Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) | Hansard source

It's interesting, when we get up, to look at the spin, the labelling and the messaging of the government. They call this tax reform. It is a tax grab. The number has been mentioned before. There will be $77 billion in new taxes. Never has reform been dressed so painfully for the Australian people. Never has there been a tax that hits people where they are. Remember back to, I think, 1991. There was a Danny DeVito movie called Other People's Money. He ran a company conducting takeovers. It was a company called OPM Holdings, and it stood for 'other people's money'. That's where it came from. That is what this government is addicted to—getting other people's money, getting their hands on it and spending it on re-engineering Australia. Nothing says that like this.

But it goes further than that. Senator Scarr touched on the promises, the words that could be relied on, that said that this wouldn't happen. There were so many people getting up in our two-minute statements today talking about how evil it is that another political party is rising and making gains in the polling system here. That is exactly what happens when this place and the people in this place don't keep their word. It is what happens when you aren't consistent with what you say. But people want to get up and pretend it's not on them. People want to get up and pretend it's on the public or that person or Gina Rinehart or someone else that the public are turning away from the Labor Party and the coalition.

It is not. It is when you break your word, when you break your bond and when you do things that breach the trust of Australians that people look for new answers. There is no good in getting up here and whingeing about it and the reasons behind it after you have done that. We need to look at restoring faith, restoring trust and restoring a solid stewardship to the Australian economy. We saw it threatened with a proposed tax on unrealised capital gains before. It was walked back by this government only after an outcry. They're trying to tax money you actually haven't made yet. They've realised that might be a step too far and have settled on this. This is the answer.

If you follow the government's own logic that this is to create a better access for housing then you might understand if they stopped at taxing capital gains on housing, but they didn't. They went further. They decided to tax shares, something that young people might use to save for their house deposit. They're taxing the capital gains of small businesses. They're taxing crypto. They're taxing ETFs. They're taxing everything that you get a capital gain on and saying it all relates to housing. That doesn't make sense, that doesn't hold true, and, once again, the pub test isn't marked by this bill. That's a real concern because, had it stopped at housing, had it stopped there, they may have had an argument. It may have been consistent. It may have been true, but it isn't and it hurts everyone. It hurts people saving for a deposit.

I ran some simulations the other day. If you grab $1,000 a month in savings and you put it in your bank account versus you grab $1,000 a year and put it in your shares, or you put it in crypto over five years, six years to save your deposit, there is a $20,000 benefit in investing that money. That will now be halved by a doubling of the tax on your capital gain. That's right. You're getting a 50 per cent discount now. You won't get that, so it's double what you would pay, and that's just unacceptable.

Let's look at the reason this discount was brought in before. It was to differentiate between speculation and investment. An investment is the allocation of funds to profitable and good areas of the economy. Speculation is 'I'm having a punt. I put a declaration out the other day. I bought a couple of crypto bitcoins. See how that goes'—very badly at the moment, may I say. That is speculation. I deserve to pay tax on my income, as the government says, because that is not efficient use of money for the economy. That is speculation for a personal gain. Like we heard Senator Scarr say, investment into companies, into small businesses and into Australian entities is good for Australia and that is the reason this discount existed—to see money put in places that grow jobs, that grow Australia, that grow the economy, that make Australia a better place to live.

Anecdotally, I have friends with some serious businesses—they wouldn't qualify as small businesses—who are already moving capital away from Australia. That hurts. But we know the answer. Every time we saw the economy shrinking, the government would bring in more people and exacerbate the housing problem. We are now facing a per capita recession and we just bring in more people so we make the housing problem worse. We've already seen on page 158 of the budget documents that 35,000 fewer homes will be built under this policy. So if we're building fewer homes, as Senator Bragg said so eloquently earlier, supply is the real problem. We see plenty of land held up by plenty of red tape, lack of infrastructure, lack of water, lack of these things. I know both parties of government took significant policies on infrastructure to unlock that last time, but it's not seeing the light of day. We're not seeing those things turn into real homes.

We heard about the $10 billion housing HAFF fund. We always hear about that, but it's not building the houses we need. We hear about the apprentices we need to get the jobs done and build things. Every time we talk about apprentices, we hear 'fee-free TAFE'. But the reality is fewer than 20 per cent of people who enter courses under that complete them. So if we haven't got the people we need to build the places we need, if we've got the red tape, if we haven't got the infrastructure, we aren't going to fix the supply problem.

