Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Secondly, there are state government taxes above $50,000, and stamp duty to the developer is $6,320. So every time they put the bid up—to $550,000 and then $555,000—$5,000 goes straight to Mr Iemma. The stamp duty to the purchaser is $20,240. So they put in another bid—straight into Mr Iemma’s pocket. Land tax is $3,471. The state infrastructure charge in Sydney’s north-west is $50,000. The bidding could have stopped at $435,000 but they are still going at $450,000, $480,000, $500,000 and $550,000. It settles at $575,000. Bingo, sold to Mr Iemma for $130,000. A Labor government gets $130,000 from the sale of the property. Who has to pay it? The poor people of these electorates. They look their families in the eye and say, ‘That’s what Labor has done to us: $130,000 of taxes ripped out of our pockets.’ At 8.25 per cent interest, they are going to have to find that money every year. That is just over $10,000—nearly $1,000 a month in interest payments that they will have to fork out year after year to the Labor government in New South Wales.

Turn your mind to Brisbane—to Redlands, down in the south-east, a beautiful part of the country. Property is a little cheaper down there, at $464,225. The one thing they have to contend with in Redlands that they have to contend with in north-west Sydney and south-west Sydney is a Labor government that is drunk on taking money in stamp duty at the expense of homebuyers. The hide of the Labor Party to stand up here and talk about housing affordability! Have a listen to this: in Redlands the price is $464,000 and the GST is $40,900—which goes straight to the state; stamp duty to the developer is $3,200 and stamp duty to the purchaser is $14,225. There is a lovely little sting in the tail. People say, ‘I think we can buy this property, darling; I think we can do it.’ They are about to do it and the bank manager says, ‘You have calculated stamp duty to the state Labor government, haven’t you?’ ‘What is that?’ ‘That is $14,225 of your hard-earned cash. By the way, you can put it on the never never and we will give you some interest for that and you can keep paying off Mr Beattie’—or Ms Bligh or whomever is going to be Premier up there in the next few months. Then there is land tax of $3,750. That totals $62,000 out of $464,000. Again, this whole process could have stopped at $400,000 but, no, it had to go another $60,000, which the poor punters from Redlands and electorates such as Bonner and Bowman have to find for these people to be able to fund the excesses of Labor governments in every state.

Whilst the numbers change from state to state, it is the same story. Have we heard one thing from the Leader of the Opposition or Labor’s housing spokesman about state taxes? No. Why? Because they are Labor mates. Anyone in their right mind will ask themselves in a calm, clear and concise moment: ‘Is the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, going to have the strength to stand up to Labor premiers like Mr Iemma and Mr Beattie or is he just going to be a patsy? Is he just going to roll over and keep giving other state Labor governments money?’ I think anyone in their right mind would know, from the eight or nine months that Mr Rudd has been the Leader of the Opposition, that he will roll over to the unions and the premiers and give them what they want and scratch their backs. Who is the loser? It is the people who live in the electorates of Macarthur and Lindsay. They just think that it is property prices going up; they do not think it is the Labor governments, in their back pockets, ripping out taxes and making home ownership an impossible dream.

The member for Sydney said in her speech that the institutional investors would put money in if there were such a scheme. She is right. I was reading a brief during question time. This brief is the result of government policy that actually has been enacted. Over the last 10 years, we have been providing Commonwealth money, taxpayers’ money, to the states. We give the states $1,000 million in round figures every year for public housing. Over 10 years, that is $10 billion in round figures. So, of course, we would expect that there must be more public houses today than there were 10 years ago. That is a pretty logical conclusion.

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