Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

This was a moment that Australian politics could have stepped up and seized. This was a once-in-a-generation political opportunity to absolutely do something meaningful to address the housing crisis that is wracking this nation, and Labor has met this moment in classic Labor form—abject failure to engage in reforms that the housing crisis is demanding.

Labor's lack of ambition and their lack of political courage mean that the housing crisis in this country is going to go for longer than it should do, and it is going to cause more social harm than it needed to. Labor's lack of ambition and their abject failure to seize the moment mean that the housing crisis in Australia is now Labor's housing crisis. They've been in government for four years. They've had every opportunity on multiple occasions to pull the levers that demand pulling to fix this housing crisis and they have abjectly failed to do so. This legislation, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill and Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill, is a continuation of Labor's failure to do the things that we need to do collectively to fix the housing crisis in this country.

Having said that, taken as a package with the Greens amendments, which will be supported through this Senate, this package constitutes a small step in the right direction. That is why the Greens are going to support it. The capital gains tax discount currently is the most unfair and egregious tax break on the tax books in this country. Sixty per cent of the benefit of the capital gains tax discount goes into the bank accounts of the wealthiest one per cent of people in this country. The one per cent get 60 per cent of the benefit. If you're poor, you get nothing out of the CGT discount, because you are too poor to buy the assets that would allow you to benefit from selling them at a profit later.

But it's not just completely inequitable in terms of favouring the one per cent of the wealthiest and the highest income earners in this country; it is also responsible for driving a chasm between generations in Australia. Seventy-five per cent of the benefit of the capital gains tax discount went to people over 50, and only four per cent of the benefit went to people under 35. You heard Senator Hanson from One Nation up in this chamber earlier defending this unfair tax break and trying to claim that she is doing so on behalf of young people. We call bullshit on that claim. It is—