Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Infrastructure) | Link to this | Hansard source

I foreshadow, on behalf of Senator Liddle, the second reading amendment in her name on behalf of the coalition.

No-one voted for these new taxes. The Prime Minister promised, in his own words, more than 50 times before the last election that he would not introduce them, and, in a complete act of bad faith and disregard for all Australians, he's turned around and broken every single one of those commitments. Think about that. He said this 50 times to the media and to the Australian people. He said his word is his bond, and he has broken that more than 50 times, equally.

These new taxes are designed to manage the decline of the Australian economy. None of these tax hikes will grow the Australian economy, at a time when we desperately need it. Australia has always been a very lucky country. When I look back just 20 years ago, Australia had zero debt. When I was younger and looking to purchase my first home, the country that I lived in did not have any debt. For my daughter, who today is looking to purchase her first home, the country that she lives in has over $1 trillion worth of debt. You would think that any responsible government would look to reduce spending at a time like this. But, no, this Labor government isn't going to cut spending. Instead, what it's going to do is increase the tax on every single hardworking Australian.

I think it's important to note the government has zero dollars of its own. The only money that government has is the money that it collects from hardworking Australians. Every single dollar that the government spends is a dollar that it has taken from an Australian who has had to earn it, and that inequity is so clear in this budget.

Labor can't manage to live within its own means. Instead of cutting spending, like you would have to do in a household budget or you would have to do in your own business, Labor is going to tax the Australian people even more. We have a death tax, a tax on family savings, a tax on renters. We've got a tax on first home buyers when young Australians are just trying to get ahead. For young people, the dream of owning a home in Australia is getting further and further out of reach. We have a tax on small businesses. We've got a tax on startups and entrepreneurs, and let's remember that businesses and startups are the engine room of the Australian economy.

This is a budget of broken promises, a budget that is going to break the back of Australians and break the Australian dream. It is an assault on aspiration. It is pulling up the ladder of opportunity from all young Australians before they have even had a chance to climb that ladder. This is a budget that is going to make sure that no young Australian is ever going to want to go out and start their own business. No young Australian is ever going to aspire to take a risk, to back themselves and start something great. As we've seen on social media, their new not-so-silent partner is Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, and his Labor government. They are looking to take that hard earned sweat capital from small businesses before they have even made any gains.

This budget is not just a bad faith budget that does nothing to improve intergenerational inequality; it is going to make the problem even worse. All of the rules that existed for people my age and above are now out the window. Everything we were able to use to create wealth and opportunity here in Australia has been pulled out from under the next generation of young Australians looking to forge their way in the world. This budget is unravelling faster than anything I think we've seen before. Every week is symbolising another broken promise from this Labor government. There are secret taxes and tax hikes littered everywhere in this budget.

Let's be honest, we've got inflation running out of control here in Australia. Inflation means that real wages don't grow. We've seen productivity grind to a standstill, and this budget is going to do absolutely nothing to improve the state of our economy here in Australia. That breaks my heart because I love Australia. I love that this has always been a place where you could pursue your dreams and where opportunities abound. If you worked hard and you saved, you could get ahead. But what this government is proving is that none of those rules apply anymore. This government cannot live within its means, and Australia is now hurtling towards $1.25 trillion in debt, so this Labor government needs to tax hardworking Australians even more.

I think about that and I think about some of the global shocks that have come Australia's way over recent decades. We haven't had significant debt here in Australia, so we have weathered the storm of global shocks very, very well. What I fear is that this budget is not setting us up to weather the next global shock. What this means is, when there is another crisis, Australia will have no money, just an incredible national debt, and that will put us at risk. That is going to make it very difficult here in Australia. It is going to make it very difficult for us to attract international investment. It's going to make it very difficult for us to keep Australian businesses here in Australia. Honestly, why would you keep your capital in Australia if the government is just going to take your hard earned money?

The coalition opposes schedules 1 and 2, but we do support schedules 3 and 4. We are going to fight these taxes tooth and nail, and, if they become law under this Labor government—and we've seen today that Labor are going to do dodgy deals with the Greens—then a coalition government will repeal them. We have a vision for Australians. We want to unlock the potential of all Australians. We want to see Australians flourish and thrive here. We want to see investment. We want to see young Australians going out there and starting their own business. We want to see them keep the earnings from that business and that sweat capital that they pour into it. We want to see young Australians owning their own homes. We want to see them able to build their wealth here. I'm not sure when it happened, but when did working hard and creating wealth for yourself become such a bad thing? When did we become a country that wanted to look at wealth redistribution rather than allowing people to work hard and keep more of what they are earning?

Our plan is the complete opposite to Labor's. We want to see lower taxes, lower inflation and an economy that is designed to back self-starters of the nation. We don't want to kneecap them. We want to see them pulling Australia forward. If businesses are willing to do the work and individuals work and they take all of the capital risk, then they should be able to get ahead, but that's not how Labor sees this budget, and that is certainly not the economic environment that Labor is creating. I look at housing and I look at the broken promises from this Labor government—higher taxes, lower living standards and fewer homes. The government's own budget papers say there will be 35,000 fewer homes built as a consequence of the new taxes that they are introducing. We've got a housing crisis here in Australia, and, rather than putting in things that will allow the economy to build more homes and allow private enterprise to thrive, what we're going to actually see is the direct opposite. These proposed tax changes by Labor will actually mean that 35,000 fewer homes will be built. Those are 35,000 young Australian families that are going to miss the opportunity to get into their first home.

If you tax something—and this is a pretty fundamental principle—you will end up with less of it. That is basic economics. The more that we are going to tax housing and the more that we are going to tax housing investment, the less housing investment we will get and the fewer houses we will get. This Labor government is quite happy that young Australians here are going to pay the price for that decision. Their budget is built on a narrative around intergenerational fairness, but it's going to strip away any kind of fairness for young Australians here. It is going to pit young against old. Any settings for our economy should allow all Australians to be able to thrive. We shouldn't be punishing older Australians for saving and investing in their super, we shouldn't be moving the goalposts, and we shouldn't be changing the rules after they've done everything they were told to do. They're being punished instead of rewarded for doing the right thing. That is not how a government should operate.

Now Labor's taxes will act like a wrecking ball. We have seen auction clearance rates and volumes down substantially in the housing market. We are going to see fewer and fewer Australians achieving their dream of owning a home. Let's not forget those who are still struggling to save a deposit to even get into that housing market. As inflation has been running out of control, inflation has been outstripping what young Australians and families have been able to save. We see the age of first home buyers continually going up, because you need to work longer and you need to work harder to be able to save for that house deposit.

We've got to also think about what these reforms will mean for renters in Australia, and they will mean higher rents. This is a government who is going to capitalise and cash in on all of this. Let's remember, as they're pulling all of this tax out of the economy from hardworking Australians, ultimately, it's the government that will benefit from this. What are they going to spend your money on? I certainly know that any individual is going to spend a dollar far more responsibly than any government ever will. We've got layers of bureaucracy. We've got layers of red tape, and this government is going to make it harder and harder for first home buyers and for renters. That's not even to go into small businesses, which are the engine room of our economy.

There is going to now be a 47 per cent stake claim in any small business. That's a pretty awful silent partner to have when government is going to come in and take nearly 50 per cent of everything. You as a small business have put in the sweat capital. You've taken the risk. You've done the hard work, and government is going to come in and take nearly 50 per cent of it. That's not fair, and that certainly doesn't allow for any kind of aspirational achievement for these businesses. We know that, if businesses can keep more of what they're earning, they're going to reinvest, they're going to employ people and they are going to help keep Australia moving. But, under this government, we will see exactly the opposite. This is an absolute assault on small businesses right across the country, and it is devastating to see businesses that are struggling already with the cost of living, with their electricity prices and with everything else that they are facing. Now, they have a budget that is out to take 50 per cent of everything that they have. That's not fair. It's certainly not going to encourage self-starters to come along, and, certainly, we're hearing that there are a lot of businesses who are looking to move their operations offshore, where they can keep more of what they earn and reinvest in their own aspirations and invest their capital back into their business.

