Andrew Leigh
Fenner · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“I move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969 , it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation—Deco…”
“The proposed works were referred to the public works committee on 3 March 2026. Following its inquiry, the committee has recommended that the House of Representatives resolve that it is expedient to carry out the proposed works.”
“When the Leader of the Opposition became leader, getting rid of the first woman to head the Liberal Party, he said that his party needed to 'change or die'. I don't think many Australians thought that they were going to choose door 2, but that's what's happening right now. The modern Liberal Party won't change, and it's choosing to die.”
“From today, Labor is putting in place six months of paid parental leave. But the shadow treasurer has called paid parental leave 'a very bad scheme', saying: … that is not my choice that women have children; it's not. It's genetic. From today, Labor is delivering tax cuts for every working Australian.”
“But when asked the same question, the Leader of the Opposition said things like, 'I don't quite know what you mean by that question,' and, 'Do you want to define it for me?' and, 'There's all these vague words running around.' Asked seven times, he couldn't back in multiculturalism.”
“For small business, we've changed the R&D tax credit so that every dollar of R&D tax credit drives 20 per cent more research and development. For Australians who are looking to afford medicines, the health minister has been putting a record number of drugs through the PBS and driving record funding through our hospital system.”
The complete record
Every one of 364 lines we hold for Andrew Leigh, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 8.
“For persons other than corporations breaching the code, penalties of up to $500,000 will be available for contraventions. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will also be able to issue penalty notices of 600 penalty units to corporations for suspected breaches and 12 penalty units for other persons. For context, the value of a penalty unit is currently $330. These changes mirror those introduced by the government in 2024 into the Competition and Consumer Act for breaches of the food and grocery code. They also complement recent action taken by the government to increase other penalties under the Competition and Consumer Act, and other action taken to address the supply and price of fuel in Australia.”
“But this process is burdensome and slow, making it too inflexible to respond to the changing situations Australia may face during exceptional global or domestic circumstances. This new power will make it easier and faster for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and businesses to assist these vital efforts to respond to these circumstances, and future exceptional challenges the Australian economy faces. Schedule 2 to the bill increases the maximum penalties that can be imposed for breaches of the Oil Code of Conduct. Under this bill, the regulations will be able to impose penalties on corporations in the oil industry up to the greater of $10 million, three times the value they derive from breaching the code, or 10 per cent of their last year of turnover.”
“They allow the minister to make a declaration enlivening the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's powers when there is a foreseeable harm and allow decisive cooperative action with the business community to prevent or mitigate that harm early. In the current situation, this could include businesses working together to minimise fuel usage to keep supply chain costs low for them and their consumers. Instead of reacting to fuel shortages, we can allow businesses to find innovative and collaborative solutions to prevent shortages. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission already can grant authorisations, and has done during the current situation and past crises.”
“Under schedule 1 of this bill, the minister can make an extraordinary circumstances declaration in circumstances that pose a risk to the Australian economy, businesses and consumers, but which may fall short of a declared national emergency under the National Emergency Declaration Act. Once extraordinary circumstances have been declared, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will be able to exercise new, streamlined powers to enable coordinated responses to the crisis by businesses to complement the work of the government in protecting the Australian public and economy from the impact of the crisis. These new powers are pre-emptive.”
“We understand this crisis is adding to cost-of-living pressures, which is why we're more than halving the fuel excise, reducing the heavy vehicle road user charge to zero, putting petrol companies on notice by doubling the consumer watchdog's maximum penalties and ramping up enforcement and monitoring, giving businesses more leeway at tax time if they face fuel supply problems, and continuing to make it easier and quicker for small businesses to access credit when they need. It. This bill supports that action by creating new powers for the Treasurer and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to permit coordinated action during a crisis by increasing the maximum penalties that can be imposed for breaches of the Oil Code of Conduct.”
