Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection, Senator Grogan. You were the one who said you picked her. This is like the famous election night when one of the ABC commentators—

An opposition senator: Maxine McKew.

Maxine McKew, said, 'We've lost the election'—'we've'.

Okay. Whatever. You mixed your words and said the quiet part out loud. In any event, the message is quite clear: Australians beware. We on this side of the chamber have told you it ain't going to be easy under Albanese. It's getting worse, by the way.

People should have a right to keep their money. There are a range of reasons. I could put on a clinic now, with a whiteboard and a marker and laser pointer, as to why high taxes are a bad thing. Let's add inheritance tax to the list. Money belongs to those who earn it, and, in the case of those who've earned it, the right to pass it on to their family and friends or whoever they choose in a testamentary capacity is the same right, in my respectful submission.

We also know that this is not the land of unicorns and fairies. I remember vividly my time—it felt like 4,000 years or so—in local government when a very left-wing local government councillor told me that there were a lot of people who liked paying taxes. 'You know, Alex,' she said, 'there are a lot of people who like paying taxes.' My response to that was, 'Yeah? What's his name?' I don't know anyone—not anyone in their right mind—who does. That's because private individuals use their money much more efficiently than governments do.

This is another example of a grab for money that will just get thrown into a pot of bureaucratic waste. High taxes discourage work. People should have the right, under the system we have, to do what they will with their money. They have a testamentary right to do that. We are now seeing the creep towards an inheritance tax future for this country. Don't take my word for it; take the word of the incoming productivity commissioner, who wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald back in December:

Growing inheritances pose a quandary for our political leaders. Taxing inheritances makes a lot of sense from both an economic and fairness perspective. Taxes on inheritances drag on the economy less than other taxes, such as income taxes. Inheritances taxes also promote what economists call "horizontal equity"—ensuring that people in similar economic circumstances pay similar amounts of tax.

Question agreed to.