Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is so arrogant in its willingness to break clear election promises that it probably shouldn't come as a surprise to us anymore when, once again, these broken promises are highlighted by the words that come out of the mouths of the ministers themselves. I was one of the first people that rose in this place to speak about Labor's disgraceful broken promise, the new tax on superannuation—the new tax on self-managed super funds—when they committed, during the election campaign, to no changes to superannuation taxation arrangements. Yet their change, their new tax on superannuation, is not only a terrible broken promise but it is also terrible broken policy that directly impacts farmers and small businesses. When asked a question about it this week in the House of Representatives, the minister said: 'As the member knows, the government is targeting tax breaks in superannuation to make them fairer, particularly for individuals with super balances of more than $3 million.' Tax breaks—no. This was the arrangement that was in place that farmers and small business owners relied upon when they put a proportion of the land of their farms in self-managed super funds or put the office building they worked out of as a small business person into a self-managed super fund. They did so under the very clear knowledge of the taxation rules that applied. This is not a tax break and never was. These were the rules that existed at the time, and people relied on those rules. Not only that but the disgrace of this is the taxation on unrealised capital gains, where you are forcing people to sell assets to pay tax on land that they hold or offices that they hold inside super funds.

Minister Collins went on to say: 'Individuals can choose how they pay their tax, either out of their superannuation account or from their own pocket.' Well, gosh, yes, that is exactly what we said about this terrible, terrible policy. They would have to find the cash out of their own pockets, out of their own income, to pay Labor's new tax on super, or they would have to sell assets from within their self-managed super fund. This is a disgraceful policy. It should never have seen the light of day. It was a clear broken promise. Not only that but it is a direct attack on those small-business people and those farmers who did what society asked them to do. They put money aside for the future. They put land into superannuation—part of their farms, the business that they operate out of—under the rules of the day in the knowledge that they were doing what society had asked them to do.

We hear the phrase often—that the small-business people and farmers are asset rich and cash poor. So, guess what? When farmers were making those decisions 15 or 20 years ago about what to put into superannuation, they did not necessarily have cash to put into superannuation to buy shares. What did they have? They had land. They had some of their land that they could put into a superannuation fund under the rules that existed, and try and prepare for their own financial future that way. And guess what? That land has appreciated. Its value has gone up over the years, and now many of those self-managed super funds are going to breach this threshold and have to pay tax. And guess what? The farmers, the small-business people, are going to have to reach into their own pockets to pay Labor's new tax on super. It is a broken promise, it is a disgraceful policy and it should never see the light of day.