“Our government is helping businesses and manufacturers bolster supply chains through interest-free loans via the National Reconstruction Fund, along with incentives to shift more freight onto trains and ships. Targeted support for electric vehicles, more charging stations and heavy vehicle reform will strengthen our long-term fuel resilience, while the Cleaner Fuels Program and reforms to the low-carbon liquid fuels market will help Australia produce more fuel at home and support future demand. We are reserving 20 per cent of gas exports for Australian users to increase domestic supply and lower prices, and we are advancing the Future Made in Australia agenda through the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve and investments in domestic smelting and manufacturing.”
“I present the revised explanatory memorandum to this bill and move: That this bill be now read a second time. Since the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran began on 28 February, our government has been responding to the biggest oil shock in history with a comprehensive plan to secure more fuel, strengthen supply chains, build resilience and take the sting out of prices. The government's Strengthening Australia's Fuel Resilience package will deliver more fuel for drivers and industry, more fertiliser for farmers and more fuel security for the economy, with its centrepiece being immediate fuel supplies and a permanent Australian fuel security reserve to ensure we have the fuels and fertiliser we need.”
“For Australian readers, he offered something rarer than reassurance; he offered enlargement. He made us more attentive to language, memory, landscape and the uneasy bargains of history. He asked us to look harder, and he trusted us to follow. David Malouf gave Australia books of enduring beauty and seriousness. I'll never regard Brisbane without thinking of his writing, just as I can't go to a Western Australian beach without thinking of Tim Winton's. Malouf leaves a body of work that will continue to unsettle, console and instruct. His sentences will keep their music. His characters will keep walking through our minds. Brisbane, because of him, will always be a little more mysterious, a little more luminous and considerably better written.”
“He could draw on Homer and Ovid, then bring the reader back to a Brisbane street—a patch of light, a bird in a yard or a silence between friends. He reminded us that erudition is most powerful when it travels economy class. In his Boyer Lectures , David Malouf spoke as a public thinker as well as an artist. He understood that literature is one of the ways that society tests its moral imagination. Good writing asks us to inhabit the minds of others. In a democracy, that's a habit worth cultivating. For Australian writers, David Malouf helped prove that local material could carry the weight of world literature. He showed that Brisbane could speak to Rome and Troy, that the subtropics could converse with antiquity and that Aussie sentences could hold their own anywhere.”
“In An Imaginary Life , he imagined Ovid hears the plea to 'cross the river into your empire'. That sentence could stand as an invitation to read Malouf himself. His books ask us to cross borders of language, class, race and time. The honours were many. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, became a fellow in the Royal Society of Literature and received the Australia Council award for lifetime achievement in literature. Yet Malouf wore distinction lightly. He had the rare ability to be both grand and modest—a difficult combination among writers and almost an endangered species among politicians. There was wit in him, too, the wit of precision rather than performance.”
“Remembering Babylon , shortlisted for the Booker Prize, gave Australian readers one of the most searching accounts of colonial fear, belonging and estrangement. Ransom retold the journey of Priam to Achilles, finding in the ancient story a modern grammar of grief. David Malouf's genius was often to notice the moral force of a small gesture—a meeting, a memory, a boy looking from a window, a king kneeling before an enemy. He knew that civilisation is built not only in parliaments and courts but in acts of recognition. In Remembering Babylon , Gemmy Fairley's fractured cry: Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object!— is comic, painful and politically exact. In a handful of words, Malouf catches the absurdity of empire with a human being trying to save himself by turning himself into property.”
“He inherited a literary landscape in which Patrick White had shown that Australian fiction could bear the weight of myth and metaphysics. Yet David Malouf found his own light, which was quieter, more sensuous and more hospitable to ambiguity. Among later writers, Nam Le and Christos Tsiolkas have written of him with evident admiration. That's a mark of a major writer. He gives other writers permission to become more fully themselves. David Malouf's major books now form part of the architecture of Australian letters. Fly Away Peter found in the First World War a terrible collision between beauty and violence. The Great World , winner of the Miles Franklin Award, traced friendship and survival through war and its aftermath.”
