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

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (13:15): I appreciate that, Senator Bragg. You're usually pretty direct and straight to the point. On the new builds and the definitions, we have been clear that we will bring back those definitions.

The budget paper already sets out the core elements of a new build for the purposes of the tax changes. It says: 'A new build is a dwelling that genuinely adds to new housing supply and includes a new constructed apartment off the plan, a duplex constructed through a knock-down rebuild replacing a single house, thereby increasing the total number of dwellings.

Any residential construction on previously vacant land, a knock-down and rebuild, isn't a new build unless it adds to the number of dwellings. For example, two townhouses replacing one house and a substantial renovation isn't a new build if it doesn't increase the number of dwellings.' What we are consulting on, to bring back through the second piece of legislation, is the drafting of those principles into legislative content, and we will continue to work through those.

Senator Bragg, you will have plenty of time to apply scrutiny to those definitions. We're doing this to provide as much certainty on the implementation details on the government's tax reform as possible. In relation to the assessment of the budget and whether anything further has been done, the analysis that was done for the budget remains.

In terms of impact on renters, I think page 158 of BP1 should answer some of your questions. Box 4.4, 'Housing measures in this budget', talks through the additional 75,000 Australians that we expect will buy their own home over the next decade, driven by these reforms, and the new 30,000 homes that are supported by our investments in infrastructure. It goes through the impacts on house prices, I think, and the impacts on rent: The reforms are likely to have a small impact on rents, with an expected increase of less than $2 per week for a household paying the current median rent.

As we all know, that analysis is based on the reforms. We know there are many different factors that affect how the housing market operates. But we believe the analysis in the budget provides people with the information they need to understand how Treasury expects these reforms to impact across the economy.