Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (4) as circulated in my name together:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table items 2 and 3), omit the table items.

(2) Schedule 1, page 4 (line 1) to page 51 (line 25), omit the Schedule.

(3) Schedule 2, page 52 (line 1) to page 55 (line 24), omit the Schedule.

(4) Schedule 3, page 56 (line 1) to page 57 (line 6), omit the Schedule.

These amendments omit schedules 1 to 3 from the Treasury Laws Amendment (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions and Other Measures) Bill 2023. These schedules would impose the new divisional 296 tax on superannuation accounts. We are moving these amendments to hold the government to account. To everyone who's going to be affected by these changes throughout Australia: we are moving these amendments for you because this is a broken promise, pure and simple. The Albanese Labor government said they would not be changing super. They promised there would be no changes. This is a major change, particularly for people who have higher balances, because the tax is doubling. That is a major change if you are doubling the tax and you said before the election that there wouldn't be major changes. Now they're doubling the tax. That is a major change. This new super tax sends the message that the Albanese Labor government wants some Australians to pay more. This is at a time when Australians are struggling under persistent inflation, a GDP per capita recession, a record increase in interest rates and soaring energy prices.

Government proposals 1 to 3 have some key flaws. One, as I said before, is that it is a broken promise, and it comes off the back of not just no changes to super but also no changes at all to the stage 3 income tax cuts, which also affected this group of people considerably. Another flaw is that it isn't indexed.

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