“As the son of a Lebanese Christian father and an English mother descended from Sephardic Jews, Malouf had an instinctive sense that identity is a set of crossings rather than a sealed compartment. Australia, in his work, became a country of inheritances and unsettled borders. His fiction understood that people carry histories they can scarcely name and that a nation is made as much by what it half remembers as by what it declares. Malouf's range was astonishing. He was a poet, novelist, essayist and librettist. For most writers, that would be a crowded CV; for Malouf, it seemed the natural result of having more than one instrument in the house. He wrote in conversation with the great dead and the vividly living. A n I maginary L ife returned to Ovid in exile; R ansom returned to Homer.”
“I rise to honour David Malouf AO, one of the great makers of Australian literature, who died on 22 April 2026 at the age of 92. Some writers describe a nation and some enlarge it. David Malouf did both. He widened the imaginative map of Australia and did so with a prose style so exact that many of his sentences seemed less written than tuned. Born in Brisbane in 1934, Malouf grew up in a city often treated by the southern capitals as a place of verandahs, heat and provincial manners. Malouf turned it into one of the great literary landscapes of Australia. In Jo hn no , Brisbane became a place of memory, desire, comedy and loss. It gained weather, depth, danger and metaphysics. The jacarandas acquired a syntax.”
“I present the following documents: Australia's 2026 National Defence Strategy—Speech to the National Press Club—Richard Marles MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, 16 April 2026. Department of Defence— Integrated Investment Program 2026. National Defence Strategy 2026.”
“The proposed works include the upgrade and replacement of site-wide infrastructure, including services, roads and footpaths, living-in accommodation, working accommodation, and training, health and wellbeing and logistics facilities. Redundant facilities will also be demolished. The estimated total cost of the works is $889.2 million, excluding GST. The proposed works were referred to the Public Works Committee on 2 September 2025. Following its inquiry, the committee recommended that the House of Representatives resolve that it is expedient to carry out the proposed works. Subject to parliamentary approval, construction is expected to commence in mid 2026 and be completed by mid-2033. On behalf of the government, I would like to thank the committee, ably chaired by the member for Makin, for undertaking a timely inquiry.”
“I move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969 , it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Department of Defence—Blamey Barracks Kapooka redevelopment project, Kapooka, New South Wales. Following the presentation of a report by the joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works to both houses of the parliament, the House of Representatives is now asked to resolve that it is expedient to carry out the Blamey Barracks Kapooka redevelopment project.”
“This bill is about continuity and confidence. It keeps responsibility for Australia's business registers with ASIC. It prevents outdated provisions from disrupting registry operations. It supports the linking of director IDs to company records. And it gives ASIC the practical powers needed to run a modern, secure and reliable registry system. In doing so, the bill will help businesses trade with greater confidence, assist regulators to detect misconduct, provide appropriate transparency and make it easier for Australians to know who they are dealing with in the corporate marketplace. Full details are contained in the explanatory memorandum. Debate adjourned.”
“That earlier consultation helped answer practical questions, including the process companies would use to update director details. Stakeholders strongly supported the program and proposed design during consultation. Following consultation, only minor technical changes have been made to refine the operation of the bill based on analysis and feedback. These changes do not affect stakeholder rights or obligations. Stakeholders recognised the importance of reliable registry information for market confidence and effective regulation. They also highlighted the need to balance transparency with privacy. That feedback helped shape the bill. The Legislative and Governance Forum on Corporations was consulted in relation to the bill and has approved the measures as required under the Corporations Agreement 2002.”
“It repeals legacy provisions from the former Modernising Business Registers program that are scheduled to automatically commence on 1 July 2026. If left in place, these provisions would transfer responsibility for the registers away from ASIC, despite the program having ceased. Allowing these provisions to commence would disrupt registry operations, delay reforms such as director ID linking, increase costs, and undermine the stability of the current uplift program. Schedule 3 must be enacted before 1 July 2026 to prevent those automatic commencements and provide certainty for registry operations. Treasury consulted publicly on an exposure draft of the bill from 12 December 2025 to 10 February 2026, following targeted consultation in 2024 on the director ID linking model.”
