Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Apparently that's socialist—we hear the assistant minister telling us—despite the overwhelming evidence from every expert that it would be a good thing to have a housing strategy to guide your policy, instead of little bits-and-pieces initiatives to make people think that you're doing something.

In closing, I again remind the government that it's not actually a socialist policy plot to say, 'Hey, those big tax concessions need to be reformed.' Indeed, it's a position the Prime Minister used to hold and articulate publicly—you know, him. We had a question yesterday in question time about policy consistency. If you noticed, we laughed, but we're all decrying it. Which inconsistency do we mean? We could talk about the republic, climate change, negative gearing—that's certainly up there. The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, only in the last week, said:

The capital gains discounts on housing should be reduced and other tax incentives limited.

The OECD says that. The government's own Financial System Inquiry said that. So did the Grattan Institute and ACOSS—we could dismiss them because they're worried about poor people; we don't want to know about them! The Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Treasury, the government's own Treasury, said, 'Fix your unsustainable tax concessions.' For every stupid bill you bring forward, we'll keep saying the same thing. Hopefully, we'll win the election, and then we'll do something about housing.

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