PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (10:37): I don't often agree with the member for Cook, but, when he says that our prime minister is proud of his record, he absolutely is, and it's because we value supporting everyday Australian workers, people who work hard, as well as small businesses. They are the people who build and run our nation. We also happen to value making our tax system fairer so more Australians can realise the dream of owning their own home.
We value supporting investment and innovation and we value a strong and stable Medicare system, NDIS and other social security services that are there for when people fall on hard times. That's why, since coming into office in 2022, our approach to taxation has been to ease the cost-of-living pressures while maintaining budget responsibility. Let's look at our record starting from 2022.
One of the first things this Labor government did and one of our most significant tax decisions involved the stage 3 tax cuts. Originally legislated by the previous LNP government, the stage 3 tax cuts heavily favoured high-income earners. We thought that this was the wrong priority.
Labor's revised package ensured that every taxpayer still received a tax cut, but the larger proportion of the benefits went to low- and medium-income Australians instead of concentrating the largest gains among the highest earners. For example, somebody on $70,000 to $80,000 now receives a larger tax deduction than they would have under the original LNP plan.
High-income earners still do benefit, but it's not to the same extent as was previously proposed. This was a fairer distribution during a period of rising inflation, higher mortgage repayments and increasing household expenses. Beyond personal income tax, the government has also introduced measures designed to reduce multinational tax avoidance by increasing transparency and tightening rules around profit shifting.
The objective is simple: ensure large multinational companies are paying taxes on profits earned in Australia rather than moving those profits offshore to lower-tax jurisdictions. Another area of reform has been superannuation. First, we introduced the LISTO to ensure working Australians earning under $45,000 do not pay more tax on their super contributions than they do in their take-home pay.
We also announced changes so those with super balances above $3 million would be taxed at a higher concessional rate than had currently applied. We've also provided $3.5 billion in targeted tax relief for small businesses to boost investment, improve cashflow and support growth, innovation and productivity. These changes vary from expanding the CGT concession to all 2.7 million active small businesses, to making the $20,000 instant tax asset write-off permanent and to progressing the new, innovative business CGT concessions to support early stage investors.
In this year's budget, we have broadened our tax reform agenda. We did this because the tax system was broken and too many Australians were being squeezed out of the property market. Those opposite know this, but it was Labor who had the courage to do the right thing and to reform.
Before I jump into these reforms, I want to highlight that Australians will see two new tax relief measures: the $250 working Australian tax offset and the new $1,000 standard tax deduction. These measures will help households manage ongoing cost-of-living pressures. Back to the major reforms, tackling the moral failure of intergenerational wealth disparity and the emerging class structures where only inheritance rather than hard work makes homeownership possible was essential and bold.
Our government has changed negative gearing so that, from 1 July next year, tax benefits for residential property investors will generally be limited to newly built homes. Existing investment properties purchased before 12 May this year are fully grandfathered. This means current owners can continue using the existing rules.
These changes will encourage investment. There have been changes to our capital gains tax that replace the 50 per cent CGT discount with an inflation indexed system, and that'll be for most future gains from 1 July 2027. All of these changes are designed to improve housing affordability, reduce tax concessions that disproportionately benefit wealthier investors and redirect investment towards increasing Australia's homeownership and home supply.
We know those opposite want to keep Australians down. They came into this House to talk about aspiration—but aspiration for who? Under their policy it's aspiration for a few, not for all, and it's this government whose tax policies are reflecting our collective values as much as our economic priorities.