“It expands ASIC's ability to correct inaccurate information on the registers, disclose information in the public interest subject to safeguards, and deregister companies in limited and serious circumstances where false or misleading information has been provided. These are practical powers for a digital registry system: fixing errors, protecting people at risk of harm, responding to fraud, and stopping company records from being misused in scams. Most of these powers commence shortly after royal assent, enabling ASIC to support the next phases of the uplift program. Some elements commence from 1 July 2027 to align with when systems changes can be developed and implemented. Schedule 3 is a technical but critical component of the bill.”
“It limits ASIC's ability to run a modern digital registry, respond to privacy and security risks, and provide efficient services to users. Schedule 2 enables ASIC to interact with users through expanded electronic communications, reducing reliance on paper based processes and supporting more efficient regulatory engagement. The bill also strengthens privacy and security settings by allowing ASIC to better manage access to registry information, including the ability to redact or restrict sensitive information where privacy or safety risks outweigh the benefits of disclosure. Schedule 2 also strengthens integrity and enforcement.”
“These safeguards help ensure individuals are aware of their directorships and provide an avenue for those who may be unaware of, or coerced into, an appointment to take appropriate action. The core requirement for companies to lodge director ID information with ASIC is intended to commence from 1 July 2027. This timing allows ASIC to prepare its systems and gives companies and directors sufficient time to understand and meet their obligations, supported by transitional arrangements aligned with ordinary reporting cycles. Schedule 2 provides ASIC with a targeted set of new registry powers needed to effectively administer Australia's business registers. The existing legislative framework was developed for an earlier era.”
“This does not create a new standalone reporting regime, but integrates director ID information into processes that companies already follow. Linking director IDs will make it much easier for the public, businesses, regulators and journalists to verify identities and trace relationships across corporate entities. This will reduce the risk of fraud and identity misuse, help tackle illegal phoenix activity, and support a fairer marketplace. Schedule 1 also includes targeted integrity and compliance measures. These include mechanisms to maintain data accuracy, proportionate enforcement tools for ASIC, and director notification and consent measures at the point of linking.”
“It helps distinguish between people with similar names, trace directors across companies, and make it harder for someone to disappear behind a chain of corporate entities. The regime was designed to support action against misconduct, including illegal phoenix activity. But director IDs are currently separate from the ASIC companies register, limiting the transparency and integrity benefits of the regime. Schedule 1 strengthens the regime by enabling director ID information to be linked to, used within, and published on the ASIC companies register. Companies will be required to provide director IDs to ASIC through existing registration and reporting processes, including at company registration, through annual reviews, and when director details change.”
“Schedule 1 strengthens director ID requirements to support linking director IDs to the companies register. Schedule 2 provides ASIC with targeted new registry powers to effectively administer the business registers. Schedule 3 stabilises the registers by repealing legacy provisions from the former Modernising Business Registers program that would otherwise automatically commence on 1 July 2026. The director ID regime has applied since 2021 and is administered by Australian Business Registry Services, part of the Australian Taxation Office. Since its introduction, three million directors have obtained a director ID. A director ID is a unique identifier that stays with a director over time.”
“Those provisions would transfer responsibility for administering the relevant business registers away from ASIC and into the registrar framework established for the former Modernising Business Registers program. That registrar is currently the Commissioner of Taxation, with registry functions supported through Australian Business Registry Services within the Australian Taxation Office. That transfer of responsibility away from ASIC would significantly disrupt registry operations, destabilise the uplift program, and delay key reforms, resulting in increased costs and uncertainty for businesses and the community. This bill prevents that disruption. It ensures responsibility remains with ASIC and provides the powers needed to administer and update the registers effectively. The bill contains three schedules.”
“The program is tracking on time and on budget, and is already delivering tangible improvements for users, including new and streamlined digital services. The next milestones include improved company search services, new online company registration services, and the linking of the director identification number, or director ID, regime to the ASIC companies register. These reforms will make ASIC's registers easier to use, harder to misuse, and more useful for anyone trying to work out who stands behind a company. To keep this program on track, urgent legislative change is required by 30 June 2026. If this bill is not passed by that date, multiple legacy provisions from the former Modernising Business Registers program will automatically commence on 1 July 2026, even though the underlying program ceased in 2023.”
