Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2026-2027

Ms MASCARENHAS (Swan) (18:38): It's useful to think about our housing crisis by way of looking at people. Sometimes that might be a friend who's not wanting to move out of their school catchment area so their child doesn't have to change school; maybe it's walking up to someone that's in the process of selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace and they have a six-month-old baby, but they're packing up their house because the landlord has put up the rent; maybe, as I saw, it's a lady playing the clarinet at the park next to the zoo because that's where she lives while facing homelessness; or it could be a FIFO worker who just cannot find a rental.

These are the many stories that we've heard all across Australia. What this budget is fundamentally about is fixing the system to make it fairer for more people. The ability to own a home should not be a privilege for some; it's a right that should belong to every Australian, and for too long that has not been the reality—not for the people that I represent in my community and not for Australians all across the country.

This bill introduces tax reforms that rebalance the system. They are reforms that back the workers, the first home buyers and the generation coming up behind us. For too long, the way that we tax labour income and the way that we tax investment in residential property has been out of balance.

The result over many years has been a system that has rewarded those who already own assets as opposed to those that are trying to acquire their first home. Since 1999, house prices have increased by more than 400 per cent. That growth has been twice as fast as the growth of incomes.

That is the gap that this generation has been asking the government to close. It has locked too many people out of ownership. Young people in our communities go to school, university or TAFE; get their first job; work hard; and do everything right, and they still find themselves locked out of the housing market.

As the Prime Minister said earlier today, the Labor Party is the party of home ownership. That's why the Albanese Labor government is coming at the housing challenge from every single possible angle. We're building more homes, we're making rent fairer and we're backing first home buyers, and now we're making the tax system fairer.

Let me start with supply because, contrary to what the opposition believes, you can't fix housing without building more of it. In my electorate alone, we are delivering 524 new social and affordable homes, and 487 of those are coming from the Housing Australia Future Fund, a fund that the coalition voted against—a fund they tried to stop. That fund is currently delivering homes in my community, but the supply alone is not enough.

That's why this budget matters. It reforms negative gearing. It reforms capital gains tax.

These reforms over time will help an additional 75,000 Australians enter the housing market over the next decade. This is a significant change, and it is a significant change of direction after a period of time in which home ownership rates have been decreasing. But this government is not just relying on these generational tax reforms to rebalance the scale.

We're already helping Australians own their own home in my electorate. In the electorate of Swan, 1,965 first home buyers have already bought their first home through Labor's five per cent deposit scheme. The week before last, when I was doorknocking in the electorate, I spoke to a young man who was grateful to get a 20 per cent HECS cut but also recognised that we're trying to make the housing system fairer for his generation.

And then I spoke to an older gentleman called Gary, who told me that he loved the changes and wanted Labor to go further. Last week, when I was in Canberra, I spoke to Shane North, who called the office to say that these are fantastic changes. What he explained is that he had worked hard and bought his own home and he wanted the same for the next generation.

It wasn't because he was a father, because he's not. He said that it was just fundamentally the right thing to do. That is my community, and I am proud to represent them.

I want to acknowledge that this kind of reform is not easy. With this in mind, the test of tax reform is not whether it pleases every commentator or billionaire. The test is whether the system is fairer as a whole.

To that test, this bill stacks up.