Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Supporting the aspirational in our society is a public good. It is vital that public policy settings recognise this fact by encouraging this valuable human endeavour. The aspirational in our society are the builders. They are those of our fellow Australians who take risks, who often forsake, forgo and defer immediate wealth and opportunity to spend and enhance lifestyle to create future wealth and future opportunities. They engage in short-term financial pain now in exchange for future financial gain, which allows Australians to become financially self-sufficient and less welfare dependent. In this context, I welcome the Prime Minister ruling out the abolition of negative gearing.

Negative gearing has been part of our taxation regime for over 100 years. The reason it has been part of our taxation system is self-evident. The ALP previously experimented with its removal and reality hit heavily and fast, with less construction work and higher rentals, which had profound impacts, especially on those less well off. Suffice to say Labor reversed their ill-considered policy within a year or two. To seek to repeat this error and peddle it as new tax policy by the Leader of the Opposition shows the hollowness and policy bankruptcy of Labor. As is too often the case for the ALP, they have engaged in the shallowest of discussion, peppered with the regrettable language of envy and class warfare and, of course, in splendoured isolation of the facts and previous experience.

There are 840,000 of our fellow Australians who earn less than $80,000 per annum who engage in negative gearing, of whom 53,800 are teachers, 52,000 are retail workers, 39,500 are nurses and 22,600 are hospitality workers. Why aren't the unions sticking up for those workers? No wonder union membership continues to decline day by day. Seventy-three per cent of people who negatively gear invest in just one property, whilst 18 per cent invest in just two. In other words, that covers 91 per cent of those that negatively gear—hardly the wealthy, just hardworking Australians taking a risk, going without today, preparing for their tomorrow. They should be saluted and encouraged, not vilified.

Indeed, the state with the lowest levels of incomes in Australia, with a total population of about 515,000, namely Tasmania, has over 18,000 people forgoing the possibility of an enhanced lifestyle to provide for a better tomorrow. I, for one, salute their entrepreneurship and aspiration to be more self-reliant. So to the over 3,000 negative gearers in the electorate of Lyons, to the over 3,400 negative gearers in Braddon, to the over 3,500 negative gearers in Bass and to the 9,000 in Denison and Franklin: be assured the Liberals support your endeavours and your aspirations.

Let us be clear, in discouraging negative gearing there may be a short-term increase in tax revenue but with a devastating commensurate long-term consequence of increased welfare dependence and less tax taken from the construction sector. The attack on negative gearing, which has served us so well, is indicative of the negative politics of those from the left. Governments have an expenditure problem not a revenue problem. It is lazy and economically stifling to seek to milk the last possible drop of taxation, which simply stops hard work and saving for the future. I trust as a nation we will not need to relearn the consequence of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.