Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Correct. Winston Churchill used this phrase in October 1939, and he was trying to describe a situation that was difficult to comprehend. That's where I find myself. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024 and the Capital Works (Build to Rent Misuse Tax) Bill 2024 are not that difficult to comprehend individually, but why they are proposed together in the same bill is incomprehensible. That is the riddle.

It's a bit of a pattern for the Albanese government. I find it a source of frustration that bills with only a passing acquaintance are all presented as inseparable in the same piece of legislation. Some call it 'omnibus'. I think the reason for this is obvious—wrap up a bit of bad legislation in a bundle of good measures and tie a pretty bow around it. The strategy is that, in order to pass the good, the bad will be accepted as part of that package. Or, to put it another way, to vote against the bad would also be a vote against the good.

I am someone who comes to this place willing to support good legislation but happy to debate the bad and, if necessary, vote against the bad. There's been a bit of bad in this term of government, I'd have to say, from my electorate's perspective. I vote against it. The legislative strategy is incomprehensible, and it's really hard to tolerate. Politics may be the art of compromise, but it shouldn't be reduced to having to choose the lesser evil. A bad idea is a bad idea, and bad legislation is bad legislation. That's my frustration with pulling all these unrelated pieces of regulation together in the one bill.

When it comes to buy-now pay-later, historically, there is a problem in my electorate with vulnerable communities being targeted with rent to own for common household items, like refrigerators and televisions. In some places, there's a lack of financial literacy, and this can be exploited. People sign up to pay thousands of dollars more for the item, and they're often targeted again toward the end of the contract to sign up for a new replacement and thousands more dollars. Buy-now pay-later has in many ways superseded that rent-to-own concept. I get that both of them have pros and cons and that both require regulation and consumer safeguards. That is what this bill does for buy-now pay-later.

I'm made aware that the buy-now pay-later sector has over five million Australian customers. Buy-now pay-later had near-universal consumer awareness in the RBA's 2022 consumer payments survey. The majority of people who told the RBA that they had used buy-now pay-later services in the previous 12 months were aged between 18 and 39 in the 2019 survey, but by 2022 the use had more than doubled for those aged 50 and over. So age seems to be no barrier to what consumers accept is a convenient and cost-effective way of making a purchase.

This bill imposes new regulation on buy-now pay-later providers, such as Afterpay and Zip. These reforms are supported in principle. Indeed, the industry sector is broadly supportive of these reforms, but the coalition remains concerned about significant delays in drafting this legislation and failures to address concerns raised by buy-now pay-later providers. These products play an important role in helping people manage their finances and smooth out expenses, and it's an alternative to high-cost forms of credit, like payday loans and credit cards, but it would have been good to see some measures in this bill about promoting the financial literacy of consumers. I think that's something we should all aspire towards.

Another part of this seven-schedule omnibus bill is the build-to-rent misuse tax. The build-to-rent misuse tax will create generous tax incentives for institutional investors to develop build-to-rent housing, BTR. This is part of what the Albanese government wants to do to add rental supply through the reforms in the 2023 budget, announced more than 12 months ago.

The legislation has faced delays, but it's also faced criticism during consultation from the sector it is intending to support. Labor seems to be prioritising corporate homeownership over individual homeownership. This is a corporate housing policy which will create a generation of renters. I still believe that in my electorate you can come and find places where young people can still save for a deposit and still buy their own home. It's one of the great advantages of living in regional Australia.

When it comes to the instant asset write-off, the coalition's position, as outlined in the budget in reply, is to extend the value of assets eligible instant asset write-off to $30,000, allowing businesses to claim accelerated depreciation on a wider range of assets. Our position would simplify depreciation for millions of small businesses just by cutting that red tape, boosting investment in productive assets and lowering business costs and prices. Every decision we make in this place should be about how easy is it to do business, how easy is it just to start a business and how easy is it to run a business? A lot of people on our side, and some people on the other side, have been involved in private enterprise, and that's what I was involved in for the entire time before I came into this place. I have huge admiration for people who are prepared to take a risk on their capital, combine it with labour and the creativity and cleverness of the people they employ and create something.

In my part of the world that creation is often fruit products that I hope people in this place enjoy, and everyone's welcome to come to my office for the Australia-China blind tasting of peaches—open invitation to everyone!

An honourable member interjecting—

I welcome that. SPC is the business that has been processing that Australian fruit in my electorate for so long. It's a very special part of my electorate. My grandparents worked there. Everyone in Shepparton has got a story about being out on the farms, picking the fruit, working on an orchard, working in the factory during their holidays or knows someone who worked in that place. I want to see that business continue to be competitive, and I think it's really important for Australia that we do that. What we want to do is make it easier for them to do business and to prosper in that business.

Labor's proposal will limit the instant asset write-off to $20,000. If Labor supported our amendments then 26,500 businesses with an aggregated turnover of up to $50 million would have been eligible to use the instant asset write-off. The increased asset of $30,000 would have allowed businesses to claim accelerated depreciation on a wider range of assets. When it's getting really hard, when inputs are increasing, labour costs are increasing, regulation is increasing—too much, in my opinion—anything we can do to help those businesses with that bottom line is so important. I think all of this would have come at a modest cost to the budget, and we would have seen it returned in spades by the increased profitability, productivity and sustainability of these really important Australian businesses.

The passage of this bill will give certainty to business, but it is not a win for small businesses struggling under cost-of-living pressures from this government. I think it's bad economic policy for difficult times. There are a number of other elements, including country-by-country tax, reporting, payments to states associated with the October 2023 National Skills Agreement, budget measures, the list of entities as deductible gift recipients—there's so much in this bill that I don't think belongs in the same bill, and that's a bit of a cause of frustration. It's not the first time I've spoken on this issue. Maybe people might call me new and naive, but I think splitting up these bills so that we can debate each regulation, if you like, and each law on its merits is a better way, rather than throwing everything together and forcing us to vote against something because we have to weigh up how much we don't like some of it compared to how much we do like other parts of it. It is a frustration.

As I have said, some of the elements are uncontroversial and some are worthy of support, like the instant asset write-off—which is good but should go further—and some should be opposed. I think the build-to-rent tax incentives ought to be removed from the bill and considered separately. So it's a frustrating one, because I think there's a lot of good stuff in here, but it's very difficult to support.

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