“In 2023, following an independent review, our government took the decision to cease the former coalition government's Modernising Business Registers program, which experienced a five-fold cost increase and did not deliver its intended outcomes. In its place, the government endorsed a targeted approach to stabilise and uplift the registers—focused on delivering practical improvements, strengthening integrity, and updating services in a measured, modular and achievable way. Since the cancellation of the former government's Modernising Business Registers program in August 2023, our government has committed substantial funding to this work, including funding to support the next stage of delivery. This program is being delivered by ASIC and is known as RegistryConnect.”
“That information gives businesses, consumers, journalists and regulators a reliable starting point for due diligence. It helps a contractor decide whether to take on a job, a creditor work out where to send a notice, and a regulator connect the dots when a director shifts from one corporate entity to another. These records are trusted because they are established under statute and administered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), an independent regulator. They provide the basic corporate map that allows markets to function, regulators to act, and the tax system to operate with confidence. However, the systems that support these registers rely on ageing legacy technology that has been underfunded for many years.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill delivers urgent and practical reforms to strengthen Australia's business registers. These registers are critical national infrastructure that underpins trust, transparency and confidence across the economy. Australia's business registers sit behind millions of ordinary decisions. Before a supplier extends credit, before a bank lends to a small business, before a landlord signs a commercial lease, or before a customer checks who is behind a company name, these registers help answer a basic question: who am I dealing with? The registers hold essential information about companies and their directors. They record whether a company exists, where it is registered, who the officeholders are, and how the corporate identity can be traced.”
“Australians shouldn't need a magnifying glass, a law degree and the patience of a saint to buy an everyday product or cancel a subscription. Markets work best when business success comes from offering a better deal, not designing a better trap. This bill helps ensure that, in Australia, firms prosper by serving consumers, not by outsmarting them. I commend the bill to the House.”
“We're revitalising national competition policy, backed by the $900 million National Productivity Fund to break down commercial and industrial planning and zoning barriers, to deliver more houses by removing barriers to the uptake of modern methods of construction and to build a more seamless national market for workers and goods. I thank stakeholders, including business, industry groups, consumer advocates and legal academics, for their engagement. Lastly, I want to thank again all those involved in the development of this bill, including officials from the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The expertise and care shown by officials across the Australian Public Service have ensured these reforms are robust and balanced.”
“We've increased funding for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to tackle misleading pricing and unfair practices. We've raised the maximum penalties under the Competition and Consumer Act from $10 million—when we reached office—to $100 million or three times the benefit gained by the breach or 30 per cent of turnover. This ensures breaches can no longer be dismissed by businesses as a mere cost of doing business. Our government is scrapping non-compete clauses for workers earning under $183,000 to make it easier for people to move to a better job.”
“Good businesses shouldn't pay a price for doing the right thing. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will play an important role in implementation. It'll provide practical guidance so businesses understand their obligations clearly and early. The intention isn't to catch businesses out; it's to set clear expectations supported by clear guidance so firms can comply with confidence. That certainty benefits everyone, firms and consumers alike. These reforms sit within a broader competition and consumer agenda. Our government has delivered the most significant overhaul of Australia's merger laws in half a century. We're strengthening the unit pricing code and cracking down on shrinkflation so Australians can clearly see when product sizes fall and prices don't.”
“They do not tell businesses how to market their products. They simply ensure that key information isn't obscured, that cancellation isn't obstructed and that competition takes place on its merits. As set out in the decision impact statement, this package of reforms covering the general prohibition on unfair trading practices, subscription protections and strengthened drip pricing rules is expected to deliver net benefits to consumers and the economy by targeting conduct that causes the greatest harm while keeping compliance costs proportionate and manageable for business. This bill is about drawing a clear line between fair competition and unfair manipulation. Most Australian businesses, especially many small businesses, already operate this way. For them, the changes will be modest.”
