Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If the member for Whitlam was sincere in saying that he supported young Australians owning their home, he would ban big super, in this amendment, from investing money in housing that they own with the hard-earned retirement savings of young Australians that they plan to rent back to them. But he won't, because we know full well that the playing field is not level.

Retirees are able to use their super to buy their own home or to pay off their mortgage. In fact, 469,000 retirees over the past years have drawn down from their superannuation balance to either pay off their mortgage or renovate their home. Big super is allowed to use your money to invest in housing that they own to rent back to you, but they oppose you using your super to buy your own home. We know why. It's because there is nothing they hate more than the empowerment of Australian families through the economic democratisation of this country. It is the foundation of who we are as a nation. They've found a sneaky, tricky, backdoor campaign on how they can concentrate economic capital in their hands.

Yes, members of the Labor Party will be horrified that somebody is calling this out, but it needs to be called out, because it fundamentally violates and risks our liberal democracy when big capital, big Labor, big government and big commodities are all sitting on the same side of the ledger against the Australian people. Some of us are going to stand up.

Don't get me wrong; before the last election the same members scoffed and sneered at the idea that removing refundable franking credits would hit low-income Australians and push people below the poverty line. They took exactly the same attitude then and we all know what happened: the government was re-elected and it was a critical part of the national discussion. At least to his credit, the Leader of the Opposition came into this chamber after the election and conceded in public that it was going to hit low-income Australians. It was because they don't understand the consequences of the policies they put forward. Now they're making a dishonest claim that it's off the agenda, even though so many members of the Labor Party have said consistently that it's an issue which should stay on the agenda. It's necessary, as far as they're concerned, for the financial sustainability of the country.

That is the Labor Party; so many of them have said it in the past and so many will say it in the future. We know that deep down they have a secret agenda to reintroduce a retiree tax later. We only need to look at their own words and repeat them. The shadow Treasurer has been quite unambiguous about his support for it. One member on the other side of the chamber said, 'You'd have to believe it was a con to think that this issue isn't going to come up again.' I agree with them—they're right. Labor has a secret agenda for a new retiree tax in the future. Every point and every decision—every economic and financial policy decision they make—is based on what will advance the concentration of economic capital into their hands.

That's because, in the end, politics is actually about power, or, more critically, who has the power. The foundation of the mad socialist centralist mindset is to concentrate power in the hands of the few with the idea that their benefice and benevolence understands how better to run a society technocratically than to empower Australians and their families. The foundation of a liberal democracy is to democratise the ownership of the country in economic, social and political terms. It's for people to own their own homes, be enfranchised and, through the ballot box, exercise the democratic direction of their country. It's for rights and freedoms to be respected as part of a free society.

We see a constant effort by those on the other side of the chamber, at the heart of their mad ideology, to shift power from Australians to themselves. They sell it on the lie that somehow it's better for the Australian people. Some of us are here to say, 'Not on our watch,' and I make no apology for that. There are of course people who disagree with that and think that we should continue prioritising super over home ownership, but I'm not one of them and I'll continue to call it out at every step of the way. Like with the retiree tax, those opposite sat in the chamber, smugly waiting for their day to sit on the government benches. The trade-off for their hubris and arrogance was that they went to the election and couldn't see what was standing in front of them: low-income Australians about to be pushed below the poverty line. They learned their lesson when the people of Australia went to the ballot box last year—sorry, it's now a year and half ago.

They learned a lesson, but they've only learned the lesson on that policy and not on their attitude. They have not learned the lesson that hubris and arrogance are the consequences of the policy agenda they proposed. What they're doing by putting super over home ownership is making sure that young Australians' concerns about the economic future of this country are completely disregarded. They're denying young Australians the basic foundations on which to build security during their working lives and their retirement. They're saying to young Australians, 'Give up on the Australian dream because we think we know how to run your lives better than yourselves,' and, more critically, 'If we concentrate the capital of the nation in our hands, and that of our million-dollar fund manager mates, then we'll deliver a better country.' The people of Australia can see through this con, they can see through this lie and they can see through the misinformation that's put out there.

I know Industry Super are now even spending tens of millions of dollars of your super to stop you owning your own home. This is how bad it has got and they feel that they are unaccountable. Now it is up to the regulators who need to rise to the challenge and call out this conduct. Where are you, APRA? Where are you, ACIC? Industry Super Australia is spending tens of millions of dollars on an ad campaign to deny Australians the chance at their own dream. How can they sit by and do nothing? I know that they're before the Senate estimates today and they're going to be before the House economics hearings next week. If they think that they can sit on their hands and not call out this conduct and this misuse of Australian superannuation savings, deliberately designed to undermine young Australians' aspirations and hopes of owning their own homes, they are kidding themselves, just like the Labor Party.

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