Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 2) Bill 2023. It is a bill that amends several acts and introduces budget decisions of the government, including in relation to changes to superannuation, in relation to the taxation treatment affecting primary producers and in relation to housing.

What we've seen from this Labor government, given effect by the budget, is broken promises to the Australian people—in particular, Labor's pre-election promises not to introduce new taxes or changes to superannuation. In the budget we saw Labor massively increase the burden on our trucking industry. The trucking tax, which will be implemented over the next three years, will put an additional $1.6 billion on the industry which carts every single product from our ports to people, and from our producers to ports. The cost of every single item is going to go up as a result of this Labor government's decision to tax the trucking industry over the next three years—an absolute shame. With the cost of fuel going through the roof, the inability to find drivers and the cost of maintenance and spare parts going through the roof, to put an additional $1.6 billion over these small and medium enterprises, in the main, is absolutely indicative of this government's inability to make a decision that puts downward pressure on inflation and puts downward pressure on the cost of living.

Every decision they're making, whether it's on industrial relations or whether it is in agriculture—we saw in the recent budget a farming tax on our primary producers, when food inflation in this country is already at eight per cent and going up. Every mum or dad or senior Australian that heads to the supermarket and fills their trolley knows it is getting harder and harder every week to pay for that. What things do they take out of the trolley and what things can they keep in it? These are actual decisions families are making right now.

We haven't seen economic conditions like this for decades, and the Reserve Bank, as other senators have made clear, is having to do the heavy lifting to fight inflation. What should be happening is the monetary policy and fiscal policy of the government working in harmony, supporting each other. Instead, because of this government's failure to increase productivity, to put downward pressure on inflation, to decrease government spending instead of increasing, we've got an additional $185 billion being spent by the federal government over the next five years. That's what's happening; instead of not spending money, they've increased to the tune of $185 billion. So what does the Reserve Bank have to keep doing? Putting up rates, because we have to slow down the inflation dragon, as some are calling it. When you have a high inflationary environment and when inflation expectation becomes embedded, when people expect prices to keep going up, that is when the behaviour of people across the economy changes, and businesses think it's okay. And you know who gets hurt most in a high inflationary environment? Poor people. The government like to talk a big game about helping people, but every single decision they make across a whole raft of portfolios is the wrong one to deal with the pressures our economy is seeing at the moment.

The farmers tax, as I spoke about, was a 10 per cent tax on research and development and biosecurity levies, putting at risk the system of agricultural research and development levies begun by the Hon. John Kerin, God rest his soul. He would be rolling in his grave. This is an iconic program in this country where the taxpayer combines with agricultural industries to co-invest in research and development that's actually going to drive forward innovation right across agriculture, from our beef industry to our cotton industry and the like. They're taxing it. Not only does Labor's farmer tax put at risk research and development levies it puts at risk farmers' support for the system of levies of animal and plant biosecurity that was established by the Howard government.

During Senate estimates, the coalition was able to expose the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Minister Watt, as he was completely unaware about how the tax that he has implemented across his portfolio even works. Minister Watt had to apologise to the RRAT committee for misleading it in relation to how the farmer tax would apply. As we hear from industry, the new farmer tax will apply not only to research and development levies but to farmers' biosecurity levies as well. The risk here is that farmers seek to reduce their research and development levies or their biosecurity levies to minimise their exposure to Labor's tax, because we know that farmers actually get to vote on setting what those taxes should be.

Labor's superannuation reforms will also hit farmers and small businesses, who, under the advice of financial planners and advisors, put their properties into self-managed superannuation funds. Guess what? It's a pretty small farm that's under the superannuation cap—a very small farm. So a lot of primary producers in this country are going to be captured. They're now faced with the prospect that they'll have to pay tax on unrealised increases in the valuation of their properties, and, in many cases, farmland purchased for $500,000 15 years ago may now be valued such that the superannuation balances are notionally more than $3 million and are therefore going to be subject to paying tax. And that's not the lazy money that a farmer and their family will have in their back pocket. They're going to sell half the farm to pay for the tax. This is the level of unmitigated disaster this government seems to wreck as it gallops towards putting in ideological policies without consulting on the people that they are actually going to impact and affect.

The superannuation changes and their impact on our primary production sector in this country is a classic example of the Labor Party's inability to consult with particularly those of us that live outside of capital cities. But, increasingly, we're hearing right across the board about the level of consultation. This week we heard from primary producers who got on a bus at 1 am in my home state of Victoria and sat in this gallery to listen to this Senate refuse to allow a Senate inquiry into the impact of transmission lines on their livelihoods, on their communities and on their futures. I am digressing so don't draw me back. I'll go there naturally.

This bill also relates to the changes to housing measures. The biggest change to housing availability, as a result of the Labor Party's decision, is their reckless decision to increase arrivals by 1½ million without any plan of where they're going to live or the impact that will have on our already congested suburbs. No idea. They hadn't run a planning ministers' meeting. It was the federal minister's responsibility to call those meetings. They've been in government for 12 months, and they were yet to actually call the planning ministers from the states together to say: 'You know what? We have got a housing crisis.' You don't have to go very far from this place to work that out. It's right across the country. You'd think the first thing you'd do if you are the federal minister and had that power was get on the phone, get a meeting organised by July last year, get the state ministers around the table and start solving this problem on the supply side. How do we get the development pipeline going? How do we get land released and planning approvals done quickly so that we can get the houses built?

In the time we've spent debating the housing bill in this place the minister responsible has sat on her hands instead of actually calling state ministers together. It's not a hard job. I've done it before. It's very easy. You have a whole suite of departmental officials to assist you. You would think that would be the No. 1 priority if you were really interested in fixing the housing crisis, instead of having political arguments here with the Greens.

The first two budgets of the Labor Party have been shockers for the infrastructure portfolio, which I'm the shadow minister for. It has been 12 months of cuts and delays. It's fantastic to see the South Gippsland Shire Council in the chamber today. They have come all the way from a place I know very well—Leongatha, in my home state of Victoria. The ALGA conference has been on this whole week. Local councils from right around this country have come here and heard a lot from the Labor government about climate change adaptation. Have they heard much about how to repair the shocking roads, particularly in rural and regional communities?