What we see here is an absolutely disastrous budget. It's not good for young people. It's not good for old people. It's not good for businesses. It's not good for anyone except for the unions and except for Labor. That is not in the national interest, and Labor should be ashamed of their budget.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

I just wish to thank Senator Barbara Pocock for allowing me to jump ahead in the order due to other duties that I have to take on in the not-too-distant future. I did want to speak on this bill, because it is such a retrograde step for our taxation system. Since the budget was handed down, I have met with, visited with, gone to after hours events with and spoken with chambers of commerce and small businesses in Western Australia. Apart from the uncertainty that this Labor budget has generated, the one thing that I have heard universally from every single one of those businesses is that they have had to go and talk to their financial advisers and their accountants about what these changes mean for them. Think about the deadweight loss that is applying to the Australian economy. Then, just in the last few days, another dirty deal was done with the Greens, changing the rules from the budget once more, attacking self-managed super funds, often controlled by small-business people for whom it was the best way to invest for their future. They've changed the rules again. Now, every single one of those small businesses, plus a whole new raft of people involved in self-managed super funds, are going to have to go and seek advice from their professional service providers, from their accountants, from their fund managers or from their auditors. This is a deadweight loss on the economy that will, over time, thanks to this Labor government, add up to billions of dollars, because this is a Labor government that just cannot get enough of your taxation. It wants more and more and more. It is drunk on spending your money, and it is coming after even more of it.

We have already far too many definitions of 'small business' in this country. The ATO, the tax office—just one agency—has multiple small-business definitions. The Fair Work Act has a different definition for a small business. ASIC and the ACCC have a different definition again. The ABS has a different definition of a small business. There's different definition in the Privacy Act. There's a different definition for the Australian Financial Complaints Agency. Now this government is going to slice and dice small business once more in terms of taxation to say that there are innovative small businesses over here who deserve one tax treatment and non-innovative small businesses over there that deserve a different tax treatment. Every small business in Australia, every business, is going to have to work out whether they fall into one category or another.

I've heard those opposite—and I'm not talking about those up at the far end of the chamber; I'm talking about those in government, the Labor Party—talking about how mining is just digging it up and shipping it out. Mining in my home state of Western Australia is not just digging it up and shipping it out. It is a highly technical, highly innovative business, ranging from the smallest of businesses in Australia to the largest. These are businesses that contribute enormously to the Australian economy. These are businesses that, in my opinion, are the foundation of the Australian economy. These are the businesses from which wealth flows. But this government's budget is putting a cap on our desire to aspire to wealth generation. They're attempting to force everything to their mindset, to their union dominated mindset, of how people should live, generate wealth and get ahead in life. This is not what Australians want. This is what the union movement wants. They want big businesses they can control, not small businesses that are flexible, dynamic, innovative and hard for the unions to sink their teeth into.

These two bills that we are discussing are yet another two bills that are being added to the shameless list of guillotined bills that have been pushed through this place under the Labor government and 99 per cent of the time with the support of the Greens. The Liberal Party has supported a couple of important defence and national security measures going through under a guillotine. But 99 per cent of the more than 100 bills that have been guillotined by this government have been supported by the Greens. I may have lost count, but I think we're up to around 146 bills under this Labor government that have been guillotined through the Senate.

In the hours motion moved today, they're adding not just these two bills but another 11. Another 11 bills will be added to this seemingly never-ending list of bills that are just rushed through this place without proper scrutiny. Then we end up finding out a few days, weeks, months later that the bills didn't actually do what the government thought or they're acting in a way that the government didn't understand. They hate scrutiny and, with their alliance partners the Greens, they push these bills through this place without proper scrutiny, without adequate attention to the drafting of the provisions they are putting in place and without allowing this parliament, this Senate chamber, to do its job, which is to scrutinise legislation both through the committee system and in this chamber, to adequately debate it and to have extensive committee stages where the minister is forced to appear in this place and actually answer questions of any senator.

That is the rigour we want from our democracy. That is the rigour we want from our parliament. We don't want a deal that we don't even know the content of. It was done behind closed doors between Labor and the Greens to rush this bill and another 10 bills through this parliament in the next four or five days, and we don't know what the deal is. The Australian people certainly don't know what the deal is. That is just not acceptable to democracy. That is not an acceptable way to treat this parliament. That is not an acceptable way to treat the Senate. The Senate is the house of review. This is where the hard work gets done. Treating the chamber in such a cavalier fashion and allowing the Greens tail to wag the Labor dog is just not an acceptable approach to passing legislation in this place, particularly when the lives and aspirations of so many Australian businesses and so many Australian individuals and families are at stake.

The Labor Party have no clue what the impact of their changes is going to be on the Australian economy. They have no clue. Their own budget papers reveal that there are going to be 35,000 fewer homes constructed under Labor's own policy formulation. What are the Greens changes, which were forced on the Labor Party in this dirty deal that we don't know the content of, going to do to that number? Are 40,000, 50,000 or 60,000 fewer houses going to be built? By eliminating non-recourse loans in self-managed super funds, you are effectively taking a house builder, a funder of house builds, out of the market.

Isn't it interesting that they're willing to attack self-managed super funds in this way but there's not a word about industry super funds.

There's not a word, Senator McKim, about industry super funds, who are in the market competing to buy houses against Australian families and competing to buy houses against Australian young people. There's not a word about those institutional industry super funds, who are in exactly the same markets competing to buy those houses that young Australians want. But you'll knock the self-managed super funds out of that market. You'll knock out those people who are trying to provide for their own future, as they were encouraged to do. Effectively, you're also locking out any future self-managed super funds, so young people who would like to look after their own future retirement needs and who wish to be self-managed are now eliminated from having this avenue to secure their own future wellbeing.

This is a disgrace. The nature of the deal is a disgrace. It was done behind closed doors. We really don't know the content of it. We don't know what's been agreed. We have no idea what the implications will be, except that it will be a hammer blow to aspiration in this country. It will be a hammer blow to those young people who are seeking to generate their own capital gains and their own returns, to see their own wealth improve and to secure a positive future for themselves and their families. This is not the Australia we want. This is not the parliament we want. This is not the way we want to see the Senate chamber treated. It is an absolute disgrace.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. These bills are a very small step in the right direction. They could have been so much better, but they are a step heading the right way. Today, the Greens have secured changes to these bills to make it harder for wealthy property investors to outbid renters. While the Greens confirm we will support these tax changes to pass the Senate this fortnight, the fight does not stop there. There's so much more that this Labor government must do to fix this housing crisis that is only growing more urgent by the day.

For over 26 years, the Australian Greens have been pushing hard to get rid of the extraordinary property investor tax perks that have priced so many people—so many people—out of owning their own home. When the bill to implement the CGT discount changes was debated in this Senate in 1999, former Greens leader Bob Brown made it clear that this change would turbocharge economic and housing inequality in Australia. He said these changes would give advantages to the rich and take from the poor. Well, he was spot on. He was right. The CGT discount, all these years later, is the most egregious and unfair tax break on the books. The Treasury calculated that 54 per cent of the lost revenue from CGT discount in 2022-23—that's $12.7 billion—went to the richest one per cent of taxpayers. It is a reverse Robin Hood tax: it takes from the bottom end and gives to the very, very wealthy.

The Greens' persistent and long-term advocacy—which culminated in the recent Senate select committee into the operation of the capital gains discount, led by my colleague Senator McKim—has been a significant factor in this legislation being introduced into this parliament. The CGT discount is responsible for driving a chasm between generations in Australia. Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry called this intergenerational injustice built into our tax system an intentional 'act of bastardry'. He's so right. People under 35 get only four per cent of the benefit, and they have to stand up at auctions with those getting the benefit alongside them, outbidding them, year after year. What is unfair to young people is entire generations being priced out of housing.

The Greens have managed to win some important amendments to these bills. We've won an amendment to close self-managed superannuation funds' exemptions from the prohibition on being able to borrow to fund investments. This is a recommendation that's been consistently made by financial stability reviews. It's long overdue. We've also won an amendment to remove the Treasurer's ability to add any additional classes of assets that become eligible for the 50 per cent tax discount, and to rein in his power to prescribe any type of property investment that can be eligible for deducting losses against salary and wage income. This prevents a minister undoing these changes at the stroke of a pen by extending the discount to other assets. These powers were unworkable and unprecedented, and they needed to be reined in. These are important changes and I want to commend my colleague Senator McKim for winning them. They're important, they're significant, and they were hardfought. This was a once-in-a-generation moment to help Australians.

