Portfolio — 27 May 2026

Assistant Minister Peter Khalil used his second-reading contribution on Appropriation Bills No. 1 and No. 2 2026–27 to lay out the government's combined tax-reform and housing agenda, framing the budget as a package of hard decisions directed at workers, first-home buyers and small businesses [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s121]. The most structurally significant element was the capital gains tax reform: from 1 July next year the existing 50 percent CGT discount will be replaced by inflation-adjusted indexation, with a minimum tax imposed on realised gains — a design that the government argues restores tax to real rather than nominal gains [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s121].

Alongside that, negative gearing will be restricted to new residential builds, with existing investors able to continue gearing unchanged properties. On income tax, Khalil flagged upcoming legislation to introduce a $1,000 instant tax deduction and a $250 Working Australian Tax Offset, extending cuts beyond the budget's headline personal income tax reductions.

The housing cluster was substantial. Khalil announced an additional $2 billion in enabling infrastructure under the Homes for Australia plan to support up to 65,000 additional homes, lifting total plan investment to over $47 billion. The CGT and negative-gearing changes are presented as demand-side complements to this supply-side spend — the government's stated logic being that redirecting investor concessions toward new builds stimulates construction without inflating prices for existing stock.

On youth homelessness, Khalil committed $59.4 million to secure social housing for more than 4,000 young people at risk, citing a structural disparity: young people are 15 percent of those experiencing homelessness but hold only two percent of social-housing tenancies [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s121]. That figure is the clearest policy signal in the segment — it frames the $59.4 million not as a general housing measure but as a targeted correction to an identified allocation failure.

Small-business relief rounded out the address. Khalil detailed $3.5 billion in measures including permanent extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off, a two-year loss carry-back, loss refundability and expanded venture-capital incentives — each element designed to improve cash-flow and investment capacity for firms that cannot access equity markets.

The session drew on a single Hansard record, and no prior-context candidates were supplied, so cross-actor positioning on these instruments — particularly Opposition responses to the CGT indexation model and the negative-gearing restriction — is not available in this Note. Readers tracking the debate on those measures should note that gap.