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

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (12:00): Thank you to the member for putting her amendments. Of course, in the legislation before the House we are making the sorts of changes that the member has long called for to address a number of serious challenges in the system, which the member has long railed against. The idea that people don't have an opportunity to express their views doesn't stand up to scrutiny, particularly in relation to the member for Wentworth, who has been included over a long period of time in these sorts of deliberations.

On the specifics raised by the member, when it comes to income averaging, the reason that the Ralph review proposed removing averaging was for integrity reasons. When it comes to the indexation of losses, if we allowed that, that would mean that more people would sell and repurchase the same assets to offset other gains. That would disrupt markets and reduce the integrity of the system.

On the minimum tax, we're making sure that the tax rate that people face will be more in line with the rate that they faced during their working life and with the tax rate paid by most workers. These reforms will make the system fairer and more efficient. They mean people will be more accurately compensated for inflation, and they reduce the incentive to defer selling assets until it's most advantageous in tax terms.

For those reasons, we won't be supporting the amendments put forward by the member. The SPEAKER: The question is that the amendments moved by the honourable member for Wentworth be agreed to.