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

Mr REBELLO (McPherson) (16:31): Labor are telling investors, 'If you want to retain the benefit of negative gearing, go and buy new properties,' and at the same time state governments across the country are encouraging first home buyers into those same new properties through stamp duty concessions and first home buyer grants. So investors and first home buyers are being pushed into the same segment of the market at the same time.

They will compete against each other for the same limited supply, which means that prices will be bid up, builders will face more pressure, and young Australians will again be told to run faster on a treadmill that Labor has made steeper. Many of these state based schemes are operated by Labor governments. So how can the Prime Minister not understand that his federal tax changes will collide directly with state based concessions and grants?

Either they do not understand the market they're regulating, or they understand it and are proceeding anyway. Neither explanation should give Australians any comfort. This government is creating a generation of permanent renters.

Labor should have learned this lesson before because, in the 1980s under Treasurer Paul Keating, Labor tried to quarantine negative gearing, and it was reversed. Why? It was because the pressure on rental markets became impossible to ignore.

History has already issued this warning. The Treasurer should have listened to it, but this treasurer does not learn from history. He tries to rewrite it.

There's also a deep hypocrisy at the heart of this debate, because 20 out of the 22 members of the Prime Minister's own frontbench and the Prime Minister have used negative gearing to secure their own futures. They operated lawfully under the rules of the time. They made choices that many Australians have made to invest, to take on risk and to try to build financial security.

Now, we don't criticise them for that. But this legislation protects the right of the Prime Minister and his cabinet to continue to negatively gear their properties into their future. So Australians are entitled to ask these questions: Why is it good enough for Labor ministers to use these rules to continue to build their wealth for themselves but apparently too generous for future generations?

Why is it acceptable for those opposite to climb the ladder and then pull it up behind them? Those are the real questions here. The second major problem is capital gains tax.

Schedule 1 makes sweeping changes to the CGT regime. It replaces the 50 per cent CGT discount with cost base indexation and introduces a 30 per cent minimum tax on capital gains for many Australians, including founders, small-business owners and investors. At the top marginal rate, this means the tax man can claim nearly half of the gain.

The government did not take the risk. The government did not work the weekends. They did not sign the lease, put the family home on the line, hire the first employee, go without holidays, miss birthdays or lie awake at night wondering whether the business would survive.

But, when it finally works, Labor is turning up with its hand out. That is what this bill says to the self-starters of Australia. You risk it, we'll take it.

A well-known local brewery in my electorate wrote to me this week, saying: I can't sit and watch this pass without putting something on the record, so I've put pen to paper. The sale of a business is not a windfall—it is a long, illiquid reinvestment program that finally crystallises at sale. Privately-held capital-intensive businesses are, by definition, the ones with physical footprints in Australia.

They occupy industrial land. They employ tradespeople, machine operators, drivers, warehouse staff, and apprentices. They buy inputs from Australian agriculture.

They contribute to the productive capacity of regional and outer-metropolitan economies. They create value differently from purely digital or services businesses. These businesses already face globally uncompetitive energy, labour, freight, and compliance costs.

Margins are thin, returns are slow, and capital is patient by necessity. Policy settings that further reduce the after-tax return on productive reinvestment risk discouraging the long-term capital commitment these businesses require. In practice, many successful capital-intensive businesses are likely to exceed the small business CGT concession thresholds early in their growth journey as physical infrastructure and equipment are accumulated.

The 50% CGT discount has been, for this category, the only recognition mechanism actually available. Its removal would materially reduce the only recognition the tax system currently provides for the long-duration, illiquid, reinvestment-heavy nature of these businesses. But, as always with this treasurer, the devil is in the detail.

The Treasurer wants the parliament to pass the laws first and then trust him to sort out the details, including carve-outs later. That's not good enough, because Australians have learned the hard way that when Labor says, 'Trust us,' they should check their wallet. This is a government that's been consistent with only one thing—being elastic with the truth.

It said one thing before the election, and it's doing the opposite after. The Treasurer can dress it up in whatever language he likes, but Australians can see what's happening here. Labor has spent too much, taxed too much and borrowed too much, and now it wants the people who work, save and invest to foot the bill.

This is not the Australia my parents believed in when they taught me that if you want something you work for it, if you drop something you pick it up and if you're blessed with opportunity you make the most of it. That is the Australia I love, and that is the Australia that those on this side of the chamber love—an Australia where effort is rewarded, an Australia where government lifts people up, not locks them in.

I say this directly to the Prime Minister. I love this country. I love it for what it has given my family, and I love it for the promise it has carried for generations.

I love it because here, more than almost anywhere else on Earth, people have been able to make something of themselves through effort, through sacrifice and through belief. But that promise is not automatic. That promise must be protected.

That promise must be renewed, and it must be defended against governments that think that prosperity is something to be managed, divided and taxed rather than created, earned and shared. What has made Australia great is not envy. It's not resentment, and it's not the politics of dragging one person down and calling it fairness for another.

What has made Australia great is a culture of reward for work and reward for effort. It's the belief that tomorrow can be better than today if we work for it. It's the belief that a person should be able to start with little, build something, own something and leave something better for their children.

Our tax system should reflect that. This bill moves us in the opposite direction, and the coalition will not support that. We won't support that because the people that we represent—the individuals, the small businesses, the mums and dads, the investors, the families, the first home buyers and the renters—expect better of us, and they expect better of this government.

The coalition supports tax relief, and we have said that consistently. We support simpler tax returns, and we support working Australians keeping more of what they earn, but we won't be bullied into supporting Labor's toxic taxes. The day after the budget was delivered, the coalition vowed to axe Labor's toxic taxes and vote them down, and that's exactly what we will do.

If these bills become law under this Labor government, a coalition government will repeal Labor's toxic taxes, because Australians deserve better than a government that breaks promises and that punishes aspiration and then calls it fairness. They deserve a government that backs them. That is the clear message and the consistent message that I receive from people across my electorate when I engage with them back home on the southern Gold Coast.

Australians deserve a government that backs them. They deserve an Australia where the ladder of opportunity is not pulled up but strengthened for the next generation. That is exactly what those on this side of the House will fight for.

That is exactly what we will do. We will repeal these taxes. That is exactly what we on this side of the parliament have committed to do.

We oppose Labor's toxic taxes, and we resent this government for putting them through and dressing them up as something that, quite frankly, they are not.