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

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (18:47): Before coming into this place, I made my living out of being a builder and a construction lawyer, so essentially I was involved in the building industry for 35-odd years before I came in here. I like to think I know a little bit about the building industry and how it operates. This bill, this budget, is going to be an absolute disaster for the Australian economy.

It's going to be an absolute disaster for mums and dads. Over the weekend, I went home, and I had the Maleny Agricultural Show on Friday and Saturday. It was a beautiful couple of days, and I had so many people coming up to me and talking to me about how this budget was going to impact upon them personally.

There was not one person spoke to me favourably about this budget, and there's a good reason for that. When we look at some of the changes that this bill seeks to introduce—I'll touch on the first one: negative gearing. We've read this book before, and we know how it ends.

In the 1980s, Paul Keating got rid of negative gearing. What happened to rental prices in Melbourne and Sydney? They absolutely skyrocketed.

That so-called reform did not last two years before he had to capitulate on that. No-one, not one person on the other side—not even the Cabinet Secretary, with all of his brilliance as an economist—has been able to demonstrate to anyone in this country why what we will get today will be any different to what happened in the 1980s. They say that to keep doing what you've always been doing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

I think Einstein said that. But the reality is that we know how this is going to end. It's going to end in tears.

And, if rents go up, what is the one challenge that so many young people talk to us about when it comes to them buying a house? It's saving a deposit. It's a lot harder to save for your deposit if you're shelling out more money in rent.

I've seen some suggestions from different economists that say that these changes will increase rents in Sydney by $160 a week and in Melbourne by $130 a week. They're talking about potentially up to 20 per cent increases in residential rents. When young people are finding it increasingly difficult to save for a deposit, I don't know how these changes are going to make it any easier for them to get into a house.

This government has consistently said since the budget that this is all about 'intergenerational fairness'. Well, this has nothing to do with intergenerational fairness. This is a cash grab.

The reality is that this government has run out of their money and now they are coming after everyday Australians for more of their money. This is the biggest attempt to redistribute wealth in this country that certainly I have seen in my very short lifetime. Australians are angry, and they should be angry, because they weren't expecting this.

They were told repeatedly by this prime minister and his frontbench that there were going to be no changes to housing tax, no changes to superannuation and no changes to trusts. They breached that when they tried to bring in their tax on unrealised capital gains on superannuation funds, and eventually the Treasurer backed down, because I think he was the only person in the world who thought it was a good idea.

But then they continued. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer continued. Even before the 2022 election, they went to the election saying there'll be no changes—no changes to CGT, no changes to negative gearing, no changes to trusts and no changes to superannuation.

They said that again in the lead-up to the 2025 election, repeatedly. The Prime Minister castigated a journalist in a presser at one stage saying: 'How many times have I got to say this—50 times? There'll be no changes.' And yet here we are, less than 12 months after the 2025 election, when they've won a thumping majority—an absolute thumping majority—by giving those representations.

The member for Fadden is a colleague of mine as a lawyer. We would call those misrepresentations—actionable misrepresentations. It's a fair enough position for the everyday Australian to rely upon a representation made by the government of the day that they will not change something.

When the Prime Minister stands up, particularly when he says things like, 'My word is my bond. I'm not going to make these changes'— Mr Caldwell: A fraudulent misrepresentation. Mr WALLACE: Well, certainly a misrepresentation.

I took some time to look at alternative ways we could describe the changed position of the government on these tax policies. I'll run through them. You could be excused for using words like 'falsehood'.

They were untruths. They were—I think this is generous—inaccuracies. It was a misrepresentation, a fabrication, a distortion, misinformation, an incorrect statement, a misstatement, deception, a misleading statement, a departure from the truth, not accurate, not correct, at odds with the facts, inconsistent with the truth, lacking accuracy, a contestable claim, a questionable assertion, a dishonest claim, a false assertion, a plainly untrue statement, a patent falsehood, a gross mischaracterisation, intentional distortion, reckless disregard for the truth, egregious inaccuracy and an extraordinary misstatement.

It just doesn't stack up. It doesn't hold water. It's not supported by the facts.

It's simply not true, demonstrably false, clearly inaccurate, factually wrong, widely contradicted, easily disproven, an unsustainable claim, a broken promise, a reversal of position, a contradiction of previous statements, a backflip, a complete departure from earlier commitments, a rewriting of history, a convenient reinterpretation and a failure to be upfront.

Most importantly, it's a breach of trust. Australians have a right to believe it when their Prime Minister stands up and says, 'I am not going to do X, Y and Z; I am not going to change the laws in relation to capital gains tax, negative gearing, the taxation of trusts or superannuation.' Australians have a reasonable expectation that those promises will be kept, and they were not.

The Australians I spoke to at the Maleny Show are not just disappointed in this government; they are palpably ropeable. No-one voted for these toxic taxes. Bill Shorten at least had the courage to take these policies to a general election.

This government, despite having made those representations that it would not make these changes, has done exactly that. I think Australians have every right to feel deceived. The bill itself in schedule 1 introduces changes to the capital gains tax regime.

Schedule 2 introduces changes to the negative gearing regime. Schedule 3 introduces the working Australians tax offset. Schedule 4 introduces the $1,000 standard deduction for work related expenses.

The coalition opposes schedules 1 and 2, and we will fight these steps every single step of the way. If this government had any sincerity, ethics or moral clarity whatsoever, it would split schedules 1 and 2 from schedules 3 and 4. We would like to support schedules 3 and 4.

We in the coalition believe in lower taxes. We don't believe in the government's $77 billion worth of additional taxes. The government and the Prime Minister crow about this working Australian tax offset that will provide $250 a year.

But, in the same breath, they are taxing Australians $77 billion, and they're doing it under the guise, as I said, of so-called intergenerational fairness. But the Treasury's own documents reveal that these policies, if they become law, will result in 35,000 fewer homes over the next 10 years. There's not one sector of the general community that benefits out of this budget.

The older members of my community are up in arms because hidden in the bowels of the budget documents is this egregious provision which will rip away the concession for private health insurance holders once they turn 65. Now, Deputy Speaker Freelander, I'm not going to suggest that you're anywhere near that age group— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): How kind of you!

Mr WALLACE: but you and I both know that we were told when we were youngsters, 'Invest in private health insurance and look after yourself. The benefits will flow if you get sick. You get your choice of doctor.

You can go to a private hospital. You don't have to go on a waiting list. You don't have to wait for years to get a knee replacement or a hip replacement.' I'm not wishing that on you, Deputy Speaker.

But that's what we were promised. We were promised that those concessions for private health insurance would last into our later years, when we need it the most—and I'm getting there. A lot of my constituents in Fisher—it's an old electorate—are getting there or they're already there, and they feel ripped off.

A couple on gold private health insurance will be paying up to $1,600 a year extra in their premiums because of the decision by this government to rip away those concessions. Shame on this government. These are people at their most vulnerable, our aged—when they need private health insurance the most.

These people have been paying premiums for decades, and now this government says, 'We're not going to worry about that anymore. We're just going to change that. If you can't come up with the money, you go onto the public health system.' Well, that'll work well for the states, won't it?

That'll work well. It'll blow out waiting times. People in Australia are very angry with this government, and they have every right to be.