Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What we're seeing in Australia at the moment is a redefinition of class. It used to be that, if you worked hard, if you studied hard, if you spent your pennies wisely, you could actually set yourself up for a good life. But that guarantee no longer exists in Australia. The egalitarian social contract upon which we once prided ourselves as a country has been torn up. Nowadays, the thing that is most likely to determine your financial success throughout the course of your life is the extent to which you or your family own land. We've gone from being a nation of a fair go to being a country that resembles a new feudal order. This is no accident. This is the direct result of 30-odd years of economic policy that, instead of treating housing as a human right that everyone should have access to at an affordable rate, has instead treated housing as a financial asset designed to enrich those who own the most of it and designed to enrich the banks, whose business model is predicated on land price inflation. Through tax policy, through monetary policy and through prudential regulation, the Australian economy is designed to enrich landholders and to enrich the moneylenders. By that design, we have torn up the social contract that our country used to be based on, which is in part an understanding that, if you did work hard, study hard and spend your pennies wisely, you could set up yourself and your family for a dignified life.

That takes me to schedule 5 of this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No. 2) Bill 2022, which reduces the eligibility age from 60 to 55 for people to make so-called downsizer contributions to their superannuation. I say the 'so-called' downsizer contributions because this policy is actually just one of the latest and increasingly more byzantine ways in which tax law is being rigged to favour those whose landholdings are worth the most. The Australian Financial Review very helpfully set out just what a rort this scheme is at the point that it was introduced by the then Treasurer, Mr Morrison, I might add, in 2018 and when the eligibility age was actually 65. The following is from an article instructively entitled 'How to put more into super when you're not really downsizing'. The article states:

These contributions, known as "downsizer contributions", present an opportunity to top up your super even if you're otherwise unable to contribute … due to your age, work status or the amount you've got in super.

But don't let the name fool you.

To make a downsizer contribution you could be selling your home to buy a bigger one—if in fact you buy another place at all. You could be moving into your investment property, holiday home or even into aged care. You don't even have to sell the place you're living in—you could be selling another property that was once the family home.

To make a downsizer contribution you don't have to even buy another place.

So there you have it: don't let the name fool you. Despite all the rubbish flowing about around reducing the barriers to downsizing, more effective use of the housing stock, freeing up larger homes for families, this policy is nothing more than an opportunity for those with the most expensive homes and those with the most excess wealth to load up their superannuation accounts so they can get even more public subsidies in the form of superannuation tax concessions for their estate planning. That's because, to quote again from the AFR:

While the downsizer contribution has broad application, people likely to benefit most will be self-funded retirees who have a level of income and assets that precludes them receiving any means-tested social security …

There you have it, plain and simple. What we are debating now, brought in by a so-called Labor government, is a public subsidy for the wealthy.

It's exactly the sort policy we'd expect from Mr Morrison and a Tory government. And do you know what? That's actually exactly what it is: Mr Morrison's Tory policy brought forward by the Australian Labor Party, the so-called great friend of the working and less-well off in our society. The Labor Party who will not increase the rate of Newstart but who are quite happy indeed to bring in a massive public subsidy for the already very wealthy. This was Tory policy when Mr Morrison introduced it as Treasurer in 2018 and it was Tory policy when the eligibility age was reduced from 65 to 60 while Mr Morrison was Prime Minister. And it's Tory policy today, which is why, when the Australian Greens introduce an amendment in the committee stages to strike out this part of the bill, it will be voted down by—that's right, you guessed it!—the political duopoly in this country: the Coles and Woolworths of Australian politics. They will vote together to ensure that the rich get yet another public handout in Australia while the poor continue to struggle and starve because neither major party in the duopoly support a rise in the rate of Newstart.

This policy to provide yet more superannuation tax concessions for the rich, when the superannuation system already provides more public subsidies to the rich than it does to anybody else, is an absolute obscenity. And do you know what? It was announced by the former Prime Minister, Mr Morrison at the coalition's election campaign launch earlier this year. So here we are debating a centrepiece of Mr Morrison's bid for re-election—a key pitch by the leader of what the new Prime Minister quite rightly described as a 'rotten government', and it's being introduced by the Australian Labor Party. This is absolutely Alice in Wonderland stuff! The party of the workers comes in here with massive public subsidies for the extremely wealthy. How good, to quote Mr Morrison, is the Australian Labor Party? What did the self-styled Tory fighter, Mr Albanese, do when Mr Morrison announced this very policy as one of his landmark campaign policies in the election? He ate it up, didn't he? That's what Mr Albanese did, he ate it up. He ate it up really fast, because he didn't want to get wedged. How good is the Australian Labor Party?

We all know that Labor would never have come up with this policy on their own. But they are such a gutless shadow of their former selves that Tory policy is now Labor policy. Here they are in schedule 5 of this bill with yet another handout of public funds to the super wealthy and the very well off in this country, actually legislating Tory policy. Once again, like the stage 3 tax cuts, this is Mr Albanese adopting Mr Morrison's legacy.

I say to the Australian Labor Party: you need to find yourselves again. You need to have a good look in the mirror and find out exactly what your values are.