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

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (21:11): I rise in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026—which I learned today is affectionately known as TLAB—and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. In doing so, I acknowledge the work of my neighbour the Treasurer, the member for Rankin, who has led the Labor government's economic team to deliver a truly Labor budget and a budget which is aimed well and truly at the people that that the Treasurer and I represent in Logan and the people that that you represent as well, Deputy Speaker Claydon.

It is a budget which speaks absolutely to the aspiration of working-class people, who have for too long seen their wages go backwards, their taxes go up, and the great Australian dream of owning their own home disappear under, effectively, 30 years of coalition government. In fact, I think what this budget does more than any single act of this government is really demonstrate that at the heart of the philosophy of this government sits a rejection of the status quo.

The public has had enough. The public is not going to put up with a broken system anymore, and it takes a government with guts to do something about it. I think the philosophy of this government was summed up in two things that the Prime Minister said recently.

One was 'nobody held back and nobody left behind', but the other thing that he said, which really struck a chord with me—and he said it much more eloquently than I'm going to be able to say it—was: If you come across a broken system, what do you do? Do you just throw your hands up in the air and say, 'I wish I could do something about it, but I'm only the Prime Minister'?

I think it is exactly that sort of attitude that Paul Keating used to describe when he talked about the coalition as presiding over the Rip Van Winkle years, where the country just goes to sleep but slowly falls apart as the rest of the world leaves us behind. It takes a Labor government to really implement Labor values, which are about improving the economic conditions of working-class Australians.

The thing that I also note about this budget is that it is very much where tax policy and housing policy come together. It is absolutely a statement of the blindingly obvious to say that. The two bills here really deal with housing and taxation, particularly the relationship between housing and taxation.

The measures in these bills are not going to solve the housing problem on their own. That is going to be solved through the implementation of the most ambitious housing program that we have seen for generations—a $47-or-so billion investment to fix public housing, to create the infrastructure needed to build housing and to encourage incentives for first home buyers, such as a five per cent deposit.

It is measures contained within the whole of government's housing policy, which is designed to deal with the supply problem, which will ultimately fix the housing problems. But they will mean nothing if all we are doing is creating supply for investors to just buy up existing homes. Long before I got elected to this place, long before I even thought about running in the 2022 election, housing had very much been my No. 1 priority.

I believe strongly that there is no greater productivity measure that a government can take than to provide affordable housing. That's why I think in postwar Australia what we saw was an investment in public housing from both Labor and Liberal governments, I've got to say. Both Labor and Liberal governments believed that by investing in public housing, not just for the people that were desperately in need of housing but for workers, we were able to keep the cost of living down.

We were able to keep rents down. As a result, we were able to keep the pressure off wages, and that actually helped business as well. You saw car workers and railway workers and teachers and police officers and aged-care workers all living in public housing because it was actually part of the economic design of our system that you had public housing in order to keep the pressure off wages and to help business.

That's one of the reasons we had a strong manufacturing industry. If you look at the suburb of Elizabeth, public housing is built around the old Holden plant there because it was absolutely part of the charter of the South Australian Housing Trust to aid in the economic development of the state. We have seen over the last 30 years a complete rejection of those old Liberal Party values and a rejection of those Labor Party values.

We saw it under the Howard government, and it even further decelerated under the Abbott, Morrison and Turnbull governments, where they built something like 373 houses over the 10 years that they were in government. We saw—surprise, surprise!—a housing crisis 30 years later. So, while the measures in these bills will not go immediately towards fixing the central problem for first home buyers today, which is that wages have not kept up with housing, it sits within the government's wider housing strategy, and, frankly, it sits within the government's wider philosophy of just not accepting a broken status quo.

Look at health care, where the government, through one policy alone, tripled the bulk-billing rate, which more than doubled the number of bulk-billing clinics in Forde overnight back in November. It enacted a policy to keep the cost of medicines down, with PBS medicines at $25. I learned today that, had that policy not been in place, people would be paying $50 for those medicines.

It takes tough decisions. This money really just doesn't come from anywhere. This money has been directed to the priorities of this Labor government, but it's meant that we have needed to make tough decisions in the process.