Unfortunately, Labor has missed a critical opportunity here. Labor's decision to lock in $33 billion in tax handouts for those with two or more investment properties means that 1.7 million properties will remain in the hands of wealthy property investors, not first home buyers, and they'll leave renters to continue fighting the housing crisis for longer. The Parliamentary Budget Office analysis, based on ATO data in 2023-24, reveals people with two or more investment properties claimed an eye-watering $33 billion in tax handouts that year. That is what Labor is baking in. That is what we would have had available to us to spend on public housing to address the housing crisis. That includes 11,000 landlords with seven or more houses who claimed $1.9 billion from 98,100 investment properties—incredible. It's intergenerational highway robbery.

After four years in government and multiple failures to act, Australia's housing crisis is now Labor's housing crisis. It is now on Labor that we continue in a crisis that has become worse through their policy failures. The housing crisis confronting Australia today is not an accident; it's the predictable result of decades of bad government. It's the result of governments treating housing primarily as an investment asset rather than a human need. It's the result of tax concessions that have overwhelmingly benefited those with the greatest capacity to accumulate wealth, and boy has it rewarded them. It's the result of a sustained failure by governments across this country to invest in public and social housing, which so many Australians are so desperately waiting on lists for decades to get into.

The evidence of the housing crisis is overwhelming. According to the Labor government's own housing affordability council, Australia is currently experiencing record low affordability on rents, record low home purchase affordability and record high rental stress. We've got vacancy rates that are at historic lows. Homeownership rates among younger Australians have fallen year after year. Rents have surged. Public housing waiting lists have grown. This is all while the current Labor government has overseen the lowest average rate of public housing construction of any postwar federal government. Shame! Shame on a government that should see housing as a central plank of a decent life. Homelessness has increased, and the Treasurer himself has acknowledged that house prices in Australia have risen by an incredible 400 per cent since 1999, when these tax breaks were first introduced. This is more than twice as fast as average incomes. Rents have done the same. They have increased at two and a half times the rate of wage increase.

The Senate Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, which I'm chairing at present, has heard a great deal of very devastating evidence from around our country and from all sectors of the community about the housing crisis and how it is affecting people in country towns, in our regional centres, in our cities and in our suburbs. Last week we heard evidence from one witness, Elise, who has been on the public housing waiting list in South Australia for more than two decades. Her latest rent increase means she is now paying 60 per cent of her income on rent. How does the government expect people to live like this? Last week we also heard from an incredible 13-year-old, Sebastian, whose dream of owning a home one day feels impossible if house prices continue to rise like they are. He's collected 22,000 signatures from his peers and others—about the crisis his generation faces. He spoke of the despair and hopelessness amongst his peers.

In the City of Onkaparinga, South Australia, which is our largest local government area, house prices have increased by 80 per cent in the last five years. We've got homelessness in our outer suburbs in Adelaide, South Australia, like we have never seen before, and that's just the people we can see. We know there are many women, many of whom have children, who are in cars and on couches and are invisible to us in this crisis.

The Greens were very disappointed on budget night by the lack of ambition in Labor's budget. There was nothing in their budget for the 31 per cent of Australians who are renters. There was nothing in that budget for people experiencing homelessness, which is increasing so quickly in so many parts of our country. These bills are a small step in the right direction, but Labor's low ambition means that inequality and the housing crisis will be worse for longer than it needs to be. This government could've done so much more. It could've collected $33 billion in tax and put it into public housing, which would've made such a difference, to play catch-up on the failure to invest in the recent years of the Labor government and in the decades leading up to it.

This enduring housing crisis is now squarely on Labor. Labor has fuelled demand with its five per cent deposit scheme and has pushed housing prices up, and it's an uncapped scheme available to all. It has done the wrong thing and made the crisis worse in so many parts of its policy, and most importantly it has failed to address the scale of the crisis which is so obvious across our country. The HAFF has built just over a thousand homes. It is an absolutely inadequate response to the crisis for our young people and so many people who are living in housing insecurity. This moment requires so much more from Labor. Unfortunately, their ambition is pathetic. It is not adequate, it is so unlike the response our country needs, and it is a betrayal of those who are living on our streets, in cars and insecurely. We Greens will not stop fighting for renters—the one-third of our country who rent—we will not stop fighting for young people or for first home buyers, and we will not stop fighting for all Australians to be able to put a roof over their head.

It's a central pillar of a human rights regime for a decent life for Australians—access to free education, to health care and to a roof over your head. We know what we need to do, and we can do it. We've done it before, and we have the budget available to us if we tax people right, if we tax gas and if we end absurd spending on AUKUS. We have the resources, as a wealthy country, to put a roof over everyone's head, so we urgently need to remove investor incentives, to build more public housing directly, to cap rents and adequately fund homelessness services.

The Greens have consistently argued that reforming tax concessions must be linked to a significant increase in public investment in housing. Just as governments invest in roads, in hospitals, in schools, in public transport and in infrastructure, governments must invest directly in housing. That means public housing, that means community housing, and it means genuinely affordable housing. It means rejecting the failed idea that private markets and a private housing market can solve this crisis. It has made it worse, and tax reform is necessary. It needs to be meaningful. It needs to be ambitious.

Tax reform on its own is far from enough. Even those who support changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements acknowledge the broader structural solutions are essential. Australia still needs a massive program of social public housing construction, and we need stronger protections for renters. We need greater investment in homelessness services, and we need to continue examining the tax settings that contribute to the widening housing inequality in our country. We believe housing is a human right, we believe public housing is essential infrastructure, we believe tax policy should reduce inequality rather than deepen it, and we believe that every Australian deserves the security and the dignity that comes with owning their own home.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. I tell you what, I'm pretty surprised to see the Greens up and ready with such formed speeches after only just striking such a dirty deal with the government to get this bill through. It's very telling to hear that their perspective of the government's budget that was passed just last month was that it was not ambitious enough. What that says to me is that they wanted more tax on the Australian people. They got that today in this dirty deal that was done. It's not one but 12 bills. I've just counted. This set of bills—this budget—is a tax on Australian dreams. It's a tax on aspiration, it's a tax on confidence, it's a tax on vision, and it's a tax on the blood, sweat and tears that Australian people put into their businesses, their investments and their trying to get ahead grow this economy for the rest of Australia.

No-one voted for these new taxes. This wasn't taken to the election, even though the Prime Minister promised at least 50 times before the last election that he would not introduce them. 'My word is my bond,' he said. 'I rule out changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.' This budget is in bad faith for the Australian people. The Prime Minister has broken his contract that he took to the election. These new taxes are designed to manage the decline of the Australian economy. They will not grow it. And we now have a death tax, a tax on family savings, and a tax on renters, first home buyers and any young Australians who are just trying to get ahead, even though this was supposed to improve intergenerational inequality. Well, we all know—and the Australian people know—that it's only going to make it worse.

I spent last week on the Central Coast, where there are 29,000 small-to-medium businesses. There's about a $20 billion economy there on the Central Coast. It's thriving. But I spent all day talking to businesses, and they are concerned—they are deeply troubled—by this budget that's been handed down by the government, about what it's going to do to what they've built over the years. A very familiar story that we heard from these businesses is that these people started from nothing, that they started the business out of their family home, out of their garage, out of their spare bedroom, and they built it up to have one, two, five, 10 or 50 employees, passing it down through generations. Now all of a sudden they've got another shareholder. Well, they didn't vote for that.

We've heard about the backflips and the carve outs that the Australian Prime Minister has done over the past couple of days. There's one for 'innovative small businesses', and they can't even tell us what an 'innovative small business' is, because they don't understand small business. They don't understand what they're doing. They don't understand the details of their own policy. Quite frankly, the small business operators here have been telling me it's too late, that they're looking overseas already. They're looking to Dubai, Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, New Zealand and Canada—anywhere but Australia. What a disaster that is.

