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

Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Leader of the Opposition) (11:23): Australians need cost-of-living relief after four years of Labor's raging homegrown inflation. They do need cost-of-living relief, with a broken economy that we saw yesterday, productivity down five per cent and the standard of living down almost four per cent. We see that the only thing left growing the economy is record levels of migration.

So we support Labor's $250 annual income tax cut. We support Labor's $1,000 deduction for work related expenses. These cost-of-living measures could have passed this parliament easily, with bipartisan support.

But tricky Labor and this tricky Treasurer have deliberately tied these measures to their toxic taxes, using a single piece of legislation, an omnibus bill, for their tax cuts and toxic tax increases. They could have put forward separate bills—one bill for tax cuts and one bill for tax increases—but they didn't, and what Australians see is a bad faith government playing a cynical, tricky game, because that's what they do every single day of the week.

Back in 2022, on the day he was sworn in—the day he was sworn in—the Prime Minister said: I look forward to leading a Government … that doesn't seek to have wedges … I reckon he's eaten a lot of wedges! But here is the truth: the Prime Minister's word is never his bond—never, never. Ramming this 'wedgislation' through the parliament without sufficient scrutiny is an act of political expediency—an act of political bastardry!

Labor is more interested in headlines than in helping Australians. That's what you get when you get a media adviser as a Treasurer. And Australians know it.

The coalition's resolve is clear: Labor's toxic taxes need to be axed. That's why we don't support Labor's legislation and we have proposed an amendment today. Now, for simplicity, there are two schedules we seek to retain in the bill.

We seek to retain schedule 3: the WATO $250 annual income tax cut would stay in the bill. We support it. We also seek to retain schedule 4—the standard $1,000 deduction for work related expenses.

We support that as well. However, we oppose Labor's toxic taxes on Australians. So there are two schedules we seek to omit from the bill: schedule 1, the CGT amendments—we don't support those, of course.

They punish aspiration—that's what they do. Again, we seek the removal of schedule 1 from the bill. We also seek to omit schedule 2, the negative gearing changes—we don't support those changes as contained in schedule 2.

The government's own budget papers, on page 158, explicitly admit that these combined toxic taxes will reduce housing supply and push up rents. The Treasury secretary has had to admit it, because it's there, plain, for all to see. We seek the removal of schedule 2 from the bill as well.

Put simply, we support tax cuts, but we don't support Labor's toxic taxes. As the government is aware, during my second reading speech on Tuesday I moved another amendment in my name, calling on the government to immediately pass laws to end Labor's automatic tax increases using bracket creep, and to implement a tax-back guarantee by indexing the personal income tax brackets to inflation.

If the Albanese government doesn't support our two amendments, it means two things: (1) Labor is imposing higher, aspiration-killing taxes on hardworking Australians; and (2) Labor is for inflation pushing more Australians into higher tax brackets, so they can take more of their income as tax. We know that's what they want. The ball is in Labor's court.

The Albanese government should stop its toxic taxes. The Albanese government should support the coalition's bigger and better personal income tax cuts.