Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and the related Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. Today's debate is just the next part of a long tale of disgrace and dishonesty that the Labor government has perpetrated on the Australian people. That this Senate should be reduced to a rubber stamp on a lie told to the Australian public by the Labor Party—that makes a mockery of our commitment to transparency as a place to protect Australians from government overreach. So shame on those senators who are complicit in this betrayal.

To every Greens voter who voted for a Greens senator believing the Greens would keep their commitment to honesty and integrity in politics: well, they lied to you. It's a disgrace, because the Senate has not been given adequate time to scrutinise what the government has described as being 'the most significant tax reform package in more than a quarter of a century'.

This parliament has been asked to consider legislation that will affect millions of Australians; kill investment; smash housing markets; wipe out small businesses, startups and family savings; and make Australians carry billions of dollars in additional tax. Yet Labor and the Greens have treated parliamentary scrutiny as an inconvenience rather than an obligation, rather than the job that we are all here to do. Despite the scale and significance of these reforms, Labor allowed only a matter of days for proper examination, and that scrutiny is fundamentally important because we know that Labor barely know what they're doing.

There have been more excuses about these changes than we've had days to hear from the public. First, these changes were supposed to be about intergenerational equity, but they dropped that when it was pointed out that their changes actually keep benefits for the last generation and shut the door to the next. Then it was about creating houses and making housing cheaper. But that lasted only hours because their own budget papers said that the changes would mean fewer houses and higher rents. Then they changed their minds again and said that the changes were about making sure that income from employment was taxed the same as income derived from an investment. They dropped that idea when it was pointed out that most investments are made using wages that have already been taxed. But the last one really took the cake—it really took the cake—when the Prime Minister said that, actually, this budget was all about 'combating populism in politics'. Oh, give me a break! I think that's when we knew that staffers inside the PMO and the Treasurer's office needed to come up with any excuse that couldn't be fact checked.

Let's be very clear. Labor's own bureaucrats don't know what it is that they're doing. First, the Treasury secretary got her figures wrong in a public defence of the changes, just got her figures wrong. Whoops! Then, during the excuse of a public inquiry, Treasury bureaucrats couldn't tell senators how much revenue would be raised from the capital gains tax changes and how much revenue would be raised from the negative gearing changes. They know, but they couldn't tell you. Officials confirmed that the measures had been costed separately, but Labor chose not to publish them separately. Why is that? If Labor can't explain the numbers behind their own tax increases, why should the Senate be expected to just wave them through?

Worse still, less than 24 hours before the committee was due to report, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer announced significant carve-outs and amendments to the legislation. Let that sink in. Labor announced substantial changes to its own tax package after the committee hearings had concluded, after witnesses had given evidence and with no opportunity for the Senate, for Treasury officials or for affected stakeholders to properly test those changes—extraordinary. The amendments were released after officials had avoided questioning on them and after the committee had finished taking evidence. Their own senators were sent out, blindly, to back in a package while their prime minister and their treasurer abandoned them to defend it.

For Labor, this has never been about anything other than the politics. It is a disgraceful saga that's masquerading as a tax policy. This is not transparency. This is not consultation. It demonstrates a remarkable contempt for the Senate and also for the Australian public. It reveals exactly what Labor thinks of Australians. It thinks that Australians are too stupid to notice that they're being robbed, and they are being robbed. If Labor genuinely believed that these reforms were sound it would have subjected them to proper consultation, proper modelling and proper scrutiny. Instead it's rushed them through parliament and is now asking senators to vote first and ask questions later.

The process is not the only problem here; the policy itself is so deeply flawed. At its heart, this debate is not simply about tax. It is about trust. It's about whether Australians can believe a single word that this prime minister says ever again. These bills represent one of the greatest breaches of faith with the Australian people that we've seen since Paul Keating's 'l-a-w law' broken promises in 1993. Before the election, the Prime Minister repeatedly promised Australians that Labor would not increase taxes on housing, would not increase taxes on investments and would not increase taxes on family savings. That's what Labor promised. Those promises were made over and over again. 'For the 50th time'—the Prime Minister said.

A government was elected on a platform of no new taxes, and now that same government is introducing billions of dollars of new taxes on housing, on investments, on entrepreneurship and on family savings. That is a tax on every Australian's aspiration, on every Australian's ambition and on every Australian's future, and Labor are inflicting it on you. No Australian voted for this, because they weren't given the chance. Let's be very clear: Australians have experienced the largest fall in living standards in decades, in a generation, under this Labor government. Labor's response to that has been to manage our economic decline by making struggling Australians pay for it. Labor can't manage money. They've never been able to manage money, and when Labor can't manage money they come after yours.

