Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps he was but it would have been a long time ago. He cannot remember what the housing affordability issue was like. Let me tell you, Senator Back, a lot of Australians are struggling. They are struggling to buy their first home. Most of them end up renting for most of their lives. One of the key reasons is we are subsidising, through taxation policy in this country, the wealthy investors who are making money out of property speculation. They are competing in the same market as young and old and low-income Australians who simply want to own their own home. That is a dream that a lot of Australians have had but unfortunately it is a nightmare for lots of Australians. If you go out and speak to most young people around this country, they will tell you it is one of the biggest challenges that they face, even in my state of Tasmania, where housing prices are much lower than they are in other parts of the country.

This tax reform issue is not just about raising revenue; it is about fairness and equality. It is about using the levers of the tax system to have a better country, to get better outcomes for all Australians, not just for the wealthy, not just for the property sector which wants to keep perverse incentives in place like negative gearing. We have argued for a long time that we should remove or phase out negative gearing over time. We have argued that we need to get rid of capital gains tax and phase that out, remove those incentives on new property purchases so we can actually have a fairer society and a fairer country.

We do not believe the scare campaign of the government that—pardon the pun—the roof is going to fall in or the sky is going to fall in. This is something that many respected economists around the country argue for. I remember arguing this same point at the press gallery, around this time last year. I am very pleased to see that the Labor Party are adopting a policy going into this federal election to back-in negative gearing and the removal of the capital gains tax. I just wish that they would spend more time out on the hustings talking about the importance of removing negative gearing and capital gains tax. Instead, they seem obsessed with muckraking, throwing mud at the Greens over preference deals.

Of course, what we have seen is the big distraction this week around the Senate voting reform. We were simply trying to get some simple democratic reforms, giving people the choice to direct their own preferences in a Senate election. How much easier could it be? This is the problem: until the Labor Party actually get on with selling their tax plan—and the same for the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull—then we are not really going to have a debate in this country, are we? So I would urge my Labor Party colleagues in this chamber, to actually get out there, be an opposition and start selling their negative gearing policy. The Greens led them to this position, and I am glad that we played that effective role. Let's see them actually get out there and sell it.

Now, I will make some points about multinational tax avoidance laws and disclosure of people with incomes over $100 million. I was sitting in your chair, Mr Acting Deputy President, when that bill went down in this place. Labor put up a few voters. They did not even call a division, they let it go to the keeper—it was gone—multinational tax avoidance transparency was gone. We brought it back for debate. We got it in here and in the end we made a judgement that we could get an outcome for all Australians, that high-income earners—over $200 million—would have to disclose their tax.

I am very pleased to say that in the next week we will see those figures come through. It will be a really good thing that we have a good outcome. We also have much broader multinational tax avoidance laws that we worked with the coalition on and which Labor ended up supporting after all of their huff and puff in this place. So we got a really good outcome. But let me say this very clearly: there were no tax transparency laws in this country until the Greens got them on the agenda.

With the aged pension—