MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (15:49): This is a beat-up. This is a desperate attempt by the Liberals to distract from their plummeting fortunes in the polls. The Leader of the Opposition was on radio, and he was pleading for more time.
He said: 'I need more time. We can't turn around the tanker.' Mate, it's not a tanker—it is the Titanic and it is sinking fast for those on the other side. The Liberals, true to form, want to focus on what these tax changes are not about rather than what they are actually about.
These tax changes are the biggest shake-up in our tax system in a generation. They are about two things. The first is getting young people into housing—by far that is at the heart of the budget.
The second thing is that it is designed to put more money into people's pockets so that they can earn more and keep more of what they earn. Now, at five minutes to midnight, just as those tax cuts are about to hit the pockets of Australians, those opposite come into this chamber to lecture us, Labor, about tax reform. It is astounding to me that they want to defend the status quo.
They want to defend a status quo that is utterly broken for an entire generation of Australians, who have been locked out of housing, thanks to this disastrous interaction that was born 30 years ago between capital gains tax and negative gearing, which saw house prices explode beyond reach of most Australians. Back in 1999, the average first home buyer was in their late 20s.
Fast forward to now and the average age of a first home buyer is 34 to 36. Westpac reports that one in five of first home buyer loans are going to people over the age of 40. In other words, first home buyers are actually ageing in to housing, and that has a multitude of knock-on effects.
They're settling down later. They're having children later or perhaps even not at all, and then we wonder why our fertility rate is in freefall. Well, the changes that we passed last week are designed to reverse all of that.
We are seeing those changes now being backed in by the Australian people in polls, which are showing support for these changes, as difficult as they are. But generational reform does have unintended consequences and it does create grey areas that require remediation. Those legal grey areas are not unusual.
In fact, in 1999, when the Howard government passed the GST, which was the last time this country ever had significant taxation reform, it required over 100 amendments to 16 bills, and then it required nearly 1,000 amendments over the following six months to again clean up legal grey areas. This grey area, around joint ownership of an asset and what would happen to capital gains treatment of that asset in the event of a divorce or in the event of a partner dying, was identified by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.
We knew about it, and the Treasurer has been explicit. He has said that a fix is coming and it will be enshrined in legislation—just to put to bed the scare campaign. It is a shame that the Liberals always revert to form on this.
They look for loopholes and grey areas, they weaponise them and then they try and generate a scare campaign. This is true to form. They fall back.
It's a default position for the Liberals, and it's a shame that it gets backed in by the Nationals as well as One Nation—but One Nation deal themselves out because they have no solutions for this country, only slogans, division and fear. That's what they trade on. We as a Labor government are not here to defend the status quo.
We challenge the status quo. While people are under sustained cost-of-living pressure, we are responding. We are responding with tax cuts.
Australians will be receiving a tax cut on 1 July. This is one of five tax cuts that will deliver, in the next year or so, an additional $2,800 into their pockets. We also backed in an increase to the minimum wage.
For the first time ever, the minimum wage is rising to over $1,000 a week. That's the fifth time this Labor government has backed in wages. Only Labor governments back in wages and entitlements for workers.
Those opposites seek to undermine them. One Nation seek to destroy those entitlements altogether. We have also backed in payday super, which will see people on lower incomes have much higher retirement savings.
For example, a 25-year-old will retire with $10,000 additional at retirement. (Time expired)