Sam Birrell
Nicholls · National Party · Australia
“They will put it maybe in New South Wales, Western Australia or Queensland, but they won't even consider Victoria. The taxes, the government interference and now this proposed work-from-home legislation just mean that Victoria is not an option.”
“The Mitchell Shire Council has identified the Kilmore-Wallan Bypass as one of the highest advocacy priorities, but the project has been languishing for years. The bypass is essential to improve safety, reduce congestion and return the historic town centre to local residents and businesses.”
“As I've often said in this place, it's a great privilege to represent the electorate of Nicholls in northern Victoria, one of the great food-producing parts of Australia. Recently, I had the great honour to go to a place called Legacy Packing in Cobram for the official relaunch of their state-of-the-art packing facility.”
“As at the last election, the AEC boundary changes meant that the town of Kilmore came into the electorate that I represent, the electorate of Nicholls, and Kilmore is one of the oldest inland towns in Australia. It's a beautiful place. It has bluestone buildings, a historic jail and a monument to Hume and Hovell.”
“A major agribusiness operator in northern Victoria who operates very successfully has told me: 'We're doing no more investment in Australia. The government's making it too hard.”
“We've also got high-tech investment in the dairy industry and the apple and pear industry and we have some new investments in the processing facility SPC, which is an iconic brand in Australia that processes peaches, pears, apples and also tomatoes.”
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“I'd like to recognise Emma Corrin, who is a 17-year-old athlete from the Cobram Barooga Canoe Club, in my electorate of Nicholls. In October this year, Emma is due to represent Australia at the ICF Canoe Marathon World Championships in Argentina in the under-18 junior women's short course event. This is a dream Emma has worked towards for years, and I saw a glimpse of that work when I visited the Cobram Barooga Canoe Club, and Emma took me out for a paddle on the Murray River. I was in the front of the kayak, and Emma was paddling behind me. When she paddled, it felt like I had a Mercury houseboat engine pushing us along, and, when she stopped, it got really hard!”
“My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Peak agricultural bodies are warning that farmers are exposed to massively high capital gains tax under your government's budget. The National Farmers' Federation has said: The concern is these changes could force families to delay succession, take on more debt or even sell parts of the farm just to manage the tax impact. Minister, will you guarantee Australian farming families that they won't be worse off under Labor's budget of broken promises and higher taxes?”
“The member for Gippsland asked a perfectly reasonable question about farm trusts tax treatment and CGT, and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry couldn't explain it. Thirdly, it's just unfair. People spend so much time and effort setting these businesses up. For the government to slug them with all of this capital gains tax is just not fair. As I said in this place yesterday, if the Treasurer and the Prime Minister want that money, they should be setting up the businesses. They should be helping out. They should be helping. They should be doing fencing on a farm. They should be pulling calves out of cows at three o'clock in the morning, planting fruit trees and doing all of that hard work that you have to do to get a capital gain. The government wants to treat them as a cash register. It's not good enough.”
“This budget has not gone down like a lead balloon. It has gone down like a lead zeppelin. The best way of describing the attempts of the Prime Minister and Treasurer to explain it would be 'dazed and confused'. There are three main reasons why it has gone down like a lead zeppelin. Firstly, it was predicated on a mistruth. The Prime Minister said 'for the 50th time' that negative gearing and capital gains tax were off the table. That was just over a year ago. Now, one year in, they've snuck it through the door. The Australian people do not appreciate that way of running an election campaign. You deceive them by saying you're going to do one thing and a year later do something completely different. Secondly, they can't explain it.”
“I think that principle is to support Australians living with disability to live with dignity, independence and, critically, opportunity.”
“We want a scheme that can support future generations, but we believe in protecting participants. We're not going to support changes that create uncertainty, undermine confidence or place vulnerable Australians at risk. We're going to engage constructively with this legislation. We're going to listen to participants, families, carers and providers—many of us have been doing that in our electorate offices across Australia—and we'll use the Senate inquiry process to properly interrogate these reforms. Getting the NDIS right is not just a fiscal responsibility; it is a moral responsibility. The parliament must ensure that, in seeking to secure the future of the NDIS, we go back and understand what its purpose was. What was the principle in setting it up?”
