Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 2) Bill 2026
Senator BELL (New South Wales—One Nation Whip) (09:30): Why are we here today? We're here today, again, to fix a mistake from this hapless Albanese Labor government. We're here today to fix their widow tax that they legislated after everyone told them not to.
We all said: 'Your legislation is flawed, and in your rush to implement a big tax grab on the Australian people you're making a terrible mistake.' We warned you over and over again; you did it anyway. You rushed the legislation through, and now we're having to clean up the mess. People are dealing with the consequences.
I was listening to Senator Darmanin's speech—through you, Acting Deputy President—and I was very interested as to when they would get to the part where they would address the mistake, the widow tax. I believe we got to that when Senator Darmanin said that changes are being implemented to correct an issue where people lose their negative gearing tax exemptions in certain circumstances.
I think that's what the senator said. Those certain circumstances she's talking about are people dying. That's the certain circumstance that Labor is talking about.
They're talking about divorce. That is the certain circumstance that they're referring to. If someone dies and they have a wife or a husband, the legislation that Labor put in meant they would lose a tax exemption that would be grandfathered in.
That is the certain circumstance that we are here today to fix. Divorce. That's another certain circumstance, as Labor puts it, that we are here to deal with.
We all warned you that your legislation would essentially be increasing taxes on people getting divorced. We all knew this, and you did it anyway. Let us think about that.
They drafted the legislation, they introduced the legislation, they defended the legislation, and then despite being told what they were about to do—what everyone knew they were going to do—they passed it anyway. And it wasn't passed in an orderly process. They passed it like we're doing to this legislation today.
A motion was moved in the Senate to limit debate, to limit scrutiny and to rush it through. It's probably because they would hope that people didn't pick up on their mistakes. How else can you treat their actions?
People rush things through and limit debate because they want to limit scrutiny because they want to get away with making mistakes or sneaking things through. Again, we're doing it again today. This legislation that we're actually dealing with, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 2) Bill 2026—the fix for the widow tax wasn't initially in this legislation.
That was added in, and I suspect they've picked this bill because they desperately needed a Treasury laws amendment on which to attach this fix. They had to find a solution. They knew they'd screwed up.
So they've picked this one and said, 'We'll shoot that up the list and rush that through too.' Then, as part of the process for fixing the mistakes they caused by rushing everything through and trying to hide scrutiny, they've done a guillotine with many more bills attached to it, which are all going to be dealt with without debate and without scrutiny. One has to wonder: Why are we doing it again?
Why are we doing it like this? Why are we shutting down debate and blocking scrutiny? As we have seen with this legislation and with the widow tax, when you do this, Labor makes mistakes.
In their rush to grab your taxes—their desperation—they literally legislated a version of a death tax. That is what they have done. Today, we are here trying to fix it.
Let's look closely at this. The legislation they put in meant that, when somebody had a relationship change—a partner dies tragically or they get divorced—exemptions that exist for everyone else on their property would be eliminated because they were going to count that as the property changing hands. This is not some obscure circumstance that could not have been anticipated.
We know that because, I'll say it again, we all warned you that it was going to happen. People pass away, properties pass between spouses, marriages end, assets are transferred, and yet the Labor Party, writing the laws of the Commonwealth, managed to create a situation where the death of a husband or wife left the surviving spouse with a tax bill. It's something so horrendous that only this Labor government could have thought that was a good idea and could have sat down, written the bill, debated the bill, defended the bill and then voted on the bill.
They voted for their widow tax. The undertaker does their job, and then Jim Chalmers started his. That was the plan.
Now we are here, back in parliament, trying to put that band-aid over the bullet wound that Labor shot into the economy. This tells us almost everything that we need to know about the Albanese Labor government's economic competence. They start with the ideology.
They start with the plan to grab those taxes so they can spend them on their preferred ideological goals, regardless of who pays it. They just need the money in the budget. Then you rush the legislation, you hide the scrutiny, and then, if someone manages to pick up on the mistake or the trick that you've played, you'll go: 'We can deal with those consequences later, and we'll continue to gaslight the Australian people.
Perhaps we won't talk about the fact we legislated a death tax or a divorce tax. We'll just refer to people dying or getting divorced as a "certain circumstance".' It's just typical Labor spin. Imagine trying to diminish a person passing away, one of the most horrible things that can occur in someone's life, when their partner dies, and then just trying to claim that it's a 'certain circumstance'—geez!
Then we've got the further consequences just beyond that. Beyond a relationship, you have the consequences to the economy at large. When Labor does this, the consequences are very severe.
