Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens support this bill in the House but reserve our position for the bill in the Senate. I would like to speak to a particular schedule of the bill which ensures foreign residents selling property in Australia don't dodge their capital gains tax obligations. While we support this, we would like to note that the second reading speech of the minister, Stephen Jones, indicated:

These changes help to level the playing field between Australian and foreign investors, by ensuring foreign investors selling a real property asset (such as a residential property) are subject to the same overall tax obligations as Australians.

The explanatory memorandum of the bill states:

This measure complements the Government's initiatives to improve housing affordability for Australians.

The government is admitting that if you force foreign investors to actually pay their capital gains tax obligations, this improves housing affordability. Yet the government blatantly refuses to acknowledge that the Greens' call to phase out negative gearing and CGT for Australian investors would improve housing affordability. In fact, it is sort of remarkable that this Labor government is intervening to level the playing field for Australian investors competing with foreign investors but says nothing about all of the attempted first home buyers in this country, who get screwed over every time they go to an auction and face a property investor with tax handouts in their pocket from this Labor government. Because the reality is that, in the middle of one of the worst housing crises we have seen in generations, this Labor government is giving billions of dollars in tax handouts to property investors while single mums choose between feeding their kids or paying their rent. Over the next 10 years Labor will dish out $176 billion in tax handouts through the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing to property investors. This includes property investors with 10, 20, 30, 50 investment properties, who collectively get billions of dollars in tax handouts from this government.

Let's be clear about what these tax handouts do. First of all, they turbocharge house prices. Since John Howard introduced the capital gains tax discount, house prices have surged ahead of wages. People wonder why young people and people struggling to buy houses are so angry and disappointed. It is because there are members in this place, for instance, the Prime Minister, who was able to buy a house in Marrickville in the 1990s for just over $100,000—three to four times the average income. Now, if you tried to buy a house in Marrickville you would be paying between 30 to 40 times the average income. People are not angry that there are members in this place who got that opportunity; people are angry that we are being denied that opportunity, that millions of Australians are being denied that opportunity.

The fact is a young person graduating from university today will graduate with a massive uni debt while a lot of members in this place got their university education for free. When that person goes to try and buy a house, they are locked out of a property market where house prices are turbocharged because property investors get billions of dollars in tax handouts from Labor that drive up house prices and deny millions of renters the chance to buy a home.

How is it fair that, in the middle of this massive housing crisis, the government found it in their heart to say, 'Well, when economic conditions change so does government policy.' They changed the stage 3 tax cuts but still ensured that every politician in this place gets 4½ thousand dollars a year off their tax but at the same time refuse to make any changes to negative gearing or the capital gains discount, the massive tax handouts to property investors that are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home. Imagine if we phased out those tax handouts. A few things would happen. Even conservative modelling shows that an extra 400,000 renters could buy a home. It would probably be far more. It would stop the massive increases in house prices that are denying millions of renters the chance to ever buy a home. But, crucially, it would free up billions of dollars in revenue that we could put to work building public housing.

I put this question to every member in this place: in a massive housing crisis, amid the talk about needing to build more housing, why is it that we're giving $176 billion in tax handouts to property investors to hoard housing, most of which has already been constructed, when we could put that money towards building hundreds of thousands of good quality homes that we could then rent and sell at prices people can actually afford? I think Labor has really misunderstood the depth of feeling and frustration and deep disappointment in this government. People expect Labor governments to be the ones that reform things that improve people's lives, yet what we've got is a 'Liberal-lite' government that has deeply disappointed millions of people.

I urge Labor members in this place to think about what Gough Whitlam was able to do: provide free university education and establish a federal department that helped coordinate the construction of hundreds of thousands of public homes—real, substantial reforms that improved people's lives. Why is it that the millions of Australians who are right now suffering through one of the worst housing crises we've seen in generations have to put up with worse than tinkering around the edges? The bottom line is this: when you have millions of people giving up on ever being able to buy a home and when you have parents terrified about how their kids will ever be able to buy a home and grandparents terrified about how their grandchildren will ever be able to buy a home, it's incumbent upon this government to take real substantial action to help those millions of people. The first thing they can do is to stop giving property investors billions of dollars in tax handouts to drive up the price of housing and lock out millions of potential first home buyers.

All we're asking for is the same opportunity that people like the Prime Minister got. All we're asking for is the same opportunity that people in the 1980s and 1990s got in this country. We're not asking for much. In a wealthy country like Australia, it seems reasonable to expect that, regardless of your background or the family circumstances you're born into, you have the opportunity to buy an affordable house and build a good life. Are we really saying that, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we're just going to accept as normal that millions of people struggle to pay the rent, give up on ever being able to buy a home and often have to choose between feeding their kids or paying the rent? How is that acceptable in a wealthy country like Australia?

It's deeply unacceptable because there are solutions to this: phase out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount—the tax handouts for property investors denying renters the chance to buy a home; invest the savings in establishing a government owned developer that builds hundreds of thousands of good quality homes that we can sell and rent at prices that people can actually afford; and coordinate national caps on rent increases so you don't cop massive rent increases that deny people the chance to save up to buy a home in the first place. All we're proposing are solutions which have worked in Australia before, which work around the world and which will help millions of people.

I urge Labor to stop picking the side of property investors with 10 or 20 investment properties. By the way, I note that 75 per cent of the Labor caucus and of Labor members in this place own investment properties, and 65 per cent of coalition MPs own investment properties. The reality is that both of those parties don't want to remove any of the tax handouts for property investors or phase any of them out, and they wonder why people are so upset.

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