“That is an extraordinary power, and it should only be used in the most limited and justified circumstances. It is essential that this aspect of the bill is fully examined through a Senate inquiry, because parliament—it doesn't matter who's in government—has got to retain oversight of fundamental legislative changes. That's a really important principle that our democracy is based on. In closing, the coalition believes in a strong, sustainable NDIS. I thought it was a really good moment when the then Gillard government presented the NDIS legislation and then Tony Abbott, the then opposition leader, talked about the NDIS as 'an idea whose time had come'. Everyone believes in the principle and the intent, but we've got to tackle the fraud and waste.”
“The bill also introduces automated decision-making processes, and I know that might improve efficiency, but we've got to proceed with caution in relation to that. Decisions about people's lives cannot just be reduced to algorithms. It's a tool, and I get that the world is moving in that direction, but none of us really understand exactly where that's going to go. I think that, in relation to these sorts of things, we need to use it as a tool to assist decision-making, not see it as a decision-making tool in its end. What that needs is human oversight and safeguards. Finally, I want to address the transitional provisions, particularly the inclusion of what we call a Henry VIII clause. This allows rules to effectively override primary legislation for a limited period.”
“It really did drag on too long, and I don't think the then Labor opposition did everything they could to work with the Morrison coalition government to try and straighten some of this stuff out. But these measures are necessary because fraud and exploitation undermine the scheme and erode public trust. We must be clear that the problem is not the participants. The problem is the bad actors in the system, and they do exist and they should be called out and held to account. Not only are they abusing the Australian taxpayer by rorting our money; they are also taking away from a scheme that needs every resource focused on giving meaningful and true help to people with disabilities. We've got to target that bad behaviour and hold it to account.”
“Again, we've got to be consistent, but flexibility is essential, because every individual is different. As I stated at the start of this contribution, we've got to make people feel like they are people. They are members of our community with families and needs, not just numbers in a bureaucracy. We must ensure that decisions are made based on real needs, not on administrative convenience. There are elements of this bill that the coalition supports, particularly those aimed at strengthening integrity in the system: improved provider registration, stronger compliance powers and civil penalties for misconduct. I wish the parliament could have come together previously to sort some of this stuff out.”
“For some participants, this may improve structure and accountability, but for others it may create pressure, particularly where services are delayed or they're difficult to access. This is common in many regional areas, and participants should not be penalised because the system fails to deliver supports in a timely manner. In changes to travel arrangements, we've already seen some regrettable changes to the provision of necessary services for people in regional areas. Again, I believe it's sometimes Canberra not understanding how things work out in regional Australia, where your primary service provider might be a two-hour drive away. The bill also expands the minister's ability to set limits on what is considered 'reasonable and necessary'. This includes caps on funding, staffing ratios and frequency of supports.”
“While critical supports are preserved, these categories are not necessarily optional luxuries. They are supports that help people build independence. They are the supports that help people gain employment, and they can help people engage with their communities. I think that, in some ways, as a society and as a parliament, we've lost sight of that—that we wanted to give the support to people with disabilities to help them not just do nothing and manage their disability but get involved in the community, get involved in employment, if they're able, and build that independence. The introduction of fixed plan end dates and the removal of rollover funding is another significant change.”
“One of the elements in this bill that I have concern with is the restriction of supports to those directly arising from a person's primary impairment. That might sound like it works in theory, but in practice people do not live with a condition in isolation. Health conditions often overlap and complications can arise. Under this proposal, supports for related or secondary conditions may no longer be covered. Instead, people will be pushed back into an already stretched health system, and that risks creating gaps in care and, ultimately, it risks shifting costs, not reducing them. The bill also grants the minister the power to reduce funding across categories of supports. This includes areas such as community participation and capacity building, two really important parts of what the scheme set out to do.”
