Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) | Hansard source

In part 2, in continuation from last night, let me be crystal clear—this government has indeed misled the Australian people. The biggest misleader of all was the Prime Minister, because the Prime Minister said, on no fewer than 50 occasions, that he would not touch capital gains or negative gearing. The Prime Minister couldn't take these policies to an election because he knows that they are an absolute stinker. What this government is doing—with their partners at the other end of the chamber, the Greens—is undermining the aspirations of Australian people. This is an absolute stinker. This is the worst budget that this country has seen in over 30 years, and the Australian people know it.

The Australian people know what's going on here. They know that it's got nothing to do with generational equity, as we keep hearing. It's got everything, though, to do with a blatant tax grab. That's all they're doing, because even their own modelling shows that it's not going to build a single extra house. In fact, there are going to be 30,000 fewer homes built as a result of these changes because investment has been dragged out of the market. We're seeing it already. We're seeing clearance rates more than halve across the country. It's down now to the period during the height of COVID. So this isn't about generational equity; this is a blatant tax grab. It's about generating another way for this big-spending Labor government to take more revenue from working Australians to fund their spending addiction. When the government runs out of money, what do they do? They come right after yours.

The Australian people have seen these policies before. Remember, back in 2019, when Bill Shorten tried to introduce them? That was something that he, to his credit, actually had the courage to take to the election, and guess what? The Australian people rejected it. Having learnt that lesson, the Prime Minister saw that, if he took these changes that they're now bringing into the election, people would reject it as they did in 2019. He didn't have the courage to do it, so he hid it from the Australian people. He said: 'We're not going to do this. No changes.' Fifty times, he said it: 'No changes.'

The electorate knew that those policies stank back then, and they know right now that these policies stink. The Treasurer claims to be the fount of all knowledge when it comes to his political hero, Paul Keating. He learnt nothing from what the repercussions were for Mr Keating with his infamous 'l-a-w law' broken promise on tax cuts in 1993. Like that episode, this terrible Labor government has breached the fundamental trust of the Australian electorate.

In the lead-up to the recent budget, the Prime Minister said, 'There's nothing to see here.' He was asked by a journalist, 'Can you rule out any changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax settings?' The Prime Minister then responded: 'Yes. How hard is it? For the 50th time.' The Prime Minister even acknowledged how many times he had said that he was not going to touch these things. Asked again on 17 April, he said: 'I rule it out. I rule it out. I have responded to that lots of times.' These words have not aged well.

This very debate is evidence of the Labor government's contempt for the Australian people. As has been said time and time again, no-one voted for these laws and no-one voted for these new taxes. This government is attacking the aspirations of Australians. This is a government that aspires to have Australia become a place where investing for the future is a bad thing. This is a government that is driving the nation to be one where aspiration simply becomes a fantasy, where the hard worker is punished and where the everyday Australian feels that it is impossible to get ahead. That's how Australians are feeling already.

But now with this, I lament, it is getting so hard, particularly for young Australians. Maybe they can't quite afford to buy their own home just yet. Of course we know that that's the reality for almost everyone. So what do they do? They want to invest in some shares to help build their equity and build their wealth. But now that is being taken away from them too because they're going to get taxed at a minimum of 30 per cent. What if you're earning less than $40,000 or $50,000 a year? You're going to be taxed at 30 per cent. The first tax rate of 30 per cent doesn't kick in until $45,000. It's just insane what you're doing here.

According to the October 2024 survey by HSBC, gen Z are quite financially active and willing to take on more risk when investing. Given this generation is facing challenges accessing the housing market, they are taking it upon themselves to build wealth through methods more accessible to them and allocating more of their income to do so. Gen Z are increasingly using pooled investment securities like exchange traded funds, or ETFs. According to Vanguard, nearly one in five gen Z Australians reported holding ETFs, and 18 per cent of gen Z said they hold cryptocurrencies. Overall, 45 per cent of gen Z, millennials and gen X reported holding at least one investment product. One 20-year-old, who the Australian newspaper interviewed about Labor's proposed changes, said it will only make it harder to save for a deposit, the very thing that they are saying these tax changes are all about. This is actually undermining that aspiration and that goal of so many young Australians.

I've got two of them in my home, my son and my daughter. They're 18 and 20 years of age. There are their friends and the people they're at uni with. My son's a tradie. He's doing an apprenticeship. There are his mates that he's connected with working on the job sites and on the tools. How are they going to get ahead under this policy and under what this government's doing? It does not make any sense. This is just a blatant tax grab. That's all that this is. It's so that you can continue to fund your addiction to spending rather than take the difficult steps and decisions to actually constrain your government's spending. Removing the capital gains tax discount on investments like shares and ETFs is actually going to disincentivise people from investing and increase the difficulty for younger Australians to get ahead. That's what's happening.

For many young people, renting a home is not just expensive; it's consuming an unsustainable share of their income. Do you remember that old 30 per cent rule on housing? It's now heading well above that. In some cases, even just renting a home is out of reach. The median weekly rent for homes across Australia's capital cities is $724 per week. Meanwhile, the median personal income for Australians aged 24 and under is roughly $455 a week. That's $23,840 per year. This means that the average young renter would need to hand over every dollar they earn, and then some, just to cover the cost of rent, even without accounting for utilities, transport, groceries—all the things that you need to. The modelling for the property industry by economic firms found that combining a CGT discount cut with negative gearing restrictions would push rent prices up by 2.4 per cent in 2029-30. A 2.4 per cent increase on today's median rent will inevitably put more pressure on young people who already lack the financial buffer to get ahead and to shoulder it—again, disadvantaging the young people that this government is claiming to be helping.

I'll turn to specific issues in my home state of Western Australia. Schedule 1 of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 represents a significant threat to minerals exploration and the long-term future of Australia's mining industry. This is a front-of-mind issue for me as a senator for Western Australia. My state is the home of mining exploration. The impact disproportionately falls on junior exploration companies, which dominate early-stage mining activities. They account for approximately 70 to 75 per cent of Australia's geological discoveries. Reduced exploration will mean fewer discoveries; fewer discoveries will mean fewer mines; and fewer mines will mean less government revenue, fewer royalty payments, and reduced economic activity across our nation. And make no mistake, this will have an impact on jobs directly and indirectly.

According to the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, 84.5 per cent of retail investors view the current CGT discount as essential or very important, and over 85 per cent of surveyed investors anticipate reducing or exiting investments in junior explorers because of these changes. What this government is doing is undermining investment in this country—investment that is critical to Western Australia and critical to Australia's economic prosperity. We don't actually make too many things in this country anymore, but there’s one thing that we do exceptionally well, better than anywhere else in the world—and I'm proud to say this as a Western Australian—and that's how to extract minerals and sell them across the world because they are very, very valuable. This tax bill that we're dealing with right here undermines that ability for Australia to continue to bat way above its average and make prosperity for the entire nation.