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

I'm reminded by that somewhat coherent defence of the position—I'm showing my age here—of the dead parrot from Monty Python. 'What a beautiful plumage,' they keep saying about a dead parrot in the dead parrot skit. This is what this government is doing. They say, 'What about the tax cuts?' It's an amazing thing when $77 billion in new taxes, as shown by the budget documents, can be described as a tax cut. Imagine that! They're going to charge $77 billion more to the economy, but they'll call that a tax cut because they'll give you $1 in your hand while picking your pocket behind you. It's a great way to do things. It's misdirection—the wonderful thing that magicians do. But this government are not magicians. Great politic talkers are all they are, but it's not good policy. And this is what matters—the policy matters. When you sit there and say you're giving tax cuts and tax reform but taxing $77 billion more, it is wrong.

They rushed the bills through because they didn't want anyone to find out the details. It's like the Dodgy Brothers coming to your house and saying: 'We fix. Good price. Don't worry about any of the detail. We fix. We promise you.' This is what's going on here today. We heard that, if you or partner is widowed, that will be a new capital gains tax trigger. Effectively, capital gains tax will be charged on the joint assets, or there will be the trigger to revalue. If you're going through a divorce, you'll settle with your ex-partner, you'll have a fight with a lawyer and you'll pay those bills, and then the Prime Minister will come in and ask: 'Where's my cut? I'll have a bit of the CGT too.' They'll do all of this.

They've said, 'But don't worry, we fix.' It wasn't fixed today. If it's not fit for purpose, don't rush it. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 is not fit for purpose. We have seen these things—a death in the family or a divorce triggers a capital gains tax event, and their answer is, 'We fix.' It can't be trusted. It's not right. They sit there and talk about tax cuts. They say, 'We fix.' But they are getting the Australian people all of the time. For taxes that aren't going to be due for another 12 months, would it have worried them to come back in the next sitting and fix it in one block so people would know what they're getting? But they couldn't do that. They rush it through, rush it through, rush it through. And it's always a spin. It's always, 'Beautiful plumage, the Norwegian blue.' That's all they go on about. This parrot couldn't get through these gates if electric volts were put through it.

We hear about fee-free TAFE. They tell you the numbers. We heard of 6,700 people going through fee-free TAFE in Queensland. What they're not telling you is that fewer than 20 per cent of people are graduating and sticking with it. Some of these numbers are people doing course after course to find one they get, but they're not getting through it. This is what matters. The detail matters. They don't get the policy work of it. They get the politics. They can spin. They've got great software and a great team on sentiment analysis. They can spam you all they want through your social media and put up the messages that you want to hear. But Australians know they are no better off. Australians see $77 billion worth of new taxes and know it's not a tax cut. Australians aren't stupid.

More to the point, they sit there and complain about votes going to One Nation, but they don't see their own part in it. When you treat the people as stupid, when you treat them as not worthy of trust, they look for other solutions. It is not on the people in One Nation why people are going there; it's because of acts like this in the government. So I say: get back to doing better on the ground. Be honest with your policies. Come here with tax bills and things that are fit for purpose. We're running this through. You had new amendments we hadn't even seen until today, and we're hearing there are new amendments coming down the track. It is not good enough.

We all know why you tax things. Why do we tax smoking? To stop people doing it. Why do we tax all sorts of things? To stop people doing them. Why do we have a carbon tax? To stop people doing it. Why are we taxing capital gains? Because you guys don't like it. You tax things to make less of it happen—less profit, less money, less Australia.