“That raises some serious concerns, because, for many Australians, reassessment is not just a bureaucratic process; it is a very stressful, very intrusive and deeply disturbing and distressing experience. We must ensure that people are not being forced to repeatedly prove their disability. The bill also tightens access to unscheduled plan reassessments. We are told this is necessary to control cost growth, but we must consider the other side of the ledger. For participants, flexibility is essential. People's circumstances will change and their needs will evolve. Unexpected events will occur in their lives. We've just got to be cautious not to lock people into plans that no longer reflect their lived reality.”
“In continuation, I want to turn now to the changes to eligibility and access in relation to the NDIS. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 proposes a new framework based on 'substantially reduced functional capacity', with new thresholds to be introduced in rules. On the face of it, consistency and evidence-based assessment are things we should support, but the reality is this: the thresholds have not yet been defined. We are being asked to pass a framework without knowing how restrictive it will ultimately be. We are told that, from 1 January 2028, new participants will be assessed under these new rules, while existing participants will be progressively reassessed.”
“The fact is that these are big, big reforms, and when you've got a big reform you have to have the courage and decency to take it to an election, and, unlike John Howard in 1998 and, to his great credit, the former member for Maribyrnong before the 2019 election, they did not have the courage and decency to take this to an election. That's the way democracy should work—you have an idea, you take it to an election and you get a mandate; you sell it, people who don't agree with you criticise it, and the Australian people make their minds up. But they weren't given the chance to do that.”
“But if you, the government, want to take all of the money from his capital gain as a result—or a huge proportion of it—then you go out and plant the trees. You take the risk that there might be a hailstorm and that, for two years, you will not get a crop at all. So, then, you spend the money and take the risk on putting hail netting up, which is a huge investment—you have to sit there and talk with your bank manager. Can I really do this? Well, you have to. There might be a hailstorm that will limit your income for two years. The Treasurer should go out and help put up that hail net. The Prime Minister should go and pick a bit of this fruit to understand what it's like to work really hard and take a risk in regional Australia.”
“On her behalf, I say to the Labor government: if you want to slug her heaps of capital gains tax 10 years after 2027, you go out there and drive around at three o'clock in the morning and pull calves out of a cow. You get up and milk the cows—and then again at 3.30 in the afternoon. You take the risk: you sit with your back manager and go build a barn, not knowing whether that risk is going to pay off. You do all the hard work: you build a rotary dairy and take the risk on that investment and then work it for 10 years. They're taking a massive risk and working very hard, and they don't need a government to come and treat them as a cash register because they've spent too much. And that is exactly what's happening. Matt's an orchardist in my electorate. He's going to have a capital gain, I hope, over the next 10 years.”
“Farming is hard enough, so I think they're allowed to use some advantages in the tax system to run a successful business that benefits Australia. But, under this government's approach, that rent is not considered primary production income. It means that the farm pays rent to itself, and that rent is now hit with a 30 per cent minimum tax. What are the arrangements for? Perhaps the agriculture minister can come in and clear this up and explain it during question time. What are the arrangements for business—for farming businesses? The way it stands at the moment is that, from 2027 onwards, this Labor government is slugging farming businesses on their capital gains. Monique is a dairy farmer in my electorate. She's doing a lot of really hard work.”
“Today, when the member for Gippsland, the shadow agriculture minister, asked the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry about whether there would be exemptions for farmers, the minister gave an answer to say that, yes, there will be exemptions. But here's the truth: there are holes in this policy that, as one expert said, you could drive a header through. Even though capital gains, specifically, might be exempted for primary productions, a lot of these farms are set up with trusts. They don't operate as a simple entity; they have a trust that owns the land and another that runs the business. The operating trust will pay the rent to the landholding trust. And that's standard. That's the way farming businesses work.”
“I too rise to speak on this matter of incredible public importance. I feel that these are rushed reforms, because they were off the table a year ago. A year ago, for the 50th time—'It's off the table.' All of a sudden, once they'd won the election, they were back on the table. I suspect they were on the table all along. But I want to talk about what it means to create a capital gain in a business. I'll use the example of farms, but it applies to all sorts of business. Creating a capital gain requires risk on the part of a business owner. It requires labour, and it requires significant investment.”
