Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move the following amendment to the bill:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"while not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government to make Australia's capital gains tax and negative gearing regimes fairer and more sustainable."

Labor's position is to support the Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Restructure Roll-over) Bill 2016, but this is a bill about economic leadership, and we need to speak directly about that issue today. The Prime Minister has now been in parliament for almost 12 years and the Treasurer for almost nine years. And after 5½ months of their double act of economic leadership we saw last week the 'emperor's new clothes' moment for the Treasurer, Scott Morrison. We saw that he is unable, given 46 minutes at the Press Club, with Australia's leading economic journalists arrayed before him, to put forth a single idea of his own. Not a single idea has been taken up by this government that contributes in a significant way to boosting growth or equity in Australia. Everything is always on the table, and you are reminded of that Yogi Berra line: 'When you come to a fork in the road, take it', because there is not a fork that this Treasurer and this Prime Minister have not taken. They even had a chance today. We moved a motion to suspend standing orders so that the Treasurer and his counterpart, Chris Bowen, could be given 46 minutes each to talk in this House about their ideas. Did the Treasurer take it up? No. Yet again, he squibbed the opportunity, running away like one of his mythical creatures, off to talk about political numbers—which is all he really cares about, all he is really confident about.

This bill is a modest reform, but let's not pretend that it in any way constitutes economic leadership. Labor will support it because it allows small business to restructure with greater ease. But it would be remiss, in talking about the issues of fair taxation, to not deal with the question of capital gains tax discount and negative gearing. We know that Australia has uniquely generous tax arrangements when it comes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. We know that those policies have worked together to make housing increasingly unaffordable for young Australians. Price to income ratios have approximately doubled over the past two decades. We have seen the share of young Australians owning their own home fall by 25 percentage points in a generation. For low-income young Australians, rates of homeownership have halved. And we now have Sydney as the second most unaffordable city in the world when measured by price to income ratios, behind only Hong Kong, and Melbourne as the fourth most unaffordable city in the world.

Yet, faced with these unassailable facts, the Treasurer does not talk about acting on negative gearing and capital gains tax to make sure that all Australians can afford their own home. No. Instead, he behaves like the Property Council executive he once was—much more interested in protecting tax distortions and loopholes than in good policy.

The list of people who have supported doing something about negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount spans Australia and spans politics. Former Treasurer Hockey said on 21 October 2015:

… negative gearing should be skewed towards new housing so that there is an incentive to add to the housing stock rather than an incentive to speculate on existing property.

There he is, presaging our policy. Jeff Kennett, the former Liberal premier, said:

I'm very disappointed at the way in which my side of politics are arguing against what I think—

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