Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026, Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Manager of Opposition Business) (16:09): I move: That the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 be referred to the Standing Committee on Economics for consideration and an advisory report by 30 December 2026. In question time today, it became really clear that the government doesn't know its own budget.

You can't believe it, but that is where we have ended up. The government does not know its own budget, so we need to refer the budget to the House Standing Committee on Economics for reporting back to this House. I'll just give you a few examples.

We asked the Prime Minister whether the budget increased taxes by $77 billion. He didn't know! And yet it's in his budget papers.

We asked the Minister for Housing whether she could define a new dwelling. She couldn't define a new dwelling. This is why this must be sent to the economics committee for a hearing—it has to be.

Last week we asked the Treasurer what was going to be carved out or what wasn't going to be carved out, and he could not answer. So it must be sent to the economics committee, because we need the government to understand its own budget. If it can't understand its own budget, what hope have the Australian people got of understanding it?

Of course they can't do that. So we have to make sure that this goes to the economics committee. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The minister, just— Mr Giles interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you have a point?

I'm sorry— Mr TEHAN: Absolutely: I'm finding all the reasons why this must go to the economics committee. We even asked the Treasurer—and the Treasurer has got enormous power, given this budget, to be, basically, able to use his own pen to decide how much of a tax cut they're going to give Australians. Two hundred and fifty dollars is what the budget papers say.

But, if he wants, the Treasurer can drop that figure down to zero—zilch; nothing. So this is why we need the economics committee to look at this. They have to look at this, because, if the government can't give a simple answer to the question of whether the Treasurer can take your tax cut away from you—from $250 down to zero—then, seriously, how can we trust the government on anything?

We've seen already that we can't trust them, sadly. So we have to make sure that the economics committee can fully look at this. We haven't even started yet on how you define a new dwelling.

We asked that question of the minister today. And do you think the minister had any clue on how to define a new dwelling or not? No, she didn't.

And this is quite complicated. If you don't know the answer to these simple questions then you have to be able to have them properly interrogated, and that is what we are seeking to do. It is now three weeks—three weeks—after the budget was delivered, and we still do not know the answer to these questions and many, many more.

What is now absolutely foolproof is that the government and the Treasurer and the Prime Minister made this budget up on the run. Mr Tim Wilson: I don't think ChatGPT was involved. Mr TEHAN: No, I don't even think ChatGPT was involved.

I think they just made it up on the run. We've had the government's own officials state the real reasons they've done things in this budget: they wanted more revenue. They wanted more revenue, because the government can't stop spending.

So we need to be able to ask those officials—to get them in and say: 'You've said that this was all about the government wanting more revenue. What is this going to mean? And what's the impact going to be on something like housing?'—because the budget papers show quite clearly that it's going to lead to less housing.

Mr McCormack: Thirty-five thousand in 10 years. Mr TEHAN: Yes—over 10 years, 35,000 fewer houses. Thanks, member for Riverina.

He's got the detail of the budget. But the trouble is that the government doesn't know any of this. So that's why we want to make sure that it can go to an inquiry.

We need an inquiry which will last a length of time, because there's so much detail the government doesn't know about its own budget that we've got to make sure that we can interrogate it. What would be wrong with sending a budget that is going to put $77 billion worth of more taxes on the Australian people to an Economics Committee inquiry? I would have thought that that makes a lot of sense, because on this side—I don't know what the government thinks—we think $77 billion is a hell of a lot of money, especially when you're asking Australians to dip into their pockets and pay that $77 billion.

We're already seeing that it's having an impact across the housing market. We're already seeing that it's having an impact across small business. I'm sure that even on that side the government members have seen those memes.

There's another question that we could ask in the Economics Committee inquiry: have you seen those memes, and do you think the Prime Minister wants to take 30 per cent of your business without even asking you about it? The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Resume your seat. The minister has the call.

Mr Tehan: Oh, you're not gagging again! Seriously, this is just to send it to a committee!