James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

What we found out in question time today is that the Labor Party—and I'm going to quote here because I wrote it down—has a full book of tax reforms. That's what we found out in question time today. The question was asked by the shadow minister for Finance to the Minister for Finance, and the finance minister said, 'The Labor Party has a full book of tax reforms.' Now, of course, then I got up and asked for the minister to table this full book of tax reforms. There was a lot of blushing on the government's side of the chamber. Of course, this full book of tax reforms was not tabled, because the Labor Party are not telling the truth to the Australian people about their intentions for tax reform in this country.

When I say 'tax reform', I mean punishing hardworking Australians. Sadly, we have a Labor Party government that went to the last election promising—making that sacred promise, that sacred pact between a politician and a voter. When politicians say to the voters, 'We will deliver on this if you vote for us,' it's sacrosanct. But, sadly, the Labor Party have broken that bond between the Labor Party and the Australian people. Before the election, Prime Minister Albanese said:

… Labor in government will uphold the legislated changes to personal income taxes and maintain the existing regimes for negative gearing and capital gains tax.

That quote is so important because the Labor Party have not upheld the legislated changes to personal income taxes. They've actually changed them.

When you're dealing with someone and they're prepared to break a promise in relation to personal income taxes, that should give you a pretty fair indication they're going to break their promise in relation to negative gearing and capital gains taxes. This is less about the tax; it's more about the honour of those who go to an election and give a commitment to the Australian people and then breach that honour. We've got a Labor Party in power who will not give a commitment to this chamber, to the Australian people. Questions have been put to them: will you rule out any changes to capital gains taxes? What you get from the Labor Party is nothing. They're not ruling out any changes to negative gearing. You put a question to the Labor Party: will you rule out any changes on capital gains taxes? Nothing from the Labor Party. They're not ruling out changes to capital gains taxes.

What we're seeing and what question time today in the Senate has shown us is that the Labor Party clearly has plans to change negative gearing and plans to change capital gains taxes. As the finance minister said, they do have this full book of tax reforms. What we want to know is what else is in this full book of tax reforms. They've already tinkered with personal income taxes. They've changed the stage 3 tax reforms that were put in by the previous coalition government. But what are they actually going to do with capital gains taxes? What are they going to do with negative gearing? What about other taxes?

Senator Canavan asked what they're going to do in terms of taxes that particularly impact rural and regional Australia. Once again, no denial from the government that they would be making such changes. What that shows everybody, in the minute that I have left, is that the Labor Party have declared war on aspirational Australia. What we've seen is a Labor Party who have bypassed the Hawke-Keating government and bypassed even the Whitlam government. They've gone back and said, 'We are going to declare a war on aspirational Australia,' because that is what the Labor Party have done since they've come to power. We see the power they're giving to union barons. We see the power that they're giving to the union thugs to enter workplaces. This is a government that exists solely for the political benefit of the union movement and the Labor Party. They do not exist to help modern Australia. They do not exist to help those who are suffering under a cost-of-living crisis—a cost-of-living crisis that this government did not talk about last year at all. It was only over the Christmas break that they started—