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

Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (11:14): If you're wondering why the Fire the Liar campaign was such a hit, here it is: a dirty deal with the votes-for-sale Greens. This is something that the Prime Minister said 385 times he would not do. And to do what?

To delay much-needed reform to the NDIS in order to ram through new taxes—new taxes that he told us 50 times would not happen. That's 435 porkies by his own count. More spending and higher taxes, brought to you by Labor and the Greens.

It is the coalition of the socialists on that side of the chamber. Stalin would be proud. Keeping the money tap on for NDIS rorts and taxing anyone that has managed to start a business with their own sweat and blood to pay for it—the Australian people will not forgive these betrayals of trust.

They will not sit back and let Labor and the Greens destroy the future of their children. This country was built on the back of people that took risks. They took risks to start businesses, provide employment and reap the well-deserved rewards.

But for the socialists on the other side of the chamber any success or benefit that accrues to the risk takers and entrepreneurs are ill-gotten gains. All of the workplace relations are aimed at making it impossible to run a business. I should know.

I owned a business. I've dealt with the unions. I've had them come on to job sites and threaten to shut us down to strong arm us.

Labor doesn't just allow this, they encourage it. Labor doesn't care about union workers. It is for the union bosses and the Labor coffers.

But my brother and I dealt with all of this, worked hard and grew the business because there was a hope of reward at the end, a hope that I could provide for my wife and children, a hope that I could retire on my own terms after putting it all on the line every day. But this bill dims that hope for the next generation. It pulls up the ladder.

Kids will now have to contend with the fact that they give up to 47 per cent of their business to the government, a government that took no risk and put in no hours, no sleepless nights and no blood, sweat and tears. Every time you take away the incentives for people to take risks, we lose more money, more of our best and brightest and, with them, the jobs that they might have generated and the improvements to our way of life that they might have brought to this nation.

It kills what built this nation in the first place. Worse than all of this is the ridiculous rationale behind this tax grab—that they are doing this for the next generation, that it's about housing. I'm sure by now even Labor has seen the public outrage.

Surely even the Canberra bubble can't ignore the fact that Australians have seen through this spin, that this is just a big fat tax grab. You want to fix generational housing inequality? Why don't you stop blowing out your own immigration targets every year?

It's a novel idea, but how about not bringing in hundreds of thousands of people to compete with first home buyers. Maybe you wouldn't sell them five per cent deposit home loans right before you pull the rug out from under them, leaving them in a negative equity hell. The best lever to pull is the only lever that they won't pull.

That is because it is not about helping the young. It is about bringing in more votes. Even if we were to put all this aside, the new tax rules themselves are unworkable.

Calculations of CGT cost bases were complex enough. Capital gains calculations were complex enough. Now we have a situation where Labor are asking people to go and value all of their CGT assets as at 1 July 2027, treat that as a notional sale, defer that until the actual sale and use the new cost base to calculate the new sale based on indexation.

Then, once you've done all that, don't just add it to your taxable income like the good old days. It is now its very own category of income that gets its own special tax rate. I hope everyone at home was following that.

That's the world that Labor thinks is fair. It's fair for them, of course, not you. They've sold their houses.

Destroying the energy grid isn't cheap, you know. Lastly, I'm speaking to a bill today that is as dense and complex as it is stupid. We have never had major backflips rushed through with just a single day to consider them.

Of course, Labor doesn't need anyone to know what they're planning to do, only their coalition partner, their comrades, the Greens. As long as their good mates sitting next to them are happy, the rest of us can just suck it up. To the Labor MPs, I sure hope you've asked your base if they're happy with the Greens setting the agenda, but I doubt it.

This will cost you dearly, as it should. More and more Australians have hit their limit with this farcical government. They want to fire the liar.

Now just something else—I was at the opening of the War Memorial last night. I sat through a 15-minute welcome to country, but the national anthem didn't get played and there was one Australian flag there hidden up in the rafters. I think it's an absolute tragic disgrace.