It creates a huge amount of uncertainty. When Labor is forced to amend or recall defective economic policy, it's the Australian public who pays. Its businesses.
It's individuals. Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have been running this country into the ground for years. They're running out of people to blame their mistakes on.
Soon, they'll have to look in the mirror and realise that the only people they should be blaming are themselves. Let's just reflect again on the sheer level of incompetence required to produce the result that we are here fixing today—passing legislation that failed to take into account the fact that people die and properties pass to spouses, failed to take into account the fact that marriages end, and assets get transferred.
These are not bizarre hypotheticals or 'certain circumstances', as Labor might like to refer to them. Yet Labor has passed its laws, defended its laws, and now here we are, back again, rushing to fix them. This is what happens when political objectives come first and competent legislation and competent process come second.
This is what happens when the Albanese Labor government treats Australian money as their own personal piggy bank, where they are desperate to do whatever it takes for them to grab an ever-increasing chunk of it. It is not your money. It is the Australian people's money.
The disregard that you have for the hard work that the Australian people do to earn that money—with your failure of due care and your failure of process—is quite shameful. Just look at how hard those opposite defended the indefensible, and they constantly do it. Let's look at Labor's housing policy.
They keep talking about how they're spending more and more money, they keep announcing funds and schemes, and yet prices keep going up. Let's look at the broader consequences of the big tax grab in their budget. Let's look at what they said in their budget.
The Albanese Labor government told Australians that the effect of these rushed changes they are putting through, which included the widow tax, would be that rents would not increase by more than $2 a week. They said that in their budget. Yet what do we see?
NAB modelling came out and warned that rents could rise by 20 to 30 per cent under this legislation. Immediately, the Albanese government rushed out trying to discredit them but, unfortunately, we have seen real estate bodies come out and say, 'No, it's very likely.' We actually can see in Jim Chalmers's own electorate, Rankin, that some properties are already increasing rents by close to 30 per cent.
One example I saw was a $240 increase in rent—after you said in your budget that the effects on rent would be less than $2 a week. If you were wrong about the widow tax, I think you're also wrong about this. I think the effects we're going to see on rent from your rushed tax grab will be terrible.
Labor's budget also said that its tax changes—this tax grab that included the widow tax—would actually not drop the price of housing. In your budget, you said that housing prices would continue to grow, just at a slower rate, and yet what have we seen? Prices are dropping across the country.
Labor are now arguing the merits of the price drop as opposed to arguing the fact that their budget was wrong. The budget said that house prices would continue to grow, just at a slower rate, but we are seeing the price of housing go down. So the question is: did you know that was going to be the effect?
Did you know that was going to happen? Did you mislead the Australian people, or did you get it wrong, just like you got the widow tax wrong? How soon will it be before we are back in this place having to fix those mistakes as well?
You said that rents would be going up by $2 a week. They're going up more. You said that the price of housing wouldn't go down.
It's going down. You said that you weren't doing a widow tax, but you did one. We are here having to fix your mistakes and, unfortunately for the Australian people, I think we're going to be here often, having to fix these mistakes for a very long time.
While Labor are fiddling with tax settings and announcing housing deals, you continue to add extraordinary population demand to the housing market. If people think back in time, prior to the first Albanese government, you actually promised to cut immigration. You actually said immigration would be lower, yet you delivered, I think, the record for net immigration in Australian history.
Then, when you start to slowly wind that back from its record peak—though it's still extremely high—you ask for credit, 'Give us credit for reducing net migration,' from, I think, over 500,000 people a year to something close to net 350,000 as you try to get towards net 250,000. Again, if we're talking about mistakes, if we're talking about misleading budget figures, nothing has been more wrong than your continued failure to predict immigration figures.
Every single budget, you have completely blown past your immigration targets. Your failure to manage some of these economic laws is only rivalled by your failure to manage our immigration system. Then we have to come back and fix it, and then, in the process of fixing it, you move a guillotine, you rush things through and you have a compounding effect—bad legislation, a rushed process and mistakes fixed with more legislation in a rushed way.
We're not going to have appropriate time to go through and do a proper committee stage on half of these things. We'll do our best. But that's not your intention.
Your intention is to take away our time. Your intention is to rush things through. It's hard to say what mistakes are going to be laid within the further tranches of legislation that are coming this week, but I'm sure they'll be there, and I'm sure it won't be long before we're all back here in this place arguing again about how to fix the mistakes you have made.
I think the Australian people deserve significantly better than this. They also deserve the truth. We're not here dealing with certain circumstances; we are here dealing with the fact that you legislated a tax on widows and legislated a tax on divorces.
It's not good enough.