Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought the member for Kingsford Smith was a bit kind to suggest that perhaps the Liberal Party was in negotiations with Katy Perry about her song 'you're hot, you're cold', because that is a bit modern for this mob. I think it is more like the hokey-pokey. I think they have got one foot in and one foot out. They have one foot in when it comes to tax reform and then they have one foot out—ruling things in, ruling things out.

This is a government where the person who became Prime Minister said, loudly and clearly, that he wanted a mature conversation on tax. But standing up and pointing your glasses, and waffling on, is not a mature conversation. Doing this at people is Malsplaining; it is not a mature conversation with the Australian people or with the Australian parliament about concrete tax ideas. In the past week this government was actually serious about introducing a GST across the board and increasing it to 15 per cent. They had already budgeted for that money in their budget, and they were going to spend it on various things. The reason why they are in absolute chaos is because the Prime Minister backed down on it without informing the rest of his colleagues. It was the right call because Australians do not want a GST. But instead, after this decision all we have had is absolute chaos. You know this government is in trouble when The Sydney Morning Herald says the Turnbull government has abandoned serious tax reform. It is time this government got serious on tax.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As someone who built their first property with hard work in a shearing shed when I was 22, I understand something about property markets. I think the Australian people will wake up to the perverse effects of the Labor negative gearing policy on our country towns. One of the reasons we do not see investment in country towns is because there is not the capital growth. This policy essentially says that you will only build new premises and be able to negative gear it if you are an investor. The consequence for a country town is that no-one will build new premises in a country town because it does not have the capital growth and, when you go to sell that property, there will be no investors to repurchase it. The impact this has on renters, particularly the poorest in our society—and my electorate has the poorest in our society—is that mum and dad investors will not buy a tin-and-weatherboard house in those country towns because they will not be able to negative gear it. The renter who, because of their circumstances, is not able to get a deposit, will not be able to have a place to rent.

By favouring new premises over old premises, this policy will have diabolical effects on regional Australia and has not been thought out at all by the opposition. They criticise us for not thinking things through, but they have not thought this through. Winston Churchill said, 'A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.' The Australian people are very smart. They will do the maths on their household budget and they will realise how shallow this policy and its impacts are.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to follow the member for Mallee. He has obviously forgotten about the op-ed piece he wrote last year dealing with negative gearing and the fact that it seemed to be detrimental to areas of our communities. The Sydney Morning Herald has really belled the cat with a headline saying that the Turnbull government has abandoned serious tax reform. We are put in this place for one reason: to make sure that we provide for our communities. In taking $80 billion off health and education, this government needed to find revenue from somewhere. They had the idea of raising the GST until they were persuaded by what they say was a scare campaign but the truth is that they were persuaded by the community that this was a bad way to go. They then wanted to talk about negative gearing.

They want to come out and criticise Labor's policies. They have the Prime Minister come out and say they are going to drive house prices down. They have the Assistant Treasurer come out the very next day and say that they are going to drive house prices up for everybody. This is a government in confusion. It is a government that has lost its way and that has a Treasurer who has not got a clue, and they are preparing to go for another budget. We saw what their budget efforts were in 2014. We saw how they wanted to slug pensioners, how they wanted to slug schoolkids, how they took money out of health and education— (Time expired)