“We know from correspondence and stakeholder engagement that people are deeply worried about what the changes we're proposing now might mean for them, and that is why a Senate inquiry is critically important. These reforms must be properly scrutinised. It is absolutely critical that the Senate do its work and look at what these changes mean for Australians.”
“There was an opportunity to build a more sustainable NDIS, and that opportunity, unfortunately, was lost, and we are now faced with greater changes to try and rein in the costs and rein in this scheme. When I came to this place, I was getting a lot of inquiries about the NDIS and could see that there were a lot of problems with it. I asked colleagues who had been here through the coalition government and who I trust, 'Why couldn't we get it under control when we were in government?' And those people, who I trust, said, 'There were a lot of design flaws to begin with, and Labor wouldn't let us fix it, for partisan, political reasons.' And that is a real disappointment.”
“This scheme and system must deliver value to the taxpayer, and we must ensure that support is there for future generations. But sustainability cannot come at the expense of fairness, and it must never come at the expense of the most vulnerable Australians. It's worth noting that the Morrison government proposed, for NDIS applicants, independent assessments conducted by privately contracted allied health professionals. But Labor, then led by Bill Shorten, former member for Maribyrnong, ran what was a fairly effective scare campaign on the reforms and lobbied state leaders to block the changes, and it forced the coalition to abandon that policy in late 2021.”
“I remember the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, saying: The NDIS is an idea whose time has come. There was a lot of support for the concept of doing something like this. Precisely because the NDIS matters so deeply, we must get these reforms right. When we talk about the NDIS, we're not talking about abstract budget lines; we're talking about people: families, carers, communities. We're talking about Australians who rely on this scheme every single day. I don't think anyone in this House disputes that the NDIS must be sustainable. The scheme's growing rapidly, and there are genuine concerns about its trajectory. It is absolutely critical that we deal with the fraud, the rorting and the inefficiencies that we all know are out there.”
“I'm really tired of fighting.' And another one says, 'This leaves us in a constant state of burnout and also highly concerned and worried not just for the present but also for the future.' So this debate is not theoretical; it's playing out in people's lives. They are not isolated cases. These are real people, and they are anxious and uncertain. They're asking a very simple question of this parliament: 'Will the NDIS still be there for me when I need it?' The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a really important social reform in the history of our nation. It was built on a simple but powerful principle: that Australians living with permanent and significant disability deserve dignity, independence and the opportunity to participate fully in our society. I remember when the then Labor government brought it in.”
“I too rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Before I go any further into detail, I want to take a moment to reflect on what people in my community are actually experiencing right now. A constituent who is looking after elderly parents as well as a disabled child wrote to me recently, 'I'm not a case number on a bureaucratic desk; I'm a drowning mother in your community.' Other comments from recent emails demonstrate similar struggles: 'It's going to be another uphill battle for me to survive with the cuts to the NDIS. I have no hope left. I'm so tired of fighting the system.' Another one says, 'If this funding were to be cut, I feel it would have catastrophic consequences to my daughter's wellbeing.' Another wrote: 'I have no hope left.”
“We want great industry and great businesses in the regions because the tax that that earns helps the rest of Australians. We want the city people to be able to benefit from the productivity and the dynamism that we have in the regions, but the government has got to assist by funding infrastructure and, in many cases, just getting out of the way and letting hardworking Australians who have got an appetite for entrepreneurialism and risk run their businesses.”
“It made being there pretty unliveable because you couldn't go and see anyone. You'd get in a traffic jam to get over one side of the river. Even more importantly, there's so much industry that exists on either side of the river. There are farms in New South Wales; the processor is in Echuca in Victoria. There are farms in Echuca. There might be something that they need. The trucks couldn't get across. The coalition government came together, worked with the state government, which was then a coalition government, and funded the Echuca-Moama Bridge. It has changed the lives of people who live there and the economy. I don't see the big regional infrastructure projects being funded the way they used to be under the previous government, and that's productivity-enhancing infrastructure.”
