use spare bedrooms for other purposes, such as storage or study. Some have even suggested that husbands and wives may elect or could be forced to occupy separate bedrooms to avoid the threat of a spare bedroom tax.

We accept this proposal was not put forward by the Labor government. But why is the Prime Minister and the government repeatedly refusing to rule out a spare bedroom tax? In this chamber, we have asked repeatedly if the government would rule out this proposed tax, and the best that we got was that Minister Wong said that there would be no bedroom inspectors. Well, what a relief! There will be no bedroom inspectors knocking on the door inquiring as to whether every bedroom in the house is currently occupied. I mean the whole thing just sounds like absolute nonsense.

One of the many critics is the AMP's chief economist, Shane Oliver, who said that such a tax would be a huge attack on empty nesters. Mr Oliver said:

"A better approach would be to remove stamp duty to make it easier for empty nesters to downsize and free up their large bedroom house—

and, of course, excess bedrooms—

for families.

This is again from news.com.au. He said:

"And the maths are such that we simply lack enough homes—we have a shortfall of 200,000 to 300,000 dwellings on our estimates—so the key is to make it easier to supply more homes and slow immigration to more sustainable levels, not tax those who have a spare bedroom."

So are homeowners in Labor's firing line? Australians have every right to be very deeply suspicious about Labor's agenda, especially older Australians. The Treasurer, Mr Chalmers, said, after the productivity roundtable, the tax system was 'imperfect'—that was his word—and skewed in favour of older generations. At least some roundtable attendees argued older Australians were able to access concessions through superannuation, capital gains tax discounts and trusts, placing more of a burden on younger workers. That sounds very much like they are certainly coming after older Australians. Mr Chalmers has left the door open to introducing new taxes in the next budget, declaring that it remains to be seen. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the statements of the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, who has insisted that the government would not implement any new taxes before the next election and would stick to the proposals that were taken to the election and to voters. So we've got a huge conflict between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. This reportedly is concerning Labor members and senators, because clearly there is some real chest-thumping going on between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

As I said, Australians have legitimate reasons to be concerned about further attacks on their own home. There have been lots of discussion and lots of reports and analysis run about the abolition of negative gearing. There are also suggestions floating around about a reversal of the capital gains tax exemption on the family home—again, not by the government but by various economists and other contributors to this debate. Australians should be very concerned, particularly this increasing rhetoric coming out of the government that older Australians have had it far too good for far too long. This government is actually forgetting that older Australians have worked hard all their lives and have paid taxes all their lives. They've got their nest egg together. They've planned for their retirement, and now older Australians have every right to feel deeply concerned that the government is coming after them.

Just consider what's happening in Victoria. Victoria is in an economic crisis courtesy of the Allan Labor government. One of the measures it's introduced is a dramatic lowering of land tax thresholds, which of course has caused absolute chaos in the housing market. One of the impacts of that is that anyone who runs a small business from home and earns more than $30,000 in income is liable to have land tax imposed on the portion of the home used for that small business. That is pretty alarming. Victorian Labor poo-pooed that whole notion, yet it was subsequently proven, as reported in the Australian Financial Review, that more than 400,000 people had been hit with higher land tax as a result of running a business in their own home.

Today is a very good opportunity for the Albanese government to rule out a spare bedroom tax. If this is a ridiculous idea—we think this is a ridiculous idea, and Australians think this is a ridiculous idea—and if the government thinks this is untenable, then it will do the right thing, get out of the shadows, stop feeding the fears of older Australians and rule out a spare bedroom tax.

I also call on the Albanese government to withdraw its regressive truth tax. The Prime Minister promised to bring transparency to government. Instead Australians are now living under the most secretive government in recent memory. The Prime Minister and the Albanese government talk integrity, but all we see is mounting secrecy. Labor's new proposed freedom-of-information laws represent the biggest restrictions on access to government documents in 15 years. If the legislation passes—and we're going to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen—Australians would be forced to pay up to $60 simply to ask what their government is doing in their name. Journalists, academics, advocates and of course members of parliament will face new costs and barriers, while anonymous requests will be banned altogether, silencing whistleblowers and deterring those fearful of reprisal. The reason is very clear: FOI requests have already exposed uncomfortable truths, and now Labor wants to make it even more difficult for the truth to get out. Bureaucrats warned Labor that disability groups did not support its rushed NDIS timeline, but the government pressed ahead. Officials raised doubts about Labor's changes to bulk-billing incentives, but that advice was kept hidden. Rather than face scrutiny, Labor wants to bury it.

Regrettably, this secrecy is part of a broader pattern. The Centre for Public Integrity shows that fewer than one in four FOI requests are now fully granted, down from half just two years ago. In parliament, ministers table heavily redacted pages. We just heard a contribution from Senator Bragg; he continues to seek critical documents that are so important in terms of the work he's doing as the shadow minister for housing, and all Labor is doing is trying to hide the truth. This is not good enough.

What is particularly egregious about this is that when the Labor Party were in opposition, they talked a big game about transparency and they talked a big game about integrity. But we have seen transparency go through the floor under this government. Transparency is not a burden; it is a duty. Labor's excuses about bots and foreign actors are a complete smokescreen. The real effect of these changes will be fewer documents, higher costs and more excuses to keep Australians in the dark. This is a government making it harder to hold power to account. Secrecy is not a sign of strength; it is the refuge of weak governments.

Since coming to office, Labor has presided over a massive spike of FOI refusals. It has pioneered widespread nondisclosure agreements for stakeholder consultation. It's produced a secret manual steering public servants on how to give acceptable answers in estimates. It has repeatedly flouted Senate orders for the production of documents; that certainly occurred when I, as the former shadow minister for education, was seeking critical documents from the Minister for Education and repeatedly got back false public interest immunity claims which had no basis in merit whatsoever. That has also been an increasing feature of this government—dodgy PII claims to get around the truth. We are all here to hold the government to account but I think the government forgets that it is here to serve the Australian people. The truth counts.

We see continuing limited parliamentary scrutiny through changes to the standing orders, and the result of all this is another big truth tax. Whether it's the spare bedroom tax or the truth tax, Australians cannot trust this government. As government spending rises, as electricity prices go through the roof, as the mismanagement of the economy escalates and as debt heads towards $1.2 trillion, spending is out of control under Labor. Debt is spiralling, and these taxes must be ruled out.