Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

Well, where to begin? I think I will begin with the questions that Senator Bragg asked in relation to housing in our country. One of the answers to his questions was that this government has an ambitious target for more houses. The reality is, whether there is an ambitious target or not, the delivery of houses under this government has been nothing short of unacceptable. Young Australians have found it harder to purchase a home under this government than in any other time in our history.

The government's budget on Tuesday evening was delivered under the guise of intergenerational fairness. Well, I would like somebody to explain to me how it is fair for young Australians that the Prime Minister, who used negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts to build his own wealth after his own beginnings in public housing, gets to retain the benefits of that but young Australians don't ever get the chance to do that. That is intergenerational fairness under the Albanese Labor government—in order to be fair to you, we're going to lift the ladder up so you can't use it when we're finished using it. Explain that to me. Explained to me, if we are trying to create more housing in this country, why then we have to tax everything else more. Why are we taxing housing? Why are we taxing shares? Why are we taxing small businesses? How does that create intergenerational fairness? What that actually means is that young Australians will have nowhere to go to build wealth because this government doesn't want them to build wealth. This government wants them to rent their houses built by the CFMEU and owned by the super funds. That is what this government wants.

Every single time that we have pointed out a deficiency in one of its policies, this government has pretended that it doesn't exist. The RBA said that the government's five per cent deposit guarantee, without requisite supply-side measures, would increase prices of entry-level dwellings. This Prime Minister said, 'No way, no, no, it will probably increase prices by 0.6 per cent over six years'—something like that. But guess what? They have gone up 3.6 per cent in the December quarter alone.

But why would we believe anything the Prime Minister says anyway? He abjectly does not tell the truth to Australians. Some 50 times before the last election, he said that negative gearing and capital gains tax were off the table, and what have they done in their budget this year? They have introduced both, despite telling Australians that they would not. Why didn't he have the courage and the transparency to tell Australians that this was what he was going to do? Because I put it to you that he had a plan to do this all along. He deliberately misled Australians when they went to the polls and, I tell you, he probably has an inheritance tax on the family home up his sleeve next. Oh, you can scoff and you can laugh but you can't hide from the fact that this Prime Minister lied about this some 50 times before the last election. That is a fact, amongst so many other things that this government has said that they would and would not do. (Time expired)