“I was a community member of the Greater Shepparton community. There used to be regional infrastructure funding that would provide these wonderful places, whether regional cities like Shepparton or smaller places like Kilmore, like Seymour, like Echuca, like Yarrawonga, like Cobram, assistance from the federal government to develop the infrastructure that they need. Regional communities need that because we don't have the density of population. The councils don't have the rate base, so they need that federal government support. The previous coalition government understood that, and there were some incredible pieces of infrastructure built. The Echuca-Moama Bridge has changed the lives of the people who live in those two communities that straddle the Murray River. There was one narrow bridge for a huge amount of traffic to get across.”
“You need to do this report', it is basically making sure that a bureaucrat gets to clip the ticket of this hard work on the way through, not to mention some of the changes to capital gains tax. When these people finally sell this asset that they've spent their life building up, the government wants to take more money out of that hard work. I seriously hope there's a backflip to that because there needs to be. The commodity prices are going up, government compliance is going up, and that is not sustainable if we want strong, dynamic private industry in this country. That is what I am hearing across regional Australia. It's a pattern of taking it out on the regions, and people are getting mighty sick of it, I can tell you. During the previous coalition government, I wasn't in parliament.”
“A lot of the processing facilities are actually small businesses in the scheme of things. They are telling me that there are more government agencies wanting to clip the ticket on the way through. They say it's become worse in the last four years, indeed, under the reign of the Victorian government, which will hopefully soon to come to an end; we need a change of government in that state desperately. The input costs for a dairy farmer include getting his or her herd, building the dairy, buying irrigation water, paying wages, buying fuel, buying urea—all of these things. But government compliance is going up as a proportion of the cost of their businesses. Now, when government compliance is saying, 'Well, you need to fill this out. You need to produce that form.”
“They have to pay more because fertiliser has gone up. Fertiliser could be made in Australia and it will be made in Australia, in north-western Australia, with the permanent facility using north shelf gas. But that was a project that was supported and funded by the previous coalition government. It's incredible, the amount of credit that this current Albanese government is trying to take for that project. But it was set up and signed off in the NAIF back in the previous coalition government. That's a good step. But I don't see anything else that the Albanese government is instigating to make life easier for farmers and the people in these regional industries. People in regional Australia have great grievance because these farms are all small businesses.”
“If you're putting Perfect Italiano on a pizza or a lasagne, it was made in Stanhope in my electorate. It was the toil of those incredible dairy farmers who get up very early in the morning, milk cows, go back and do it again at about 3.30 in the afternoon, and all of the people associated. So when those farmers tell me that policy decisions in Canberra make it harder to run their businesses, I've got to come up here and talk about that. When Murray-Darling Basin Plan policies made by Labor take irrigation water out of the consumptive pool, it means that everyone who's left using irrigation water has to pay more for it. They have to pay more to keep the system alive, to keep the system going, and they have to pay more when they're buying temporary water because there is simply less of it there.”
“I agree with a lot of what he said, but I would advise him to go and talk to the Jacinta Allan Labor government in Victoria and ask her why the Victorian health procurement agencies insist that people in Victorian hospitals should be eating Chinese-preserved fruit when we're growing so much of it and producing so much of it in Shepparton. I'll leave that with him but I agree with a lot of the points he was making about procurement. Procurement, particularly state government procurement, can lift industries in regional Australia. Another industry that was very strong was the dairy industry. We started with a butter factory in every town, milk going to different places, but now we have an incredible industry that value adds and makes cheese, makes infant formula and sends them across South East Asia and beyond.”
“The lived reality is that all of these people moved to the regions—some many generations ago—because they wanted to set up, primarily, agricultural businesses. Those agricultural businesses lead to these other businesses, because, particularly many years ago, it was impossible with the logistics that they had to get fresh product—fresh fruit, fresh milk—everywhere across Australia. We set up preserving industries where we can make fresh produce into non-perishable produce. There is no better example than the SPC fruit cannery, set up more than 100 years ago, where peaches, apricots and pears were put into cans. Now they're put into snack packs, and those products have gone around Australia and around the world. At this point, I commend the speech I heard from the member for Deakin about Australian procurement.”