We will have the highest taxing government in Australian history. I'll just take it back again to what the Greens said before, that the budget that was handed down was not ambitious enough; there's not enough tax in it for the Australian people. We've got a big-spending government. It's got some very big bills. It's got an interest bill that is $80,000 a minute. Somebody's got to pay for that, and it's the Australian people. And the taxes that they will raise from this budget—we've got $50 billion of higher taxes, $273 billion in taxes that Australians didn't vote for over the next nine years, and most of that money will be going towards paying off $80,000 a minute. It won't be going to defence spending; we know that for sure.

The coalition opposes schedules 1 and 2, and we support schedules 3 and 4. But if the coalition wins government we will be repealing these bad taxes. Our plan is for lower taxes, lower inflation and an economy that backs entrepreneurs, backs small business, backs self-starters and backs people who are willing to take risk, because we believe that if you risk then you should be rewarded.

Schedule 1 introduces changes to the capital gains tax regime. We will be opposing that. Schedule two introduces changes to the negative gearing regime. We will be opposing that. Schedule 3 introduces the working Australians tax offset, and schedule 4 introduces a $1,000 standard deduction for work related expenses.

We heard before about the housing from the Greens and the HAFF, the Housing Australia Future Fund. There's $10 billion that's gone into that HAFF housing project. We heard that about 1,000 homes that have been built. But no-one can tell me whether any of those homes have gone to the vulnerable women and children that they've been promised to. Four thousand homes under the HAFF were supposed to go to vulnerable women and children, and nobody in the government is tracking it. Nobody seems to care. It's a disaster of a policy.

This budget puts new taxes on homes. My colleague Senator Bragg is always asking the good questions: Why, if you want more of housing, would you put a tax on it? How does that get more supply? Well, the simple answer is that it doesn't. He's very wise, Senator Bragg. The government's own budget papers say that 35,000 fewer homes will be built as a consequence of their new taxes. The government's own budget papers say that—35,000 fewer homes. Yet we have 90,000 more people than planned arriving in the next two years. How do we expect to house these people? What is the government going to do about that? We have an overshoot of 90,000 people. That means higher demand, lower supply and higher prices.

We've also got changes to negative gearing which will bring down investment, which will raise rental prices. Independent experts have suggested that rents could rise by up to $160 a week in Sydney. That's up $160 a week because, when you drive investment out of the rental market—it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work it out—prices are going to go up and supply will go down. When you've got real wages declining and you've got higher tax and you've got Australians taking home less, it's a recipe for a perfect storm. We heard the Greens today talking about the cost of living and how people are turning up at the supermarkets and having to make some very extreme choices about the things that they can and can't buy, yet their dirty deal is only going to make it worse. It's a shame.

We in the coalition back small business. We back vision. We back hope. We back consistency and clarity for the economy. We back Australians who believe in themselves, Australians who back themselves, Australians that aspire to have a roof over their heads. But, as a result of these changes, in the past month, when speaking to real estate agents, they're saying that the auction clearance—nobody's even doing auctions anymore. There's no point. Nobody's turning up. There's no confidence in the housing market. They're looking at the housing market like it's back in the global financial crisis already, and these bills have not even been passed. They're absolutely ripping the rug out from under Australians and the housing market. It's a shame.

What we need is more supply. What we need is more infrastructure. What we need is more builders in the country bringing on that supply. Of course the labour unions have a stronghold over who comes into this country. I'll tell you: dog walkers are not going to build us more houses. So here we are with a budget that doesn't bring intergenerational equality or fairness. It's intergenerational fraud, and there is absolute outrage from the Australian people.

I had a roundtable with some startup companies just last week in Sydney. They are despairing. They have built these companies from nothing. They put everything into it, waking up at two or three o'clock in the morning for years on end. Families were throwing everything into it. I know all about it. My dad built his business from scratch. My husband and I had a business when I was raising my kids. My brother built a business. I know what it is to throw everything into these things and to then have the government come back and say that they want half of it. Well, that's just not fair and that's just not on, so the coalition will never back that. The coalition will repeal these bad taxes because the government have done none of the work, they've taken none of the risk and they want nearly half of it.

Small-business owners are the self-starters of our nation. They sacrifice holidays. They work weekends. They do everything to put themselves in a position to get ahead, and here we have the government's answer to that. The government's answer to the fact that they've run out of money is to come after yours. The Treasurer is doubling the tax rate on small businesses when they go to sell, and he's raised the threshold to $10 million for a small business. He's raise the threshold for small business. The effect that that's going to have is it will be a tax on ambition. Small business will want to stop growing once they reach that threshold. That's never going to be a good idea. We want to grow this economy. The government needs to step back and give the businesses the freedom they need to excel. The rules of the economy are rigged against self-starters. They've got the compliance burden of industrial relations law, tax law. I've seen the size of the tax law book—the summary growing and growing and growing. We've got regulatory laws. (Time expired)

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a little thing called a democratic mandate, which is supposed to be a system where people put forward their ideas before an election and people can either vote for or against those ideas. In the UK, they call it a 'manifesto' and here we would call it a 'platform'. Now here in this country, the Prime Minister said that there would be no changes to these tax arrangements, and he was at great pains on occasion to say there would be no changes to the CGT or to the negative gearing arrangements if he was to be re-elected. Now, of course he has broken that promise and he will now have to wear that broken promise like a crown of thorns. This is not really a productive use of my time this evening in the Senate, because everyone knows that these commitments were made and they were breached. But it is important to note we are all custodians of a system where the Australian people are allowed to decide who they want to run the show and what policies they should be pursuing. Now, that is something that the Prime Minister will have to consider over the coming years, and, no doubt, his colleagues will also closely consider these matters. I suspect we won't need to prosecute them too much more.

This other old theory is a difference of opinion on tax policy. Now, in the Liberal Party, in the coalition, we have a view that the government has no money of its own. If the government wants to get money, it needs to raise the money from the citizenry and from the businesses in order to spend it on public good. We've always had a view that it's a reasonable proposition that taxes should be raised as efficiently as possible and public services should be provided as efficiently as possible.

But I go back to this point around the theory. On this side, we're firm in our belief that taxation is effectively legalised theft. We're taking something from the citizens, and we are going to spend it on something for the greater good. On the other side, you hear things like 'tax handouts'. We heard before from the Greens that there are handouts when people are paying less tax. This shows you the mentality of the other side of this chamber. They believe that the tax money belongs to the government. We believe that the tax money belongs to the people. That is a clear difference of opinion across the board.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

A core value.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Link to this | Hansard source

A core value—thank you, Senator Scarr.

The other great theory is: what is a reform? I would have thought that a reform of the tax system would be something that moves the whole show forward, moves the nation forward, with perhaps a more efficient way of doing things, a better way of doing things or maybe a way that will attract more stuff, and we get more stuff as a result.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Increased productivity.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly right. In this case, it is clear that the other side thinks that a tax reform is when you just raise more money. If you look at the budget, you'll find that $77 billion of new taxes will be raised. That's tax raised. Taxing is not reform, unless you constitute a significant regeneration of the scheme, as we saw when Howard did the GST, when we had the capital gains tax changes in the eighties or when we had the business tax reforms. Those are reforms. Raising taxes isn't reform.

I think this shows how bad the debate has been in this country for decades that this guy thinks he can hold out this policy as reform and get away with it. I've said before that I very much regret that we haven't had more contests and more debate on tax reform. The fact that Allegra Spender has done the only tax policy in years, and it was a terrible plan, shows how badly this country is going, because no-one else can even be bothered getting out of bed and doing a tax plan. The fact that some of these policies that Ms Spender has been peddling have been cherrypicked also shows the danger of big thinking, but I do want to encourage all colleagues to always put forward ideas, particularly if they are genuinely reforms.

But what we've ended up with is the highest pay-as-you-go system and the highest capital gains system, so nothing's actually been improved. All we've got is the downside. Nothing's better, and the 77 billion bucks just disappears into Canberra's coffers to be redistributed somewhere else—God knows where. I guarantee you one thing, Deputy President: that $77 billion is not going to help the budget bottom line, because we're still stuck with $1 trillion of debt and deficits as far as the eye can see.