And so it is that the measures around negative gearing and around the capital gains tax are designed to attack that particular problem where housing has become an investment vehicle rather than a family home, as we've seen since the capital gains tax discount at 50 per cent flat came in. We've seen values of housing rise of multiples of about four or five times the median wage to eight to 10 times the median wage.

It has become absolutely impossible for people to think about buying a home anymore. What we've seen as a result is homeownership rates, which were, for decades, steady around that 72 to 73 per cent of the population, fall to around 66 per cent of the population today. When you look at that age cohort between 25 and 45, they have gone completely off a cliff.

It is not good enough. We know it in our electorate. People are hurting.

I think the Prime Minister really summed it up well the other day when he said, 'It's hard to buy a house,' and there was an interjector from the other side who said, 'It's getting harder,' and the Prime Minister seized on that and said, 'Yes, it is getting harder.' There is a recognition in this government that the status quo is broken. We know it in our communities.

You know it when you look at the numbers. You know it when you sit down, like I did over the weekend, with a 65-year-old woman whose lease is about to run out in three months time and who is desperate to find somewhere for her and her 13-year-old dog to go and live. It's broken when you look at the numbers.

It's broken when you talk to talk to people. The underlying philosophy of this government is 'no more'. The status quo is not good enough.

These measures deal with the taxation treatments around housing as an investment, but they also deal with the other part of that problem—rising house prices compared to median wages, which is take-home pay. Today, we've seen, again, because of this government supporting a rises for minimum wages, take-home pay increase by 4.75 per cent for minimum-wage earners, which means, that since this government came to power, wages have gone up by $12,000 a year for minimum-income workers.

That is a 12 per cent real wage increase. On top of that, it is not just how much people are earning but how much people are able to pocket. Once the measures contained in this bill that build on the tax cuts over the last few years are in place, the average worker's income tax cut will be about $2,816 compared to 2023.

We are doing two things. We are trying to take the heat out of the housing market. As the Prime Minister says, we expect prices to continue to rise but at a moderate level.

At the same time, we are dealing with the other part of that equation—how much workers take home in their pocket. In some ways, the argument has been settled around housing, and it is very difficult now to hear cogent arguments from the other side about housing. They generally leave that alone, which I think is interesting for them, because they're creating a long-term problem for themselves again.

There are many reasons, including the good policies that we had, but the one mistake that the other side made was when the now opposition leader said that they would repeal our tax cut on the eve of the election. That was the moment where I actually thought: 'You know what? I've got a chance in Forde.' I just thought it was political as well as economic craziness to take that policy to the election.

I credit that as the single biggest mistake they made on the other side. I can't believe it. Not only are they prepared to make that mistake again by not supporting the tax cuts in this legislation—are they seriously going to go to the next election promising to give tax breaks to property investors?

I'm not sure they've really thought that through. In two years time, are all of the people, all of the first home buyers who are already starting to be advantaged by this policy—all of the people that can actually start to see this dream becoming a reality again—really going to vote for a party that is promising to bring in tax breaks for property investors? I don't know.

I don't know. I hope so, because I think it's going to cost them a lot of votes. I hope so, I guess, for my benefit—not to be selfish.

I implore them not to, for the sake of the community. You hear them talking about other things, like the member for Wide Bay mentioning that this is going to hurt people that are saving up, using shares as a strategy to save a deposit for a house, because a house is unaffordable for them, so shares become the only strategy. The irony in that is obvious to me, so I don't know why those on the other side keep bringing that up.

The irony is that house prices have got so out of control that the only way that you can use the 10 grand that you might have disposable, which you can't now invest in a house deposit—you say you have to put it in shares. That irony is obviously missed on them, but the economics is also missed on them. It's a fact they don't like to talk about, but, if you look at the last 20 years, if you retrospectively applied a system of indexation, most people would have actually done the same or better out of an index system.

I urge people to support this. I urge the opposition to have another think about this. I would hope that all their shenanigans in trying to refer it to a committee is because they haven't properly settled on a position, but, when they do, I urge them and the others in the House to support this bill.