Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Australian families are facing enormous economic and financial pain right now. For 18 months, we've seen a household recession in this country. For 18 months, GDP per capita has been going backwards, not forwards, and that's the economic growth measure that counts—GDP per capita—because that's what people feel. That's how their financial situation is affected. You can't cover it up by having over a million people come into the country and say, 'It's great. It's all fine,' because it's not. You've got GDP per capita going backwards in six consecutive quarters. Now, we haven't seen that since the early nineties, when, of course, Labor was in power. We haven't seen it in that state. At the same time, we've seen the standard of living of the average Australian family fall by just under nine per cent. The standard of living of Australians, their capacity to buy, has gone down 8.7 per cent in just over two years.

Of course, we know that is the worst in the OECD. We know that. There is no other country that has seen anything like that collapse in the standard of living. And we know that, sitting underneath that, the prices a working family are paying on average—their cost of living—have gone up by 18 per cent, way higher than their wages. Real wages have been dropping. We know they're paying 25 per cent more personal income tax than they were a couple of years ago, and we know they've seen 12 mortgage interest rate increases in that time. It's no wonder, then, that they've seen an absolute collapse in their standard of living.

Whilst we're seeing interest rates coming down in countries and regions across the world, we're not seeing it here. We're seeing interest rates coming down in the US, they're coming down in the UK, they're coming down in Canada, they're coming down in Europe, they're coming down in New Zealand—but not in Australia.

Australians are having to find a way through. They've cracked open the piggy bank. There are no savings anymore. They've stopped saving. They've essentially stopped saving. We know they're doing extra work. They're taking on extra hours, and that's unsustainable. They struggle to work out who's going to pick up the kids from school and who's going to find the time to do those chores around the house when they have to make extra income to make those extraordinary extra payments. We also know there's no pathway to improvement here for Australians.

But there's a problem here for the government. I mentioned earlier that a 25 per cent increase in personal income tax is being paid. We know there have been very high iron ore prices, just at the time when the government have been making it hard for mining companies to get approvals. We know that those personal income tax revenues and those commodity tax revenues that have been fuelling this government's spending habit—a 16 per cent increase in spending in just two years—are coming to an end. They're coming to an end, and, as they come to an end, the government have to find new pots of money. It seems they have been working on exactly that, because we saw, in the Sydney Morning Herald, confirmation that negative gearing and capital gains tax are in Labor's sights. Well, they're always in Labor's sights, but the Sydney Morning Herald picked it up this time. It was leaked by 'a senior Labor official'. Let me quote:

Federal officials have started work on options to scale back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, preparing the ground for a bold new housing policy that could define the federal election.

It goes on:

This masthead has confirmed with a senior Labor official, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely about internal policy development, that a request for modelling on the potential change to negative gearing has been made and that it could canvass changes to the concessions on capital gains tax.

Obviously, that's to the family home.

We know you can't trust Labor when it comes to tax—we know that—because we were told before the last election that they weren't going to make any changes to superannuation, yet we know they are bringing forward unrealised capital gains tax on Australians' super. They are unrealised capital gains. They're going to tax them. Where those small businesses and farmers who have their land in a self-managed super fund are going to find that money, we don't know. Labor don't know either. They don't care. Those on that side of the parliament have never been interested in small business and farmers. But we do know they're breaking a promise.

They're also breaking a promise on income taxes. We know that Australians are going to pay an extra $28 billion in bracket creep in coming years because of a broken promise from the Labor Party. We do know they've broken a promise on franking credits. Labor are targeting $1.5 billion of revenue from franking credits, through tax and regulatory changes. We know it's hardworking Australians who, over many, many years, have squirrelled away that money in their super funds and their savings who are going to end up paying for Labor's big-spending habit.

Deputy Speaker, this housing tax that Labor are going after is about more than just raising revenue. It is about raising revenue, because Labor always want to raise more revenue, but it's also about their vision for housing in this country. We know what their vision for housing in this country is—it's housing that you rent. It's not ownership. They don't believe in Australians owning their home. They want people to rent. They want them to rent apartments and they want those apartments to be built by the CFMEU. They want them to be built by the CFMEU, Deputy Speaker. They want them owned by big investment funds and they want mum-and-dad investors out of the way. We hear them talk regularly, those speaking out—and I'm sorry the member for Moreton is not here, because he's always speaking out on this; he's one who loves the idea of getting rid of negative gearing—and we know what they hate. They hate mum-and-dad investors who own three or four homes. But they're completely okay with a big industry super fund owning 3,000 or 4,000 homes. They're okay with that because that's their vision of housing in this country. That's their vision of housing in this country, and it's a vision that we absolutely don't share. We believe it is right and proper that a young family—a young builder, plumber, teacher, nurse—should be able to buy a home, invest in it for a period and then move into it or sell it. They sell it in many cases—and I see this in my home town—to someone who becomes an owner-occupier. This is a well-trodden path in this country, but it's not a path that those opposite believe in. It's not a view of how housing should work in this country that those opposite believe in either.

We know that the Treasurer has long believed in this picture of getting rid of negative gearing and capital gains tax. He told Sky News:

We think that any policy on housing affordability which doesn't make important and considered changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing has a hole in the middle of it.

That's the Treasurer. That was the Treasurer back in 2017. It didn't end there. A month after that he said:

Any housing policy that doesn't have changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax is just a shocker.

'Any housing policy that doesn't have changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax is just a shocker.' I'm very happy to repeat that. The Prime Minister doesn't like it when I repeat things! But I will repeat that, because that's a great quote. To give you another one, the Treasurer told the ABC:

If you want to deal with housing affordability, you need to start with negative gearing and capital gains.

This Treasurer has made his view clear. We know what his real plan is, and he's not alone.

I mentioned the member for Moreton, who normally comes along to MPI. It's sad that he's not here today. He's looking for his next role in life. But we know he's alongside the Treasurer in wanting to get rid of negative gearing and cut back concessions on capital gains tax on the family home. The member for Macnamara has also said he's open to changes, and we'll hear from others. They're all looking down. I'm sure amongst them are many others who agree with the Treasurer's view on this. Well, I'll tell you what we're not going to do—we're not going to whack a tax on the family home or make it harder for mum and dad investors to squirrel away their investments and rent out homes to young Australians who want to get ahead.

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