In terms of the theoretical part of this contribution, I make the point that, yes, the democratic mandate has been breached and, yes, the principle that the Labor Party believe in, that taxes belong to the government, has been ticked off. The fact that they're holding out these tax hikes as reforms brings home the trifecta. You've got the democratic mandate breached, you've got confirmation that they believe that all the people's money belongs to the government, and you've got the big lie that this is some sort of fantastic reform where all the unicorns come and live.

You've got to think to yourself, 'Well, why would a rational person and a clever political machine come up with this idea?' I've thought about this a lot. You can say what you like about the Labor Party. They're terrible at governing. They're the champions of maladministration, as evidenced by the budget papers. But they're very good at politics and spin. You've got to give it to them. They sit down there, and they think about how they can spin, spin, spin and then occupy the treasury bench forever and ever and never actually do anything. It reminds me of some state governments in the past, actually.

But the point is that this is just another gimmick. So far, we've had three gimmicks in their housing policies. They have the Housing Australia Future Fund, which has been going for 2½ years, which has got 10 billion bucks and built a handful of houses. Then we had the five per cent deposits which can go to anyone, and it pushed up prices and made things harder not better for young people, and now we've got this big lie that apparently fiddling around with the taxes is going to solve the housing crisis. No-one honestly believes that the housing crisis is going to be fixed as a result of high taxes and also a 30 per cent tax on everything else. No-one believes that. But, when you hear the housing minister carry on with this garbage that she carries on with that, apparently, John Howard and Peter Costello are responsible for the housing crisis because of a tweak to the tax code 25 years ago, it insults the intelligence of the electorate.

One of the things that I would advise the government about is people have more information now than they've ever had. People have access to a lot of information, and people know that that's not right, because people can also work out there's two sides to a market. There's supply, and there's demand, and what's happened over the last few years is supply has collapsed and demand has increased. Even just this last four years of the Labor Party's term in office, we've had two million people increase in population, and we've only had about 600,000 houses built. Clearly, there's a mismatch there which has added to the problem. At the end of the day, the supply piece is where it's at in housing, and people know this. I think the days of politicians going around bribing the electorate with give outs and handouts and whatever else you want to call it—bribes and grants and other things and 'here's some free money for you—are coming to an end, and that's good, because all these demand-side measures in the main have been damaging. If you go and talk to a builder, they'll tell you that those grants are subsumed by builders and developers into the price, and so prices have gone up while supply has gone down. People know that this tax gimmick is another housing gimmick and that it won't solve the problem, and we won't see the housing system fixed until we supply about a quarter of a million houses a year. That's the reality.

What actually is the bottom line here in terms of this housing issue, given this is ostensibly about housing? I think it is going to be about making home building more economic. Building costs are too high. Productivity is negative in the building sector, and we have not had any real attempt to grapple with the things that the Commonwealth government does control, like this National Construction Code which actually could be cut down to a very small document, and you could actually be allowed to build a cheap house in Australia, if that were your wish. The fact that we gold plate all these houses and that we have the difficulty with getting the labour and that we have the CFMEU and all the other different productivity issues has made a perfect storm where it's very hard to make a buck out of home building. So people look at it and say, 'Actually, I'm not going to do that.' The underlying issues—the Labor Party have stuffed the housing system. They have stuffed it up because they haven't been prepared to address any of these labour or productivity issues. They haven't been prepared to look at the nexus between migration and housing, and all their all their housing supply policies have been a disaster. They're going to miss all their housing targets, and their government fund has been an absolute sinkhole of government funds. Having failed on all those fronts, they thought, 'We'll have this new tax thing and maybe that will help,' but that is only going to make a bad situation worse, because who could believe that the government would have a deliberate design feature to reduce housing supply by 35,000?

They say, with all their gimmickry and spin and rubbish, that 'oh no, that's not really a real number, because we're going to offset it with 6,000 in an infrastructure fund', but the number is there in the budget. It's a number—35,000 fewer houses because of higher taxes. That's there. I think it's incredible, to think about this housing crisis, that any government would want to do anything to reduce housing supply. We should be trying to get any building we can. We should be trying to build on top of other buildings. We should be trying to add buildings to existing titles. We should be trying to allow people to build cheap houses and mini houses and motor houses and mobile houses and whatever. That's what we should be trying to do. We shouldn't be trying to gold-plate everything, pay off the CFMEU or do anything else, no matter what the government's motives are.

The reality is that we have no idea, really, about the impact of these bills. We had a sham two-day inquiry where the government used its numbers to close down any real avenues of proper analysis. We had more time hearing from St Vincent de Paul than we did from actual people who'd done the fair-dinkum analysis—people like Chris Brycki, the Francis Brothers and whatever; people who have actually pored over this and looked at the portfolio analysis and the impacts on the economy. They were denied service—'We don't want to hear from you. We just want to hear from a few of our mates.'

I'm sure we heard from the ACTU—I didn't make that decision about the hearings—and I'm sure that, when they came, they didn't declare their financial interests in a super fund which stands to significantly benefit from the arbitrage in this legislation. The super funds will only pay 10 per cent if they invest in something, but the poor old punter will pay 30 per cent, or the foreign investor will pay 15 per cent but the punter will pay 10 per cent. And today we see more arbitrage. They're going to kick the SMSFs in the pants, but they're going to protect all their old mates—Wayne Swan and the 40 thieves and everyone else at CBUS and AustralianSuper and all their mates.

The government at least is consistent on this front. They are a government for vested interests. They only get out of bed every day to help out their mates. It just so happens this tax policy has been perfectly crafted to support all their friends in their great endeavours to invest in everything with a tax advantage that no person in this country can avail themselves of. If a person invests in a basket of shares, under this disgraceful legislation they do not benefit to the same rate as a big super fund, in terms of the tax rate but also in terms of the way that losses are treated.

The regulatory impact analysis was done on the basis of the recommendations of Senator McKim's committee report. There wasn't even a RIS into this bill, which has changed about five times. It changed yesterday and it has changed again today. Even if you wanted to do a RIS, you wouldn't know what you were actually looking at. So we have no idea of the long-term damage this will do to the economy. We do know that a 30 per cent CGT is punitive and bad for our economy. It makes us one of the most highly taxed economies on the planet. But, at the end of the day, the idea that more taxes on housing are going to be good is insane, and I flag that we will move amendments in relation to some of these superannuation matters so as to ensure that all super funds have the same tax benefit, rather than just picking out a few to get a kick in the pants from these government vested-interest people.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I just confirm that you are foreshadowing a second reading amendment, Senator Bragg?

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that's true.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's an absolute privilege and an honour to follow my dear colleague and friend Senator Bragg, who, I think, in that speech, which traversed many areas, wandered across the Australian policy landscape like an explorer. He made a number of fundamental salient points, which I think we should all reflect upon in the course of this debate. I'd also like to thank Senator Bragg for the contribution he's making to policy development within the coalition. I think he's doing an outstanding job.

As Senator Bragg said, we have to start this debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 with the fundamental fact that this budget represents a broken promise. The Labor government went to the people at the last election and promised on no less than 50 occasions that they were not going to change the rate of capital gains tax, they weren't going to impact negative gearing arrangements and they weren't going to engage in the very conduct and make the very changes which they're seeking to implement through this bill. That's the starting point—that the Australian people were misled. They were told one thing by the Labor government before the election, and now we're seeing the Labor government do a complete backflip and do the opposite. That hurts all political parties in our system because it undermines the integrity of our democratic system.

When a party goes to the people at an election on the basis of a particular platform and a particular policy suite, the Australian people have a right to expect that, whichever party it is, that party will be true to its word. That didn't happen at the last election, and that will be an albatross around the necks of Prime Minister Albanese and this Labor government as we move towards the next federal election.

In terms of the policy issues itself, on quite a few occasions in this place, I've quoted from a monumental work called Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, who's a wonderful economist. He deals with this issue of capital gains tax. It is basic economics. In relation to capital gains tax, page 448 of Thomas Sowell's book Basic Economics says:

…when the federal tax rate on capital gains—

this is in the context of the United States—

was lowered in the United States from 28 percent to 20 percent in 1997, it was assumed that revenues from the capital gains tax would fall below the $54 billion collected under the … rates in 1996 and the $209 billion that had been projected to be collected over the next four years, before the tax rate was cut. Instead, tax revenues … rose after the capital gains tax rate was cut and $372 billion were collected in capital gains taxes over the next four years, nearly twice what was projected …

Sowell goes on to say that people adjusted their behaviour to a more favourable outlook for investments by increasing their investments so that the new 20 per cent tax rate on the returns from these increased investments amounted to more total revenue than that produced by the old 28 per cent tax rate on a total amount of investment that was not as large. What do we learn from that? We learn that there's a difference between tax rates and the revenue collected under taxes, and in the United States when the capital gains tax was decreased there was actually more revenue raised under the decreased capital gains tax rates.