“What concerns a lot of people across my electorate and, indeed, across regional and rural Australia, is that policy that's made here in Canberra is increasingly detached from realities on the ground in the regions. The downsides of those policies are being felt hardest in those communities, and those communities are saying they just don't understand us in Canberra. That is a function of the way that the Albanese government has been running this country for the past four years. What looks like a neat policy decision on paper here in Canberra can be very different in a place like Shepparton, in a place like Kilmore, in a town like Cobram up on the Murray River, in Yarrawonga and in Echuca. It's not only in my electorate; it's also in Gippsland, and my good friend the member for Monash is here.”
“I rise to speak in this grievance debate. There is a bit of grievance in regional and rural Australia at the moment, and it's something I continue to hear across my electorate of Nicholls. For those of you who aren't aware, it's the food bowl of Australia. It's northern Victoria. It's a place where so many people have come for so many years to set up amazing businesses using the natural assets that we have. Those natural assets are irrigation water thanks to the Murray Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District scheme, the incredible fertile soils of the floodplains and, perhaps more than anything, the new entrepreneurial spirit that has arrived in the Goulburn and Murray valleys over many years, as well as to the south in places such as Seymour and Kilmore.”
“The reason he became a Liberal and on that side of politics is because of what he saw in East Germany versus West Germany. When you see the capitalism and the business and all the development and how that lifts people, he was inspired, and that's why he wanted to be on the side of aspiration, of free trade, of free enterprise, but with that crucial safety net to make sure everyone's dignity is supported.”
“You can go up there and, if you work hard, you can get ahead. You can make something because it's private enterprise. There are no government jobs up there, but if you get out and work hard on a farm, in five years you'll own your own farm.' We've seen waves of people come and do that, and it's been inspiring to see. We want to be the sort of government that encourages that entrepreneurism; doesn't punish people for their aspirations about wanting to get ahead; makes sure we increase housing supply, which will be the thing that gets more young people into housing; and builds an Australia that is not veering towards socialism, which is something that we have seen not work in lifting people's ideas. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a quote from former senator Mathias Cormann.”
“For too long, councils and community organisations have been starved of any opportunity to even apply for funding, so I welcome that. There has never been a clearer outline of competing visions for Australia's future. On one hand, you've got a bigger government where more people are employed by the public service, where more people are reliant on the government for their funding and where the government is in people's lives more than it has ever been with all of the cruelling of economic opportunity and private enterprise that that causes. Or you've got a different vision—the one of the pioneers who got off boats at the Port of Melbourne in the late 1940s and said: 'Where do I want to go? I want to go to Shepparton, in the Nicholls electorate, because that's where opportunity exists.”
“That is a nation-building project—it should be a nation-building project—that has a great environmental benefit and a great productivity benefit. It was going to spring businesses up all across the extent of it. To end it at Parkes and not take it through to Queensland is very disappointing. There are significant cuts to infrastructure spending and the National Water Grid—even smaller things like the $191 million cut from pests and diseases and regional trade and drought funding and the $21.4 million cut from regional communications funding. This is all very regrettable. I do give credit where it's due. After more than a year of us trying to highlight the lack of funding in key regional grant programs, the new rounds of the Growing Regions Program and the Stronger Communities Program have been funded. I support the government in that.”
“It has meant that, as people become more senior and they try to work a bit harder and earn more money, the money just gets grabbed back by the government. I hadn't seen anyone with the courage to seriously do something about it until the Leader of the Opposition got up and announced what the changes around indexing tax brackets to inflation will be. It's courageous. It's bold, and I think, once we get out there and explain to the Australian people that it's their money—and you don't want the government grabbing it back because you had the temerity to become more senior, work harder and get a higher wage—they'll respond very positively towards that. There are some regional impacts to this budget too that make a big difference to what the productivity of Australia will be. The cuts to the Inland Rail project are incredibly regrettable.”
