Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

So it is not the government's policy to follow those opposite, who believe in higher taxes for higher spending down that path, as they have outlined, to apply a 50 per cent increase in capital gains tax to all of those things, which would be a punishing tax on investment at a time when it is the last thing that this country could afford to go down that path.

But I am asked about negative gearing. I am asked about that, and it gives me the opportunity to remind those opposite about what we do not believe on this side. We do not think it is excessive that policemen, that nurses, that paramedics, that schoolteachers and that some two-thirds of those who have a taxable income of $80,000 and less invest in negative gearing. We do not think that is excessive, but those opposite do.

Those opposite think that, for someone who negatively gears one property and claims net interest deductions or net rental losses of around $10,000, that is excessive, and it must be stopped. They think nurses who are trying to save for their future and small businesses and mums and dads who have gone out there and bought an investment property are the problem. They think they are the reason why their kids have to pay higher prices for their houses—not because successive Labor governments at a state level contracted places like Sydney, put the 'shut' sign up and stopped the building boom that could have continued in those states when the member for McMahon was serving that great minister in New South Wales, Minister Carl Scully. That is what they think. They think the mum and dad investors of this country are the problem.

On this side of the House, we know they are the answer because they are investing in their own future, and they are investing in the future of this country. Those opposite just want to tax them silly.

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