In the converse, investors, founders and entrepreneurs don't just sit still when you increase taxes. Capital moves. It moves across borders. It moves to jurisdictions which have lower tax. That is the reality of the world we live in. The federal Labor government will find with these tax changes—I've got no doubt about this—the founders of future unicorns such as Seek Ltd and Canva will move offshore. They will move offshore to more investment friendly jurisdictions. Why would you commence a startup journey in Australia when you can go to Singapore and pay zero per cent capital gains tax? Why? People have options. Investors have options. Capital is mobile. Workers are less mobile, so the people who will suffer from this are the workers themselves because their opportunities to move offshore are more limited than those who own capital. That's what we're going to find. People are simply going to move offshore. They're not going to stay here and pay those elevated amounts of capital gains. That's the reality.

I want to now talk about an industry which I'm passionate about, and that's the mining industry. For 12 years before I came into this place, I worked as general counsel of a mid-tier copper and gold company. But that mid-tier copper and gold company, which built two mines in a little country called Laos, lifted thousands of people out of poverty and did it to the highest standards of health and safety, environmental compliance and social licence. That company started as an exploration company in Australia. It listed on the ASX. There were thousands of retail shareholders who invested in that small exploration company and gave it the capital to engage in exploration in Australia and offshore. They did that on the basis that, one day, if that executive team were to be successful and make a discovery that would lead to a mine, to commercialisation, even if they had to bring in further investment—those retail shareholders and other owners of capital invested in that exploration company on the basis that one day they would make a capital gain. That's why they invested in that exploration company. And that's the story across the whole of Australia.

The opening statement the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies gave to the Senate economics legislation committee underlines the importance of the tax regime to the future of mining exploration in this country. I want to quote from this opening statement:

Today, mineral exploration and mining make a critical contribution to Australia's economy, directly employing over 314,000 people.

Mineral exploration is Australia's original startup.

Mineral exploration is Australia's original startup.

It drives discoveries that lead to new mines, jobs and economic growth. Its success relies on two critical components: men and women investing their own money and time to develop a mineral exploration company and project which is backed by mum-and-dad retail investors taking a punt on their success.

That is foundational to an exploration mining company. It goes on:

Around one in 1,000 exploration projects becomes an operating mine …

Around one in 1,000 exploration projects becomes an operating mine, so all of those mum-and-dad retail shareholders and investors—investing their money into buying shares, contributing to capital raisings undertaken by exploration companies—are making a risk based assessment and they're placing their faith that perhaps that exploration project is going to be one of those one in 1,000. It's on that basis, on the basis of that capital risk, that the mining industry, and the oil and gas industries, in Australia have been driven.

As AMEC says in its statement to the committee:

… yet Australia's small ASX listed mineral exploration companies are responsible for around 75 per cent of Australia's economic discoveries.

Just reflect on that: only one in 1,000 exploration projects are successful, but they constitute 75 per cent of Australia's economic discoveries, which lead to mines and greater wealth generation and employment. What the Labor government is doing, through its new capital gains tax regime, is placing a huge disincentive, a huge barrier in the way of those exploration companies efforts to raise capital in this country.

Those companies will look offshore. I've served as a senior executive in a mining company. I know the discussions that occur around the boardroom table. Those companies don't have to be listed on the ASX. Those mining exploration companies can move offshore to Singapore, become listed in Singapore, where there is zero per cent capital gains tax. Or they could be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, where the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount still applies. The Labor government is driving that investment offshore, and it will drive the wealth generation with it. The wealth generation will be driven offshore as well, and others will benefit from that.

One of the great things about the Australian market is we've developed this culture of mum-and-dad retail investors investing in junior exploration companies. Notwithstanding that success rate of one in 1,000, Australians have still been prepared to invest and support those exploration efforts. It's truly one of the great things about our capital markets. It's one of our comparative advantages. And yet this capital gains tax increase will cruel the pitch for capital raisings undertaken by exploration companies.

I want to continue to quote from the statement made by AMEC, who are at the front line of raising capital. They say:

In setting up and investing in these companies, the incentive is purely in the hopeful prospect of capital growth.

And that's why, like the Tech and BioTech sector, these CGT changes would hit mineral exploration where it hurts most.

…   …   …

And if Mum and Dad retail investors desert mineral exploration, there will be no investment to replace it. Mineral explorers will be starved of capital, and Australia's mineral exploration effort will decrease rapidly.

That means less mineral discoveries, less mines, less jobs and less government revenue.

This is a massive own goal committed by the Labor government in relation to our mining industry.

Then we've got the dirty deal that was done with the Greens, which has just been announced. It's a dirty deal done dirt cheap, in the words of the great AC/DC. What do AMEC say in relation to this dirty deal done dirt cheap, which the mining industry was excluded from? They say:

The International Energy Agency says the world needs around 50 new lithium mines, 60 new nickel mines and 17 new cobalt mines to meet carbon emissions goals by 2030.

Excluding an industry that finds the mines of the future from carve-outs will hurt future discoveries and reduce productivity for Australia's most important economic driver.

This is a kick in the guts for the entire mineral exploration industry and those who invest in it.

These are the words of the mining and exploration industry, invested in by mum-and-dad retail investors, with a one-in-1,000 chance that one of those exploration projects leads to an economic discovery and produces the next mine. Still those mum-and-dad retail investors are prepared to invest in the industry. But, with the increase of this capital gains tax under the Labor government, will they in the future? This is what the mining industry is saying in relation to these changes:

This is a kick in the guts for the entire mineral exploration industry and those who invest in it.

When I came into this place, one of my objectives was to advocate for policies that would make it easier, not harder, for people to set up businesses in this country to create wealth and generate opportunity for all Australians. That was one of my goals when I came into this place. I'd seen the power of people investing in the company which I was employed by and how that investment in an exploration company had led to mining projects in one of the poorest countries in the world and lifted thousands of people out of poverty. This Labor government budget will make that sort of investment less attractive and less likely to occur for the benefit of Australia's people.

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

It's interesting, when we get up, to look at the spin, the labelling and the messaging of the government. They call this tax reform. It is a tax grab. The number has been mentioned before. There will be $77 billion in new taxes. Never has reform been dressed so painfully for the Australian people. Never has there been a tax that hits people where they are. Remember back to, I think, 1991. There was a Danny DeVito movie called Other People's Money. He ran a company conducting takeovers. It was a company called OPM Holdings, and it stood for 'other people's money'. That's where it came from. That is what this government is addicted to—getting other people's money, getting their hands on it and spending it on re-engineering Australia. Nothing says that like this.

But it goes further than that. Senator Scarr touched on the promises, the words that could be relied on, that said that this wouldn't happen. There were so many people getting up in our two-minute statements today talking about how evil it is that another political party is rising and making gains in the polling system here. That is exactly what happens when this place and the people in this place don't keep their word. It is what happens when you aren't consistent with what you say. But people want to get up and pretend it's not on them. People want to get up and pretend it's on the public or that person or Gina Rinehart or someone else that the public are turning away from the Labor Party and the coalition.

It is not. It is when you break your word, when you break your bond and when you do things that breach the trust of Australians that people look for new answers. There is no good in getting up here and whingeing about it and the reasons behind it after you have done that. We need to look at restoring faith, restoring trust and restoring a solid stewardship to the Australian economy. We saw it threatened with a proposed tax on unrealised capital gains before. It was walked back by this government only after an outcry. They're trying to tax money you actually haven't made yet. They've realised that might be a step too far and have settled on this. This is the answer.

