PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr KENNEDY (Cook) (18:59): I rise to support the motion moved by the member for Bowman. There's a pretty simple test Australians apply to economic policy. After working hard all week, they have to decide whether to keep more of what they earn.
Can they afford to pay the power bill? Can they afford to pay the mortgage? Can they realistically pay for their kids schooling and for their groceries?
Will they have any money left over to save? Under Labor the answer has been no, increasingly, to that question. Their economic model is painfully familiar.
Take more, spend more, regulate more and then hand back a fraction through a subsidy. The coalition is offering something fundamentally different. The coalition's plan is to offer a tax cut for life.
That is an income tax you get every single year, and it gets bigger every single year. It is a lifetime tax cut that gets bigger every year for the rest of your life. That is what the coalition is offering because ultimately, ideologically, we believe that money is better off in the pockets of hardworking Australians and their businesses.
No-one knows better how to spend that money than you and the businesses Australians own. Unfortunately, this Labor government believe they are better able to spend that money than hardworking Australians. That is why CGT is going up.
That is why negative gearing is now taxed. That is why they went after an increased tax on super funds. That is why tax after tax of this government continues to go up through bracket creep and others.
Secondly, the coalition has a plan to create a sovereign wealth fund. We are sick of watching windfall gains that we get under mining, gas and resources being sucked up by this government and then spent on general revenue, be it through the growing Public Service or be it through out-of-control rorting in the NDIS or myriad other government programs. We believe 80 per cent of every extra dollar in windfall gains from gas, coal and minerals should be quarantined in a sovereign wealth fund put away for future generations.
These minerals and gases are in the ground once. They're dug up once. And we believe that future Australians should have this money put away for them so they can benefit and their kids and grandchildren can benefit.
That is the kind of discipline the coalition will bring to this budget. A resources boom should not just fund paying off government debt or paying off out-of-control government spending. It should help build a stronger Australia for generations.
Nowhere is there more long-term thinking needed than housing. We can't keep adding immigration to a level housing cannot keep up with. When population growth outruns housing, our roads, schools, hospitals and car parks bear the price.
Every Australian in a capital city feels this right now in their neighbourhood. They pay it in higher rents. They pay it sitting in traffic.
They pay it as they turn up to their children's schools and see demountables flooding the place. And they pay it when they can't find a park on weekends, because our infrastructure cannot keep up with the pace of immigration. You see it in waiting rooms.
Recently in Cook, in the Sutherland shire, it was repeated. One in 10 people can wait up to 24 hours for a bed. This is why the coalition will link migration to housing capacity, a perfectly sensible, logical solution.
We will establish a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund to unlock 400,000 homes by getting roads, sewerage, water and power there in the first place. Last week in the Sutherland shire, more than 250 people came together to protest against high immigration levels and overdevelopment. I congratulate every one of them.
They sent a message to Anthony Albanese and Chris Minns: enough! While the residents were protesting the Premier, the Premier was giving a talk, at $150 a head, about how he is going to jam the Sutherland shire with increasing development and no new infrastructure. The Sutherland shire has had enough.
They're standing up, and I'm standing up with you. Congratulations.