I will ask a question in the committee stage because it's a concern to me. When you go through the EM, it says that existing small businesses will have exemptions raised from $2 million annual turnover to $10 million, but keep those words 'existing small businesses'. If we talk about generational equity, what about the businesses of tomorrow, of the young people, of the ideas that happen the day after? What happens if there's someone at home, 20-something years old, and tomorrow they come up with the next Canva, the next Atlassian, or the next Kick or Stake? They want to start out. They want to get there, but are they covered by this?

Are they going to New Zealand? The land of the long white cloud might be the land of the long Australian business coming up as we go, when their capital moves to places where they can better reflect that risk-to-reward ratio. This fundamentally changes that. This fundamentally changes the balance between investing in something to try and get ahead, potentially losing it and the reward of actually seeing it through. The changes that were announced, the backflip that was unbelievably good—it would make Nadia Comaneci jealous of the flexibility of the Treasurer. It was an amazing flip to say, 'There's nothing wrong. We're consulting,' and then come out when we clearly know no consultation of any note took place.

What happens to the businesses tomorrow? What happens to the young people that aren't going to settle for the lowest common denominator, who want aspiration—this word we hear so much but is understood so little on the other side? Aspiration is the goal to be your best and have dreams. We should be helping young people reach them. We should be helping everyone reach them. But now we're saying we will put a handbrake of 100 per cent more tax on your success. One hundred per cent more tax than you would pay last year, you'll pay on your success. That is wrong.

We sit here and wonder why the country is as it is, why there are doldrums, why money is leaving overseas, why young people are getting angry and going to people they haven't voted for before. Look at our own actions. Look inside ourselves. Look as a government. Look as a parliament and say, 'What are we doing wrong?' I come back to that message. It is about staying true. It is about building hope in a time when our world looks so horrible, when there are wars all over the place, when allies can't be trusted, when rule of might is overcoming rule of laws. We want to give hope to people, and this change takes that away. This change diminishes the fundamental principle of trying to have a better life.

Let me tell you about the big end of town. They're not going to have a worry, because they're going to put things in a company and pay 30 per cent anyway. Things in companies, things in structures—all this sort of thing. They have access to the best solicitors and to the best tax accountants. They have the best advice to get. This won't affect the big end of town as much as it does mum-and-dads. That's why it hurts so much—because they are the people we should be supporting. When we talk about taxing this the way we tax wages, which has become a catchcry, we forget about the risk. We forget about the importance of creating jobs. We forget about creating the houses that people who can't afford it get for housing. When we see the balance of immigration coming in—not many people land in Australia and can afford to go out and buy a house straightaway. Can they get the finance? Have they got the deposit? These people rent straightaway, and they need stock. They need these rental properties going, and this will take that away. So we'll see rent rises. We'll see savings diminish. We'll see the inability to create wealth in other ways. This is all because this government likes to spend.

Let's talk about that spend. Another thing I don't understand—another issue we're talking about—is the NDIS bill. We see all sorts of numbers where we're going to cut 20 per cent of people off the NDIS. We're going to crack down on who gets what out of those left in there. Never have I seen a crackdown where 20 per cent of people come off a program and we crack down on those that are left. It still costs more than it did the previous year. It's an amazing stat how you go forward under those economics. It's not maths as I knew it.

We see the defences here where, even today in question time, the finance minister got up and was asked specifically—she was given two minutes. She noted it herself in her answer. 'I have two minutes to get to the answer'. She didn't want to answer it straightaway. When we pressed for a country, for her to name one country that has capital gains tax higher than Australia now—I remember the answer. 'I'll get to your answer. Give me two minutes.' In two minutes, she managed to get to it finally, when the answer was handed to her: 'United Kingdom, 24 per cent; America 30 per cent'—all these thing, she labelled about three—'France, 26 per cent.' Those were the numbers that came out of her mouth, every single one of them was under the 47 per cent that we can charge on capital gains. Now, I don't know what the people of the world like, but I would prefer a finance minister who understands that 47 per cent is higher than 26 per cent or 30 per cent. It doesn't take a lot to know that. I'm not the world's sharpest tool, but even I learned that from my maths class. So you can't go comparing that. We now have one of the highest marginal tax rates in the world for earners and probably the highest capital gains tax in the world, and we still talk about this world of aspiration and hope.

We need to be better than this. We should be taxing less. We should be playing fewer games where we take people's money off them and only give it back if they do the things we want. If this were a relationship, it'd be financially abusive. Imagine you're in a relationship with someone and they are taking all your money and only giving it back if you do the things they want. That would be a financially abusive relationship, and we would be calling someone. There would be an intervention to stop that from happening. But here it's celebrated: 'Aren't we great for doing it? This is the way forward, and it is a reform.' That's not the case. Tax less.