If you follow the government's own logic that this is to create a better access for housing then you might understand if they stopped at taxing capital gains on housing, but they didn't. They went further. They decided to tax shares, something that young people might use to save for their house deposit. They're taxing the capital gains of small businesses. They're taxing crypto. They're taxing ETFs. They're taxing everything that you get a capital gain on and saying it all relates to housing. That doesn't make sense, that doesn't hold true, and, once again, the pub test isn't marked by this bill. That's a real concern because, had it stopped at housing, had it stopped there, they may have had an argument. It may have been consistent. It may have been true, but it isn't and it hurts everyone. It hurts people saving for a deposit.

I ran some simulations the other day. If you grab $1,000 a month in savings and you put it in your bank account versus you grab $1,000 a year and put it in your shares, or you put it in crypto over five years, six years to save your deposit, there is a $20,000 benefit in investing that money. That will now be halved by a doubling of the tax on your capital gain. That's right. You're getting a 50 per cent discount now. You won't get that, so it's double what you would pay, and that's just unacceptable.

Let's look at the reason this discount was brought in before. It was to differentiate between speculation and investment. An investment is the allocation of funds to profitable and good areas of the economy. Speculation is 'I'm having a punt. I put a declaration out the other day. I bought a couple of crypto bitcoins. See how that goes'—very badly at the moment, may I say. That is speculation. I deserve to pay tax on my income, as the government says, because that is not efficient use of money for the economy. That is speculation for a personal gain. Like we heard Senator Scarr say, investment into companies, into small businesses and into Australian entities is good for Australia and that is the reason this discount existed—to see money put in places that grow jobs, that grow Australia, that grow the economy, that make Australia a better place to live.

Anecdotally, I have friends with some serious businesses—they wouldn't qualify as small businesses—who are already moving capital away from Australia. That hurts. But we know the answer. Every time we saw the economy shrinking, the government would bring in more people and exacerbate the housing problem. We are now facing a per capita recession and we just bring in more people so we make the housing problem worse. We've already seen on page 158 of the budget documents that 35,000 fewer homes will be built under this policy. So if we're building fewer homes, as Senator Bragg said so eloquently earlier, supply is the real problem. We see plenty of land held up by plenty of red tape, lack of infrastructure, lack of water, lack of these things. I know both parties of government took significant policies on infrastructure to unlock that last time, but it's not seeing the light of day. We're not seeing those things turn into real homes.

We heard about the $10 billion housing HAFF fund. We always hear about that, but it's not building the houses we need. We hear about the apprentices we need to get the jobs done and build things. Every time we talk about apprentices, we hear 'fee-free TAFE'. But the reality is fewer than 20 per cent of people who enter courses under that complete them. So if we haven't got the people we need to build the places we need, if we've got the red tape, if we haven't got the infrastructure, we aren't going to fix the supply problem.

I will ask a question in the committee stage because it's a concern to me. When you go through the EM, it says that existing small businesses will have exemptions raised from $2 million annual turnover to $10 million, but keep those words 'existing small businesses'. If we talk about generational equity, what about the businesses of tomorrow, of the young people, of the ideas that happen the day after? What happens if there's someone at home, 20-something years old, and tomorrow they come up with the next Canva, the next Atlassian, or the next Kick or Stake? They want to start out. They want to get there, but are they covered by this?

Are they going to New Zealand? The land of the long white cloud might be the land of the long Australian business coming up as we go, when their capital moves to places where they can better reflect that risk-to-reward ratio. This fundamentally changes that. This fundamentally changes the balance between investing in something to try and get ahead, potentially losing it and the reward of actually seeing it through. The changes that were announced, the backflip that was unbelievably good—it would make Nadia Comaneci jealous of the flexibility of the Treasurer. It was an amazing flip to say, 'There's nothing wrong. We're consulting,' and then come out when we clearly know no consultation of any note took place.

What happens to the businesses tomorrow? What happens to the young people that aren't going to settle for the lowest common denominator, who want aspiration—this word we hear so much but is understood so little on the other side? Aspiration is the goal to be your best and have dreams. We should be helping young people reach them. We should be helping everyone reach them. But now we're saying we will put a handbrake of 100 per cent more tax on your success. One hundred per cent more tax than you would pay last year, you'll pay on your success. That is wrong.

We sit here and wonder why the country is as it is, why there are doldrums, why money is leaving overseas, why young people are getting angry and going to people they haven't voted for before. Look at our own actions. Look inside ourselves. Look as a government. Look as a parliament and say, 'What are we doing wrong?' I come back to that message. It is about staying true. It is about building hope in a time when our world looks so horrible, when there are wars all over the place, when allies can't be trusted, when rule of might is overcoming rule of laws. We want to give hope to people, and this change takes that away. This change diminishes the fundamental principle of trying to have a better life.

Let me tell you about the big end of town. They're not going to have a worry, because they're going to put things in a company and pay 30 per cent anyway. Things in companies, things in structures—all this sort of thing. They have access to the best solicitors and to the best tax accountants. They have the best advice to get. This won't affect the big end of town as much as it does mum-and-dads. That's why it hurts so much—because they are the people we should be supporting. When we talk about taxing this the way we tax wages, which has become a catchcry, we forget about the risk. We forget about the importance of creating jobs. We forget about creating the houses that people who can't afford it get for housing. When we see the balance of immigration coming in—not many people land in Australia and can afford to go out and buy a house straightaway. Can they get the finance? Have they got the deposit? These people rent straightaway, and they need stock. They need these rental properties going, and this will take that away. So we'll see rent rises. We'll see savings diminish. We'll see the inability to create wealth in other ways. This is all because this government likes to spend.

Let's talk about that spend. Another thing I don't understand—another issue we're talking about—is the NDIS bill. We see all sorts of numbers where we're going to cut 20 per cent of people off the NDIS. We're going to crack down on who gets what out of those left in there. Never have I seen a crackdown where 20 per cent of people come off a program and we crack down on those that are left. It still costs more than it did the previous year. It's an amazing stat how you go forward under those economics. It's not maths as I knew it.

We see the defences here where, even today in question time, the finance minister got up and was asked specifically—she was given two minutes. She noted it herself in her answer. 'I have two minutes to get to the answer'. She didn't want to answer it straightaway. When we pressed for a country, for her to name one country that has capital gains tax higher than Australia now—I remember the answer. 'I'll get to your answer. Give me two minutes.' In two minutes, she managed to get to it finally, when the answer was handed to her: 'United Kingdom, 24 per cent; America 30 per cent'—all these thing, she labelled about three—'France, 26 per cent.' Those were the numbers that came out of her mouth, every single one of them was under the 47 per cent that we can charge on capital gains. Now, I don't know what the people of the world like, but I would prefer a finance minister who understands that 47 per cent is higher than 26 per cent or 30 per cent. It doesn't take a lot to know that. I'm not the world's sharpest tool, but even I learned that from my maths class. So you can't go comparing that. We now have one of the highest marginal tax rates in the world for earners and probably the highest capital gains tax in the world, and we still talk about this world of aspiration and hope.

We need to be better than this. We should be taxing less. We should be playing fewer games where we take people's money off them and only give it back if they do the things we want. If this were a relationship, it'd be financially abusive. Imagine you're in a relationship with someone and they are taking all your money and only giving it back if you do the things they want. That would be a financially abusive relationship, and we would be calling someone. There would be an intervention to stop that from happening. But here it's celebrated: 'Aren't we great for doing it? This is the way forward, and it is a reform.' That's not the case. Tax less.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's like my relationship with my children.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

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

It was funny. Tax less, give them their chance and let them be all they can be. If that's not working, create the housing.

I wish! What we want to do is show that there is a way forward, and this doesn't do that. Taking people's money off them does not do that.

We are sitting there patting ourselves on the back for doing this. I don't blame the Greens. As I said, it's in the Greens' DNA to get as much of other people's money as they can. They love it. They want to shut down all the industry that creates the money but take that money as they destroy it. I look forward to living in caves if they ever get into government. It'll be a fantastic time—subsistence living back again, and no carbon output. I don't know what the campfire would put out as a carbon output, but I wonder how I'll offset that. That'll be an interesting one, because that'll be my heating. I don't have a problem with that. I'm surprised that the Greens did it so cheaply. There seems to be very little in this for them. They've managed to get some trusts there, but what a small deal! Let's face it: no-one wants to get between the Greens and getting access to money. Labor had to know it would be the price to meet with these guys—give the Greens a chance to increase taxes. They were going to take it, but I would have thought they would at least hold out for something a bit decent in that. They've got the bill done; they've got it through. Here we go.

