Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026, Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026
Mr REBELLO (McPherson) (13:25): Let's be clear with Australians about what this parliament is being asked to vote on. The coalition is being asked to vote against an income tax cut, not because we oppose tax relief for working Australians but because the government has deliberately wrapped modest tax relief inside a new bundle of toxic taxes on businesses, on retirees, on family savings, on renters, on first home buyers and on young Australians who are trying to get ahead.
That's the choice that Labor have engineered. They've taken measures that the coalition supports and chained them to measures that we fundamentally oppose. They've put a tax cut in the same package as taxes that will make it harder to build wealth, to invest, to rent, to buy a home and to start and grow a business in this country.
That's not good government. That's political blackmail. This bill contains four key schedules.
Schedule 1 changes the capital gains tax regime. Schedule 2 changes negative gearing. Schedule 3 introduces the working Australians tax offset.
Schedule 4 introduces a $1,000 standard deduction for work related expenses. The coalition supports schedules 3 and 4. We support tax relief for working Australians, we support making tax returns simpler and we support Australians keeping more of what they earn.
But we oppose schedules 1 and 2 because they represent a direct attack on aspiration, on investment and on the Australian dream. What Labor has offered working Australians is a fraction of relief years from now—relief that will arrive after families have already been crushed by inflation, bracket creep, higher mortgages, higher rents and higher grocery bills.
By the time many Australians actually see the benefit, it will have been eaten away by the very cost-of-living crisis that this government has helped create. This government expects Australians to be grateful when it hands back a fraction of what it has already taken. The Prime Minister promised Australians again and again that he would not introduce these taxes.
He promised there'd be no changes to negative gearing. He promised there'd be no changes to the capital gains tax. He said all of that before the election because he knew that the Australian people would not vote for it.
And now here we are. This is a budget of broken promises. It's not intergenerational fairness.
It's intergenerational fraud. It punishes people who did the right thing, who worked hard, saved carefully, invested modestly and tried to build something for themselves and for their families. It punishes the self-starters of this nation.
Margaret Thatcher once put it perfectly when she said of British Labour that they would rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich. She understood that politics of envy does not create prosperity. It does not fund better services.
It does not lift people up. It drags people down. What was true of British Labour then is true of what has become of the Australian Labor Party now.
Those opposite do not ask how we make more Australians prosperous. They ask how can they punish those who are. They do not ask how to grow the economy.
They ask how to carve it up. That is the ideology behind this bill. Let me turn first to negative gearing.
Labor is dressing up these changes as though they are designed to help young Australians and first home buyers. That is false. The reality is simple.
When you tax housing investment, you get less housing investment. When you make it harder to provide rental homes, you reduce rental supply. When rental supply falls, rents rise.
It's not complicated. It's not ideological. It is economics 101.
Before a young Australian buys their first home, they rent. So, when Labor puts upward pressure on rents, it does not help young Australians. It hurts them before they even get to the starting line.
A young person who's saving for a deposit is already being hit from every direction. They're paying more rent. They're paying more for groceries.
They're paying more for electricity. They're paying more because inflation has run through the essentials of life. Now this government wants to reduce the number of rental homes that are available to them while they save.
That's not fairness; that is betrayal. Labor says that these changes will level the playing field, but what they're actually doing is pitting investors against first home buyers. They're telling investors, 'If you want to retain the benefit of negative gearing, go and buy new properties.' The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43.
The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.