Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister has told first home buyers in Sydney to move to the country, saying, 'Houses will always be incredibly expensive if you can see the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge.' Is this why you, Prime Minister, won't take up Labor's reforms to negative gearing? Has the Prime Minister been told that people in Sydney are not looking for the Prime Minister's harbour views; they just want to be able to afford their first home?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I distinctly recall the honourable member's colleague the shadow Treasurer saying Labor's negative-gearing policy wouldn't affect housing prices at all. He was chastising us for saying that it would bring a sledgehammer to the housing market—a view I stand by. So the Labor Party have got to work out whether their ban on negative gearing is designed to raise billions of dollars in tax and prevent hardworking Australian families on wages and salaries from investing and getting ahead, or whether they just want to shatter the housing market. The Labor Party's policy on negative gearing is no more than a cash grab. That is its whole motivation. Its impact on the housing market would be damaging in the extreme, and the Treasurer pointed out precisely why. You can imagine what it would do, and the honourable member might reflect on this: its consequence for the rental market would be to put significant upward pressure on rents, making it much harder for Australians to make ends meet when they are renting properties as, indeed, more than a third of Australians are—well over a third of Australians are. It's an ill-considered, unmodelled policy designed to raise billions and deprive thousands of Australian families from investing and getting ahead—as usual, an attack on investment, an attack on aspiration and an attack on Australians being able to realise their dreams.