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

I'll wait for the clock to reset—very good. The whole point of this motion is about really making the point that people have had enough of politics as usual, and I think people have had enough of the incompetence as usual as presented by this government.

This treasurer, Dr Chalmers, as he styles himself, has had two tax policies in four years and both have collapsed. His first policy was to tax unrealised gains, and that collapsed last year. His second policy has been to put in place a 30 per cent tax on everything, ostensibly to improve housing affordability. Now, people are not stupid. They can see through this and they can see that putting a tax on everything else in the economy is not going to help housing. People are aware of the Treasury's own admission in the budget papers that the government will supply 35,000 fewer houses. People are not stupid, and people object to being treated as if they are idiots or children. The way that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have sought to address the Australian people over this past month or so has been objectionable at best. People are intelligent. We are living through an age where people have more access to information than they've ever had in human history. So people understand that these taxes are stupid. They understand that more tax is not good for Australia. People know this budget is bad for them and is bad for Australia because it increases the tax burden on working people. It increases the risk that we won't have the houses that we need. This 30 per cent CGT is going to be a jobs killer, an investment killer and a nation killer because it will sink our competitive position relative to other jurisdictions, which will be able to attract capital in an age where, of course, labour and capital are mobile.

The deliberate design feature of 35,000 fewer houses is bizarre, but at least it is consistent with a government that has built 30,000 fewer houses each year—just by an $80 billion investment. Who could believe that a government could increase investment to the tune of $80 billion and get fewer things as a result? When we hear these ridiculous motherhood statements from this shocking government about their investment in housing—what matters is the result. Just because you spend more money doesn't mean you get more stuff. When you lose it in corruption and productivity losses, it's gone. And when you fail to address the core problems of the red tape disaster, the CFMEU running the show, the inflated labour costs, the corruption and the crooks, then you end up with fewer things. So more money doesn't mean more stuff. I don't know what he did his PhD in, but it certainly wasn't in anything practical or anything to do with economics or housing.

Then we have this issue of the arbitrage, where the good doc has found a way to help out his bros, the unions. He's got Wayne Swan and the 40 thieves with their hands in the till. They only pay 10 per cent CGT, but everyone else pays 30 per cent. So if you're Cbus super fund and you go and buy some shares, you only pay 10 per cent capital gains. But if you're a poor old punter living somewhere in Australia and you buy the same shares, you'll pay 30 per cent. This is the system that Labor has put in place to protect its mates. It's got a secret good deal for its mates in the super funds and a similar good deal for foreign fund managers who can invest in housing and pay 15 per cent withholding tax when everyone else will pay 30. So these, at the end of the day—the arbitrage, the 30 per cent capital gains tax and, of course, the higher rents—are the consequences that the Australian people will have to live with because this government doesn't like Australian enterprise. It doesn't like the idea that people should be able to get ahead and invest.

Of course, at its fundamental point, it must be recognised that people have already paid tax on this money. We're living in a country with one of the highest pay-as-you-go systems in the world, probably the highest in the English-speaking world. And now you've got the highest capital gains tax system. So you've got more taxes than you can poke a stick at, and you've got a so-called reform, $77 billion in new taxes, which is not a reform. More tax is not reform. There are more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese because they're helping out their mates while they smash the battlers.