“They were the Consumer Policy Research Centre, the Consumer Action Law Centre, CHOICE, the Financial Rights Legal Centre, Mob Strong Debt Help, the Consumer Credit Legal Service, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the Consumers' Federation of Australia, Energy Consumers Australia, Financial Counselling Australia, Financial Counselling Victoria, the Justice and Equity Centre, National Seniors Australia, Way Forward, West Justice, AMES Australia and the Western Australia Consumer Advocacy Network. The sheer breadth of support reflects a shared conclusion: these reforms respond to persistent, well-documented problems in everyday transactions. The bill responds in a careful, proportionate, balanced way. These prohibitions don't ban advertising. They don't ban fees, subscriptions or innovation.”
“For Australians, that harm is experienced in very practical ways: time wasted navigating complex processes, fees revealed late in a transaction, subscriptions that are easy to sign up to but difficult to exit and a growing sense that markets are structured to wear them down. Over time, that erodes trust, and, when trust falls, competition and productivity fall as well. That assessment is not contested among those who see these markets up close. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission supports this bill, informed by its enforcement expertise and its work across consumer-facing markets. On the day the bill was introduced, 17 consumer organisations welcomed it, including national consumer advocates, financial counsellors, legal services and community organisations.”
“Together, the bill ensures that consumers are treated fairly and that honest businesses, including small businesses, aren't disadvantaged by competitors who rely on tricks and complexity rather than value and service. Some in this debate have questioned whether these reforms are necessary, but the evidence before us is clear and consistent. Years of research, consultation and enforcement experience show that there are gaps in the current law. Certain practices may not be clearly misleading and may fall short of the high bar of unconscionability, yet they still distort decision-making and cause real detriment to consumers. These are practices that quietly pressure, confuse or obstruct consumers, often through design, ensuring deception.”
“I thank members who have contributed to this debate: the members for Page, Melbourne, Kooyong, Fisher, Maribyrnong, Mallee, Holt, Moreton, Griffith, Whitlam, Sturt, Forde, Barton, Bennelong, Hasluck and Brisbane. The breadth of the contributions really reflects the passion that so many members feel about cracking down on unfair trading practices, subscription traps and drip pricing. It reflects that energy, particularly on this side of the House, directed towards making the Australian economy more productive, more competitive and more dynamic. The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 strengthens the Australian Consumer Law in three important ways: by banning unfair trading practices, by addressing subscription traps and by strengthening drip pricing protections.”
“We had more than a doubling in the house-price-to-income ratio. No wonder young Australians are mad that they can't break into the property market. It has taken a Labor government to act on boosting supply, working with states and territories to overcome unnecessary regulation on an abundance agenda but also working to ensure that we have the right tax settings—fair tax settings that fund a tax cut for every working Australian and ensure that our tax system is fairer and the incentives are there for people who want to take advantage of negative gearing to invest in new-build homes. This is a budget for all Australians and a budget that tackles the central issue of housing affordability in Australia.”
“Even Scott Morrison, former Liberal Treasurer, when asked, 'Does negative gearing need to be reformed?' replied, 'There are excesses.' Dom Perrottet and Rob Stokes, sensible Liberals from New South Wales, have made exactly the same case. What we are doing is responding to a huge run-up in house prices relative to incomes. Unlike the shadow treasurer, I'm not afraid to have written a book or two and to be able to quote from those books. In Battlers and Billionaires , I crunched the numbers, looking at how house prices have moved relative to the earnings of the average worker. If you go back to the 1980s, the typical house cost four years of average earnings. It then ran up to five or six during the nineties and then to seven in the 2010s. In the 2020s, buying the typical house took the typical worker 11 years of earnings.”
“He went on to say: In short: if you work hard to get ahead, you get hit hard; if you live off assets, you don't. Senator Kovacic has said: We should not be afraid to consider tax changes, whether they be capping the number of properties that can be negatively geared … We've heard from the member for Groom, who said: I think there are some real issues we need to address. I'm open to a discussion on CGT The former member for Menzies, who held it when Menzies was a seat held by the Liberal Party, said this year: Current tax settings tilt incentives toward investors, particularly in existing stock. They reward bidding rather than building … The Liberal Party should lead with this: cap negative gearing for established dwellings at one property per investor, while allowing the deduction for up to five newly constructed homes.”
