Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety) | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be in continuation on this very important private senator's bill, the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill 2025. This is a bill that will make life fundamentally fairer for women, and I want to again congratulate Senator Hume on bringing this forward.

I spoke on this bill the day after the budget was handed down. In stark contrast to the stand that we took, Australians were hit with the news of this horrific budget that was handed down by this government, a budget of broken promises, higher taxes, more debt, lower living standards and fewer homes for all Australians, and things have just got worse. The deception and the lies have just got worse, because now we have seen in this place a dirty, rotten deal between the Albanese Labor government and the Greens, which is selling out all Australians, including Australian women. This latest deal is to compromise those who have invested in self-managed super by preventing people from borrowing for the purposes of acquiring residential real estate. These are mum-and-dad investors. They're not the big foreign investors who've got the big tax concessions and can come into this country and get 10 or 15 per cent. These are mum-and dad-investors, and many of them are women—women who've planned for their future, who've done the hard yards and who often have far less in their superannuation balances because they've taken time out of work to care for children and raise a family. Now we see another dirty, rotten deal which compromises anyone who thought that super was safe.

I have to say that, watching social media videos last night, I saw ordinary Australians and the rage that is in our community, because this is a government which said: 'We are not going to touch negative gearing, we're not going to touch capital gains tax, we're not going to interfere with your super and we're going to give you continuity in the laws that apply to your investments and your savings,' and the government, in a dirty, rotten, stinking deal, has done just the opposite. Labor lied before the election, they betrayed Australians on budget night and they have now done a dangerous—