“We are leaving them with a tax system that doesn't reward them in the way that it should. The government's very fond of saying they're going to give working Australians some sort of tax back, which is not much money in the scheme of things. That tax that they get back, that money that they get back, is going to be eaten up in this insidious problem that we have had in the Australian tax system for years called bracket creep. As inflation rises, you go to your employer—or hopefully your employer comes to you and says, 'As CPI is rising, your wages need to rise to deal with the cost of living.' That wage increase pushes you into a higher tax bracket, and the government, while saying, 'We're giving you a tax cut,' grabs it back with the other hand. This has been a problem with the Australian taxation system for a long time.”
“We need to try and free that up a bit, make it quicker and make it more possible to get more blocks and more houses out there. Many of those opposite and a lot of the ministers are having trouble explaining how the treatment of trusts works. I too am having trouble explaining to some of my constituents how the treatment of testamentary discretionary trusts works and whether or not they will be taxed. I think the government needs to go back to the drawing board and have a look at that. There's a lot of talk in the wash-up of this budget about intergenerational equality. What sort of Australia, what sort of a budget bottom line and what sort of tax system we leave to our future Australians is the real test of intergenerational equality. I worry about the Australia that we're leaving them.”
“That will solve that problem more than anything else. I agree with the measures in this budget to provide $2 billion for enabling infrastructure for new housing developments. Our policy is to provide $5 billion and have a proportion of it in regional Australia. But I do support that part of the budget. I think it could be more, and we would do more, but I support that. Go out and actually talk to housing developers, builders and the people who go in there. Once a council zones a paddock, takes it away from being agricultural or industrial and says, 'We're zoning it residential,' look at the time and money that it takes to get to the point where someone can actually pour a slab and build a house. It is too long, too hard and too expensive.”
“But worse is this: do you know what the people who have a great idea and the inclination to take a risk with that great idea and set up a business are going to do? They're going to go to another country. We've already got the New Zealand finance minister saying, 'Hey, Aussie entrepreneurs, come over here.' That's not a good thing for a neighbouring country to be saying after a budget. It's basically saying, 'Your government is going to tax you for your success and your risk and we are not, because we want your ideas, we want your creativity and we want your appetite for entrepreneurialism.' The changes to negative gearing are intended to make it easier for young people to get into the housing market, and I think that's an intent that we all share. That intent is best served by making sure that we improve the supply of houses.”
“It's incredibly well exhibited in my electorate of Nicholls, where people have turned up from all parts of the world, often with nothing, and have used the natural resources there. In our case, it's irrigation water, but there are also the fine soils, the ability to grow fruit, the ability to process that fruit, the dairy industry and all of the ancillary businesses that strike up. When someone has a successful industry, all these private enterprise businesses strike up to service it. The change to the capital gains tax is the government saying, 'If you take a risk and if you're successful, we are going to tax you more as a result of being successful.' There are a couple of problems with that. Firstly, it cruels aspiration. People might not be as willing to take a risk.”
“Shorten lost the 2019 election, but he had the decency and the courage to take those changes to an election. This government did not do that. Changes are important, but so is how you make the changes and how you try and bring the Australian people along with you. If you really believe that you can sell these changes and that they're a good thing for Australians, don't sneak them in in the middle of a term. Take something this big to an election, and let's have a debate about it. That did not happen. In relation to the changes themselves—firstly, capital gains tax changes have gone over like a lead balloon because, even though this government's trying to stamp it out, there is still a spirit of entrepreneurialism in this country.”
“Here we have a budget that is taking us in a very different direction from Hawke and Keating, expanding the size of government, making sure more people are involved in the government and employed by the government and really making it difficult for private enterprise to get ahead. This budget contains some very significant changes to treatment in relation to the capital gains tax and negative gearing in particular. There are also some changes to trusts. But, in relation to CGT and negative gearing, these are big changes. I won't deny that. When big changes normally are proposed by a government, the courageous and decent thing to do is to seek a mandate by taking those changes to an election, as John Howard did in 1998 and Bill Shorten, to his great credit, did with similar changes to these at the 2019 election.”