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

Senator NAMPIJINPA PRICE (Northern Territory) (19:34): Mark my words, this legislation will be remembered for what it absolutely failed to do. It failed to create the opportunities Australians need to get ahead—opportunity for the small-business owner, opportunity for the apprentice, opportunity for parents trying to build a better future for their children. Governments should ultimately be judged by the opportunities they create not for themselves but for the people they serve—the opportunity to start a business, the opportunity to learn a trade, the opportunity to buy a home, the opportunity to raise a family and the opportunity for the next generation to do better than the last.

That is the test this legislation should be measured against, and, by that test, it simply fails. We're now five budgets deep into the Albanese government. Australians are asking a very simple question: are we better off?

Australians are working harder and getting less in return. Homeownership feels further out of reach. The cost of living continues to bite.

Yet, instead of addressing those challenges, Labor has decided the answer is more tax. These changes are being presented as reform, but reform should make it easier for Australians to get ahead. It shouldn't make it harder.

For generations, there was an understanding in this country: if you worked hard, if you saved your money, if you invested wisely, if you started a business, if you took responsibility for your family, you could get ahead. That was the Australian promise—not a guarantee of success but a guarantee that effort mattered, a guarantee that responsibility would be rewarded.

Today, more and more Australians feel that promise slipping away. They are not asking for guarantees. They are asking for a fair chance, a fair go.

Australians are doing their part. They are working hard. They are taking responsibility and wondering whether the government is doing its part to.

As shadow minister for small business, I spend a great deal of time listening to business owners—the people who open the doors before sunrise, the people who invest their savings and their future into building something, the people who employ Australians and keep local communities alive. What I hear repeatedly is the same concern. For small businesses already facing rising costs, higher energy prices and workforce shortages, Labor's approach creates one more obstacle.

It makes business owners think twice before investing, before expanding, before taking on an apprentice, before creating opportunity. Small businesses create opportunity with every dollar they invest. Every apprentice starts with a business owner willing to take a chance on somebody's future.

Sadly, though, many businesses tell me they are simply keeping their head above water, and the consequences are already visible. More than 45,000 businesses have entered insolvency since Labor came to office. It's an utter shame.

Construction businesses continue to record the highest number of failures. These are the very businesses Australia needs to build more homes. At a time when Australians are struggling through a housing crisis of Labor's doing, the businesses we need most are under the greatest pressure, and the pressure does not stop there.

Next month Australians will pay another 32c a litre at the fuel bowser under the Albanese government, and fuel is not just another cost. Fuel moves our freight. Fuel grows our crops.

Fuel powers our machinery. Fuel gets Australians to work. Fuel keeps businesses operating and goods moving across this country.

When fuel costs rise, everything costs more. You cannot build a stronger economy by making everything that powers it more expensive. Small businesses feel it.

Farmers feel it. Families are feeling it, and Australians will pay more as a result. Now Australians are being asked to trust Labor again when it says these tax changes will somehow improve the economy.

But economic success is measured by whether Australians can get ahead, whether they can build a business, whether they can own a home and whether they can build a future for their family. Uncertainty does not only affect investment. It affects training.

Governments talk about skills, housing and productivity, but none of those things appear by magic. Somebody has to train the next generation. Somebody has to teach young Australians skills they will carry for life.

Builders, mechanics, manufacturers and contractors do that every single day. Every apprenticeship begins with an employer willing to invest in somebody else's future. Yet at the very moment Australia needs more skilled workers, Labor has cut $266 million from apprenticeship incentives.

At the same time, it found another $35 million for skills advice and bureaucracy. It's a familiar story. Australians are entitled to ask a very simple question.

Does this government value apprentices or bureaucracy more? You cannot build homes, strengthen industry or improve productivity without skilled workers, and you cannot create skilled workers without employers willing to train them. Every apprenticeship represents independence, a career, a future.

When governments make it harder for businesses to train apprentices, they are not simply reducing workforce numbers. They are reducing opportunity. That contradiction sits at the heart of this very legislation because, at its core, this debate is not really about tax.

It is about whether Australia rewards responsibility or punishes it, whether we encourage aspiration or make it harder, whether we create opportunity or put it further out of reach. I acknowledge my own Northern Territory within this debate. In the Territory, investment is not an abstract concept.

It is how businesses start, it is how communities grow, it is how jobs are created and it is how families build their future. In the Northern Territory, those investors are not faceless corporations. They are almost always your mums and dads.

They are police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers, public servants, tradespeople, small-business owners, the people who coach the local footy team and the people who volunteer in their communities and back the place that they call home. They are not asking for special treatment. They are asking not to be punished for doing the right thing.

In Australia, we should reward aspiration, not penalise it. They are Australians who have worked hard, saved hard and invested so that they can look after themselves in retirement and help the next generation to get ahead. In the Territory, where 99 per cent of businesses are small businesses, when small businesses succeed, our communities succeed, when small businesses thrive, our communities thrive and, when small businesses take on apprentices, opportunity is created.

That should be encouraged, not discouraged. These are people willing to work hard, take risks, build things, fix things, make things and take responsibility. The small-business owner, the apprentice, the parents saving for their children's future, the Territorian backing their community—these are the people who create opportunity, and that is the standard this legislation should be judged against.

Every apprentice creates opportunity, every business creates opportunity, every home built creates opportunity and every investment in a local community creates opportunity. Australia does not need more barriers to those opportunities. It needs more Australians willing to invest, hire, train and take risks.

Prosperity is not created by government. It is created by Australians who build, hire, invest and take responsibility. This legislation will be remembered for what it will fail to do.

It will fail to create more opportunity for Australians to do exactly that. That is what Australians and small-business owners have been telling us and trying to tell this government, and that is why the coalition opposes it.