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

My question is to the Treasurer. Prior to the last election, the Prime Minister ruled out any changes to superannuation. Why is the Treasurer persisting, for the first time in our history, on taxing unrealised capital gains on superannuation assets?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's becoming clearer and clearer to us that they had a very different question time pack in mind for today. So they've gone back to the reserve pack and all of the old chestnuts, all of the questions that we've answered before in this place and outside this place as well, which I'm happy to repeat for him. What we are proposing to do for people with balances of more than $3 million in superannuation is make a very modest change to turn very concessional tax arrangements into concessional tax arrangements—for people with the biggest balances. We announced this policy more than two years ago.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order. I'm going to ask the shadow Treasurer to cease interjecting for the remainder of this answer. The Minister for Social Services will cease interjecting as well. The Treasurer will return to the question.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has taken a break from trying to chase the aluminium industry out of Australia to interjecting about a policy which has been publicly announced for more than two years now. If he's the shadow Treasurer he should know a couple of things. He should know that unrealised gains are calculated elsewhere in the superannuation system. If he's the shadow Treasurer he should understand that the arrangements for tax on superannuation would still be concessional for the half a per cent of people who would be impacted by the modest change we are proposing.

In fairness to the shadow Treasurer, he has made his opposition to this measure clear. I understand that. So the onus is on him now to find the couple of billion dollars a year that this would raise when it's fully mature, and we know where he'll go looking for those savings—and, again, that goes to the difference between the parties. We think we can make concessional arrangements at the very top end of super a little bit less concessional and raise money to fund our efforts to strengthen Medicare. Those opposite, if they're given the chance to find those couple of billion dollars each year, will go after Medicare again, because they did it last time. They'll go after housing. They'll go after pension indexation.

Those are the choices that are available to both sides of the House, and that's the difference between the parties.