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

Thank you very much—but this is the whole point. This is basic stuff. We know it and Australians know it, but the government doesn't care. With the assistance of the Greens, they will push these bills through. They'll push this legislation through, and Australians will pay the price for it. The hard reality is that life is tough enough as it is today. It is going to get even harder for so many people. I don't say that to scaremonger. I don't say that to gloat. I say that as a sad reality, a consequence of the decisions of this government and the Greens. Young Australians are caught in a brutal squeeze. Rents are going up, there's a higher capital gains tax on their savings, in whatever form they've chosen to have savings, and the government just keeps hitting them, over and over and over again.

That's without even considering Labor's active inflation agenda. Inflationary impacts have been created by the Albanese Labor government. Real wages are declining. Productivity has tanked. Renters are paying more in rent. People with a mortgage are paying more in their repayments. Everyone is paying more in tax and taking home less in real terms. This is the Albanese Labor government's record, and it is a shameful one. This is the highest taxing government in Australia's history, with the highest rate of capital gains tax amongst our contemporaries. I've said it a number of times in this chamber, but I'm going to say it again. Communist China has a CGT flat rate of 20 per cent. The Albanese Labor government, with the assistance of the Greens and our new quasisocialist government, has a rate of 30 per cent. Think about that.

Indeed, Senator Cadell. The Commonwealth Bank's own chief economist has said these changes will raise revenue but will not build more homes—the very thing the government keeps trying to tell us that these changes will affect. It is clear that it will not occur. Even the government's own budget papers say that there will be fewer homes. What are we trying to sell here? Why don't you actually just tell us what your actual agenda is? It's clearly not to provide more housing for Australians to buy. I'll repeat it again. It's my view that this government wants Australians to be in a perpetual state of renting and to live in homes owned by the super funds and built by the CFMEU. That's what this government wants, because, otherwise, it would not create a vicious cycle such as this one where young Australians simply cannot get ahead.

The narrative of this budget is intergenerational equity. The reality is an intergenerational betrayal. Young Australians trying to get ahead by renting while saving are hit first by higher rents and then by higher taxes on the moneys that they are trying to save to build their nest egg. This government needs to explain why it is doing this and why it will not tell the truth to the Australian public.