“I remember sitting here in this House when Joe Hockey gave his valedictory speech, and he said in that valedictory speech: … negative gearing should be skewed towards new housing so that there is an incentive to add to the housing stock rather than an incentive to speculate on existing property. Well, Joe, we're doing exactly that. We've heard calls from the member for Canning, who, in response to the question, 'Is this why you're also open to negative gearing and capital gains tax changes?' said: This is a new era … I just think we need to overhaul the whole system. And we've heard from the member for Goldstein, who has said: … the tax system is screwing over young Australians. Instead, it favours well-off, established interests against those trying to get ahead.”
“Well, the benefit to the top one per cent cumulatively has been around $700,000, so these are policies whose benefits are more than 50 times larger to the top one per cent than they are to the median income earner. What these tax reforms do is fund a working Australian tax offset for everyone—not just for the fortunate few but for every working Australian who earns a salary. That's why the Grattan Institute has referred to this as 'the budget we've been waiting for'. It's a set of reforms which respond to the Economic Reform Roundtable last year, and it's a set of reforms that respond to calls that have been issued across the political spectrum.”
“We're seeing very clearly this week who the coalition is fighting for. We know from analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office that the top 10 per cent get three-quarters of the benefits of the capital gains tax discount and about 40 per cent of the benefits of negative gearing. The Grattan Institute has crunched the numbers to ask the question: what has been the benefit of these policies to the typical income earner since the year 2000? They estimate that the typical income earner has benefited to the tune of about $12,000, cumulatively, over the last quarter century. What about the top one per cent, though—those now earning over $800,000?”
“It responds to calls that experts have been making for decades for reform on capital gains and negative gearing. You will still be able to negatively gear a new home, but you won't be able to negatively gear an existing home if you buy it after these measures take effect. That approach, of course, is the approach that we take with foreign investors. Those on the other side of the House support it when it comes to foreign investors. They will happily argue why foreign investors should only be able to buy new built homes—because we're asking them to add to housing supply. But somehow they walk away from that principle when it comes to negative gearing, and the idea is exactly the same: if you want to benefit from negative gearing, we want you to benefit the whole community by adding to the housing supply.”
“With not a word on real estate, it was a report that suggested that putting in place a 50 per cent capital gains tax discount would turbocharge investment in innovative firms, and we immediately saw the result of that. The impact was principally felt in the housing investment sector. Previous to that, net tax paid by landlords was positive, but it very quickly turned negative, and, in most of the period since those changes, we've seen landlords lose on net some $4 billion to $10 billion a year. Landlords in Australia have become among the biggest recipients of tax handouts. It has disordered investment decisions. The incentive now is to overinvest in loss-making assets and to invest largely in existing properties. Four out of five investor loans are for existing homes. This budget changes that.”
“They keep on saving for a deposit, but house prices are soaring out of reach. And it's not just young Australians; it's their parents and their grandparents that are repeatedly getting in touch with me and so many members on this side of the House, saying we need to do something to boost homeownership. We have the most ambitious plan on housing supply of any government in recent decades, but we're also, through this budget, tackling the challenges in the tax system. How did we get here? Well, it's the combination of two policies. In 1936, Australia moved to allow taxpayers to deduct interest losses against their salary. You can't do that in Britain. You can't do that in the United States. And then, in 1999, the Ralph review was handed to the Howard government.”
“In the interwar era, about half of Australians owned a home, but, by the time you got to 1966, thanks to the Curtin, the Chifley and, yes, the Menzies government, the homeownership rate had gone up to two-thirds. Yet, what we've seen over recent years is the reversal of that great Australian dream. We've seen the Australian homeownership rate falling now to a 60-year low. We've seen the abandonment of what used to be a great principle of the Liberal Party, just as the Liberal Party members in this House have abandoned so many principles of their party. At street stalls and town hall meetings, teachers, tradies, nurses talk to me about their sense that it's become too hard to buy a home in Australia, that the statistics out there in the community are what they're feeling in their own lives, as homeownership soars out of reach.”