Labor's budget locks in $50 billion of higher taxes. I know that Labor think this is funny. They're actually laughing. Labor are laughing at the fraud that they have imposed on the Australian public. They are laughing at you because they have managed to pull the wool over your eyes. They lied to you before the election; they're lying to you now. The Prime Minister said that these changes are all about intergenerational equity, but that could not be further from the truth. Instead Labor is pulling the ladder up behind them and making it harder for young Australians to get ahead, first, through more than a trillion dollars of debt that they will spend decades paying off, and, second, through higher taxes on the very investments that people rely on to build wealth and to get ahead. Why is building wealth such a dirty word for Labor? It's the politics of envy writ large.

Young Australians are already facing higher housing costs, higher rents and lower living standards than the generations that came before them. Many have now accepted that the pathway to homeownership is no longer as straightforward as it once was. So they save, they invest, they buy shares and they put money into ETFs and other assets to build that deposit and to bring forward their own dream of building a home. But now, instead of backing that ambition, Labor are taxing it. Remarkably, the budget's own papers acknowledge that these tax changes will result in around 35,000 fewer homes. That's not more homes but fewer homes. Because of these tax changes, there will 35,000 fewer homes at a time when Australia needs more housing supply, not less housing supply, and at a time when Labor is already projected to miss its own housing targets by hundreds of thousands of homes.

You cannot solve a housing price crisis by reducing the supply of housing, but that's what Labor have intentionally done. When you tax something, you get less of it. It's basic economics. Less investment means fewer homes. Fewer homes mean higher rents. Higher rents mean young Australians will pay the price. Again, the government's own budget papers concede this point. Research from independent economists suggests that rents could rise by up to $160 a week in Sydney and by around $130 a week in Melbourne.

Young Australians are already struggling with cost-of-living-crisis pressures that Labor have inflicted upon them, and they will now face higher rents while simultaneously being told that somehow this is being done in the name of fairness. There's nothing fair about paying more rent because the government has driven investors out of the market, there's nothing fair about making it harder to save for a home and there's certainly nothing fair about reducing housing supply during a housing crisis. They're consciously, intentionally, reducing housing supply.

The government claims these measures will help first home buyers, but the evidence presented to the committee doesn't support that claim. What we know is that young Australians are increasingly investing in shares, ETFs and other assets to build that deposit. They're taking responsibility for their future, they're saving and they're investing, and now Labor wants a bigger slice of that action. A generation already paying record rents is now being asked to pay higher taxes on the investments that they rely on to save for that home. That is not intergenerational fairness; it is intergenerational fraud.

The same story applies to small businesses. Small businesses aren't a lobby group. They're not a business association. They're not a spreadsheet. They're families, they're livelihoods and they're years of sacrifice and risk and hard work and sleepless nights. Businesses have already warned that Australia ranks so poorly on tax competitiveness and that business investment is already at a 30-year low. Now they're saying that they're already delaying investment decisions because of the uncertainty that's been created by these changes.

What was Labor's response when the criticism became impossible to ignore? It was last-minute changes announced after the Senate inquiry had finished. But the so-called small-business carve-out is a con. Most small businesses will get nothing from it while still being caught up in Labor's broad tax grab. It simply created another layer of complexity and another layer of uncertainty. Even worse, Labor now wants Canberra bureaucrats to decide which businesses are sufficiently innovative to qualify for that special treatment. That's really making them a partner in your small business.

The coalition believes that Australians who work hard, save, invest and take risks should be rewarded, not punished. These bills reflect a fundamentally different philosophy, and the result is so predictable: less investment, less housing, less entrepreneurship and less opportunity. They increase complexity, they impose substantial compliance costs and they weaken confidence in Australia's tax system. It's been rushed, inadequately scrutinised and developed without the transparency expected of major tax reform.

The coalition supports genuine tax reform, lower taxes, simpler taxes, fairer taxes and measures that encourage Australians to work, to save, to invest and to build. That's why we support the working Australians tax offset. That's why we support the $1,000 standard deduction. But we cannot support the schedules that increase taxes, that reduce housing supply, that discourage investment and that break explicit promises made to the Australian people before the election. The coalition will continue to fight these toxic taxes. We will continue to stand up for renters, for first home buyers, for small businesses, for investors and for self-starters, and, for those reasons, the coalition opposes schedules one and two of these bills and urges the Senate to reject them.

Every senator who votes for these bills will be voting for higher taxes, not lower taxes. If you vote for these bills, you are voting for higher taxes. Be very clear on that. Fewer homes—you're voting for fewer homes. You're voting for higher rents, and you're voting for fewer opportunities for young Australians. Shame on you for doing that. You will be voting to make it harder for the next generation to do what previous generations took for granted—buy a home, build a business, save and build a better life. You're voting against that. The coalition will not be part of that. We will never be part of that. We will oppose these toxic taxes, and we will continue fighting for an Australia where hard work, saving, investment and risk-taking are rewarded and not punished because Australians did not vote for these taxes. They didn't get the chance to vote for these taxes because they were lied to. They were told that these taxes were not going to go ahead, and you have backflipped on that. You have backflipped on that.