MOTIONS

Senator MULHOLLAND (Queensland) (17:13): I rise to talk about Labor's federal budget, which has delivered more tax cuts and a fair go to buy a home of your own and has strengthened Medicare. Let's start with the tax cuts. This budget is about delivering a tax system that is fairer for working Australians.

It's about ensuring that everyday Australians can get ahead so they are rewarded for their work and their effort. It's about helping more Australians to get ahead and get a foot into the housing market. This budget isn't about making the easy decision, to do nothing, which is the economic policy offered by Angus Taylor.

Labor is making decisions to build an economy that delivers greater productivity, and Australians understand that. Australians made the right choice at the last federal election, rejecting the Liberal Party. And last weekend, in the once blue-ribbon seat of Farrer, they again rejected the Liberal Party, because this is same party that went to the last election promising higher taxes for ordinary Australians.

It is the same Liberal Party under which wages stagnated for a decade. It is the same party under which productivity stalled. It is the same party under which bulk-billing rates were in freefall, making it more expensive and more difficult to find a doctor in Australia.

Instead, thanks to Labor, over 13 million working Australians will receive a tax cut in this budget. This is real money for working people, not shareholders, not trust beneficiaries, not investors with six properties—real Australian workers. We will not be lectured about taxation by those opposite, because the highest taxing government in Australia's history was John Howard's government.

That is not an opinion; it's a fact. The ATO has confirmed it. Treasury's own numbers have confirmed it.

Under Howard, the tax-to-GDP ratio hit a record 24.2 per cent in both 2004-05 and 2005-06. The top seven years of tax to GDP since the 1950s all belong to the Howard government. They don't like to hear it.

They don't like to be reminded of history. If you want to put something in a motion about the highest taxing record, you'd better have the receipts to prove it—every single one of them. Under Labor in 2011, the ratio dropped to 19.9 per cent, the lowest in 33 years.

Howard had the mining boom behind him, and we're not begrudging him that, but what did he do with all that money? He introduced the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount in 1999, and that single decision— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Colbeck ): Senator Smith? Senator Dean Smith: A point of order on a fact checking.

I'm wondering if Senator Mulholland has any other facts that she would like the coalition to check while she's giving her contribution? Of course, Mr Howard, a very successful prime minister, used revenue to pay down debt. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I'm not sure that that's a point of order.

Senator MULHOLLAND: They don't like to hear it. That single decision to introduce the 50 per cent capital gains tax in 1999 was the one policy choice that has done more than almost anything else in our economic history to lock young Australians out of homeownership. Since the discount was introduced, house prices have risen by more than 400 per cent in this country—wages, less than half that.

Homeownership among 25- to 34-year-olds has fallen by 17 percentage points. In the parts of Queensland I represent, homeownership is as low as 30 per cent, and in other parts it is as low as 20 per cent. For the first time since the Second World War, a majority of Australians in their 30s do not own a home.

This is not because they don't want to but because the Liberal Party's tax system has spent 25 years favouring those who already own multiple properties at the expense of those trying to buy their first. Logically, that had to change, and under the Albanese government, Australians finally have a government with the resolve and the ambition to do something about it.

The Howard government's capital gains tax discount was the can of petrol poured over the housing affordability bonfire, and negative gearing was the flame. Now Labor is putting out the fire that the Liberal Party started. This budget begins to fix it.

It gives people over a year's notice that the tax system is changing. From 1 July 2027, negative gearing for residential properties will be limited to new builds, incentivising investment in housing supply. Existing investors are protected.

The grandfathering is generous, and it is deliberate, because if you've made financial decisions based on options available to you, we don't want to change that. But it's time we acknowledged that the tax scales in this country have been tipped against younger generations, so, going forward, Australian taxpayers will stop subsidising investors to bid against first homeowners for existing homes.

The 50 per cent capital gains tax discount will be replaced with cost based indexation at a 30 per cent minimum rate. That means only real gains get taxed. If inflation ate your return, you will not be taxed on it.

If you made genuine, significant capital gains, you will pay something closer to what a nurse or a tradie pays on their wage. Treasurer Jim Chalmers rightly called it the most ambitious tax reform in 26 years. (Quorum formed) The government estimates these changes will help 75,000 more Australians buy their first home over the next decade.

Alongside the $47 billion total investment in housing, including $2 billion for enabling infrastructure to unlock 65,000 new homes, this is a serious, structural, long-term response to a crisis that has been building since 1999. But this is not about being anti wealth; this is about being pro fairness. There is a difference.

It means that, as a government, we can focus on the things that matter, like the largest investment in Medicare in its 40-year history. We know that our investment in urgent care clinics, increasing bulk-billing and cheaper medicines is already delivering right across the country, particularly in my home state of Queensland. In the seat of Longman, since Labor tripled our bulk-billing incentives, 15 more GP practices are now bulk-billing.

There have been more than 3.3 million cheaper scripts issued to the people that live in the seat of Longman, and there have been more than 57,000 bulk-billed visits to our Morayfield Medicare Urgent Care Clinic since it opened. In the seat of Groom, up on the Toowoomba Range, we've seen seven practices convert to fully bulk-billing practices. There have been over 3.2 million cheaper scripts issued to the people right across the Darling Downs.

I'm looking forward to joining Assistant Minister Emma McBride next month to officially open Labor's new endometriosis clinic in the suburb of Drayton in Toowoomba. On the Sunshine Coast, in the seats of Fairfax and Fisher there are 12 additional GP clinics that have started offering bulk-billing appointments since our bulk-billing incentives were introduced.

More than five million cheaper scripts have been issued on the Sunshine Coast, and there have been 5,800 visits to the Buderim urgent care clinic, a clinic that we promised at the last election, we opened in December and is already helping thousands of residents on the Sunshine Coast. But we won't stop there. We promised an urgent care clinic at Caloundra and we'll be opening that urgent care clinic next month.

We promised it at the election and we're delivering it already. Finally, in the seat of Wright five more GP clinics are now offering bulk-billing services thanks to Labor, with more than three million cheaper scripts issued to local residents. This budget locks in a record investment in Medicare and makes Labor's urgent care clinics permanent.

The Liberal Party can run their scare campaigns, but, while they do that, Labor will be out there delivering for the Australians who have been forgotten. That is the difference between this side of politics and the other.