In summary, just in governance—forget the methodology—none of their arguments hold up. It doesn't hold up when the Treasury documents say it will result in less housing. It doesn't hold up under any investment period as generational equity. We have diminished all of the democracy in Australia by doing this. Australians deserve better, and we will vote against this.

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

I've been thinking about all the speeches that I've heard tonight and throughout the day on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. I think it was you, Senator Scarr—I wasn't here, but I've just had that vibe that it may have been you. The thing that's coming to my mind about all of this is that, when you frame it, we have a housing crisis. We don't have enough supply. We also have a rental crisis. We don't have enough houses for people to rent. Young people can't afford houses, so young people are using different mechanisms to save some money in order to fast-track their ability to have a nest egg big enough. They're investing in shares and ETFs. They're innovating in small business. So they're trying different things. They're having a go. They're having a crack. They're trying to make their lives better. They're aspiring. Senator Cadell spoke about aspiration. This is what people want: to create wealth and build a better life.

So what has this government done as the solution to this? They've decided to tax shares, they've decided to tax ETFs, they've decided to tax small businesses and they've taken away from young Australians, in the name of intergenerational equity, the same mechanisms for wealth creation that prior generations had: 'So that you can have a better chance, we're not going to let you use the mechanisms that we used in order to create wealth.' How do you actually expect anybody to believe that?

The thing that has struck me from the afternoon into the evening as I've been in the chamber, whether as temporary chair or in the shadow ministerial spot, is the Greens talking about the fact that this is a toxic group of taxes. You facilitated it. You let them do it. And, as Senator Cadell said, you actually got nothing for it. You just gave it to them. You've just let them have it, and you've let young Australians pay the price for it. You've taken away their opportunities to invest, and you've taxed them. The thing is you want some of their money when they make a profit, but you don't want to let them offset some of the losses if they don't make some money.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Socialise the profits; privatise the losses.

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

Indeed.

As I said earlier, we have entered the Albanese Labor government's quasi-socialist era with the support of the Greens. That's what it is: 'If you've got something good, we want some of it; if it's a problem, we don't want to know about it. Your losses are your problem. Of any profit you make, we want a bunch—but only if you're an individual, only if you're a mum-and-dad investor, only if you're a young person. If you're an industry super fund, we'll continue to subsidise you. If you are an international global institution who wants to come here and create build-to-rent properties, we'll give you subsidies as well because you're a good guy, you international global institution. We want to give you tax concessions; we just don't want to give young Australians tax concessions. We don't want to give mum-and-dad investors tax concessions, because they're the bad guys.' That's what I've come to understand from what has transpired here today.

Let's be clear. We oppose Labor's capital gains tax changes, and we oppose Labor's changes to negative gearing. We oppose them because they are fundamentally wrong and because they do not solve the problems at hand. The thing that this government seems to want to hide from as well is the fact that they lied to the Australian people. They went to an election and said that they would not do this. The Prime Minister, Prime Minister Albanese, told Australians before the last election, 'There will be no changes,' and what has he done? He has done exactly what he said he wouldn't do. And we ask why people are losing trust in institutions. We ask why people are losing trust in democracy. It is because they don't get truth from government. Instead of getting answers as to what is really going on, they get smugness and arrogance, as though we aren't entitled to the real answers as to why things have occurred. Australians aren't stupid; they can see what is going on.

We have clear evidence from the RBA that this government has overspent. But do you know what? We don't even need the RBA to tell us that. We can see it. We have had 15 interest rate rises under this government, and we have had three interest rate reductions. They like to talk about the rate cuts that they've seen, but they never want to talk about the 15 interest rate rises. That's around $30,000 a year to the average Australian mortgage holder. Have a think about what you can buy with $30,000. Have a think also about what cuts Australians have had to make in their own lives in order to come up with that $30,000. What aren't they buying for their children? What aren't they buying or saving for their own future? They're really important questions.

Senator Collins made a comment earlier in her speech about difficult decisions people are making in supermarkets. I've had my own pharmacist tell me that she has people coming in asking, 'Does it work if, so I can stretch my packet out, I take half of my tablet in the morning and half in the evening?' These are real conversations that real Australians are having, and those opposite pretend there's nothing to see here, that people are not in trouble and that people are not struggling.

Instead of solving those problems, we are just taxing people more—not 'we', you. You are taxing people more. That's not transparency. That's not honesty. This has been a deception of the highest order. I don't understand how this government can sit there and pretend that this is about intergenerational equity when we know that it's not and when we know that the only ones getting concessions are at the big end of town: the industry super funds and the global institutional investors.

Let's have a think about renters for a moment. I've talked about young Australians who are trying to buy a home. Have a think about the fact that they've got to rent before they buy their first home. There are Australians who are struggling and are going to be renting for a lot longer because they can't get ahead because of the cost-of-living crisis that this government has created. This government's own budget papers admit that these tax changes will increase rents. They are taking from young Australians at every single stage of their journey—not just at the point of purchase but at every single point where they're trying to make their way through life, at every point where they're trying to create a better future for themselves.

Research from independent economists suggests that rents could rise by up to $160 a week in Sydney and around $130 a week in Melbourne. Have a think about that $130 to $160 a week. That's a lot of money. That's another bunch of groceries that someone's not going to buy. That may be some medical treatment that somebody's not going to get for themselves. In most cases, it will be women who defer their own medical treatment to ensure that their children get appropriate medical treatment.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Electricity bill.

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

Electricity bill. It'll be, perhaps, some dental treatment that somebody doesn't go and get, or they delay the treatment for their children to go to the dentist. It might be an appliance at home that doesn't get upgraded, or it could well be heaters that don't get turned on in winter.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

School excursions.

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

School excursions. School uniforms.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Sport.

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

Sport—thank you, Senator Scarr—and kids going to school without breakfast. That is becoming an increasing problem in our country. Think about that when you talk about $130 to $160 a week. That's not a small amount of money. Then, what are we doing? We're driving mum-and-dad investors out of the private rental market. What is that going to do? That's going to mean that we are going to have fewer investment properties, and, when we have fewer investment properties—fewer rental properties—we have higher rents. The rents go up. It's not rocket science.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Basic economics.

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

It's basic economics. I don't have that great book that you have, Senator Scarr. I wish that I did, but I don't, and I often admire it and think that I should get myself a copy.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

We'll get you a copy.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) | Link to this | 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.

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

You'll be disappointed to learn that it's almost adjournment, so my speech is going to be cut into two parts. Maybe it's like a little part 1 of a miniseries, what I'm going to call 'the anatomy of a broken promise'.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanna binge!

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

We're going to binge it in the morning when I continue with this speech. I tell you this: what this government is doing is disappointing, because it's demonstration of a broken promise. We heard the Prime Minister say, no less than 50 times during the election, that there will be no changes when it comes to capital gains or when it comes to negative gearing. Yet this government has broken the promise to the Australian people, because these changes that have been brought in with the support of the Australian Greens are a fulfilment of a fantasy and a dream that this government and that the Prime Minister has had his entire adult life—ever since he was at university as a student unionist, he's been passionate about bringing in these sort of changes. It is disappointing because Australians who have their heart set on building a great future for themselves and, indeed, for their families are now having their aspirations cut short and broken.

In the minute that I've got left, I want to say to the Australian people I'm so sorry that this is what you're having to endure, and I know that you are disappointed in this government, as we are. It doesn't matter how you voted at the last election. I know many people—clearly a lot—did vote for Labor because you won, but you voted on a deception that this government put before you. It is disappointing to see. I know that at the next election, this government is going to pay a price for that. We know there's this great disruption going on in this country right now politically, but it is being led, and has been aided, very much by this broken promise that you've given. Australians are sick and tired of being misled by this government. They are sick and tired of being misled by this awful government that we're dealing with. So, in part 2, which I'll get to in the morning, I'll unpack why this is such a disappointment for the Australian people.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator O'Sullivan. I look forward to listening to the next instalment, the next episode.