QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:11): I just want to respond to a comment from Senator Grogan about there being a lot of hot air in this chamber about this topic. I wouldn't call it hot air in this chamber; I would suggest that it's white-hot anger in our community, and we are reflecting that, as it is our job to do, because every single day, over and over, we hear from people who are impacted.
Today I asked my question about important family heirlooms. I had my own father pass away a little over a year ago, and he, before he passed away, gifted me his own wedding ring. So it was a legitimate question.
That happened a year ago. What happens now? What happens to people who are in exactly the same circumstances as I am?
Do we go out and get a valuation for that item? What is the cost base for that item? Why should I even have to now pay, presumably, 30 per cent tax on that item after almost six decades?
Why should anybody else? That's just one small example. There are many other such examples that are perhaps more significant in value dollar-wise.
But that significance doesn't make it any different or any more stressful for somebody to understand what they need to do. What you have to realise when you're talking about how those same Australians are going to get a tax cut is that those Australians are going to have to think about whether they have to sell that asset at some point in order to ensure that they can pay any commensurate tax on that or any other assets.
This is the consequence—unintended, perhaps—of the terms of the agreement that the Albanese Labor government has entered into with the Australian Greens, and I think that is a really important thing for us to think about. Among the other things that we've heard about is that this wasn't even something that the Albanese Labor government wanted to do. They were only going to apply the removal of the CGT discount to residential investment properties, but Treasury told them to apply it to everything else, and now we have the Australian Greens dictating terms to them.
It's extraordinary—absolutely extraordinary. I think the other thing that's really important to note is that Minister Wong said that the Prime Minister has been upfront with the Australian people. No, he has not.
He has misled the Australian people, and that is why they are furious. He has misled them over and over again. We also have the Treasurer now coming out and saying that the tax treatment that previously applied to assets in relation to negative gearing and CGT will no longer apply to those assets post the death of one partner or the divorce of a couple.
Have a guess who that's potentially going to impact the most in relation to divorce? Women. They might have to think about whether they can actually afford to leave a marriage, perhaps an abusive marriage, based on the recalculation of what assets might be there, because, whether we like it or not, they are the calculations that women make out of necessity.
You should be ashamed. (Time expired)