Allegra Spender
Wentworth · Independent · Australia
“Estimates are between 0.5 per cent and two per cent of all abortions over 20 weeks. They are generally because of late diagnosed anomalies, genetic syndromes or severe fetal growth problems.”
“The bill is useful, it is technical, it's incremental, it has useful schedules, it has 'tell us once', it has streamlining and it has technical fixes. These are all good things, and I do not underestimate the effort that goes into getting useful changes like this.”
“Across Australia, we're seeing rising threats to women's access to abortion care. We see it in bills in state parliaments. We see it in the way some politicians talk about this issue, using misinformation and scare tactics to drive divisions, tools straight out of the Trump playbook.”
“They're saying they're waiting up to 18 months for the ATO to make a decision on how an investment would be treated, so the foreign capital just goes away. We need to change the culture here, and this is why—while I support this government's actions in this space—I urge the government to go further. This isn't about bad people.”
“I've seen firsthand how drone technology is at the forefront of some of these problems because government is slow to make decisions. There's no accountability from many government departments in terms of the speed of their decision-making.”
“I support the government's work on the fund, but I think it's currently around one tenth the size of the original 1990s National Competition Fund. If we expect that to move the dial, as it did back in the 1990s, we are going to have to put more firepower behind it.”
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“It has the overarching environment for the economy, but it doesn't need to add this legislation, and it doesn't need to exclude small businesses or make it harder for small businesses to access government contracts. I genuinely say: if you've got a problem with secure jobs, show me in the economy where you want to make those jobs more secure, rather than using industrial relations instruments, because there is a real risk here of corruption. We have seen this play out. In saying, 'We're going to exclude the construction industry,' there is a real risk of corruption, and the government has not got the safeguards in place to make sure that this doesn't happen. To then provide this and say, 'We'll carve this bit out. It will be okay,' is naive and is not in the interest of the Australian taxpayer.”
“The Queensland government itself acknowledged that BPIC contributed to delays and cost overruns. It was paused in November 2024 and then permanently abolished. This bill creates a similar risk at the Commonwealth level. I have heard some of the people opposite argue for this bill on the basis that people should have secure jobs and that that is a positive thing. Now, I support secure jobs, but we have an economy and a lot of industrial relations legislation that enshrines a lot of secure jobs across the economy. The government doesn't need to enshrine secure jobs through its own procurement practices. It can employ its people how it wants.”
“It's all very well for the minister to say, 'Well, we're not going to do this.' This is exactly the legislation that provides the environment in which the minister can do this. The best-practice industry conditions scheme used procurement policy to embed preferred industrial conditions into government funded construction. That sounds very similar to what we're trying to do here. The Queensland Productivity Commission found that the BPIC likely reduced construction productivity, which fell by nine per cent over six years. The commission modelled that, if left in place till 2029-2030, it could have increased project costs by 10 to 25 per cent, reducing housing supply by up to 26,500 homes and imposing net community costs of $5.7 billion to $20.6 billion.”
“A 15 per cent cost increase applied to the $100 billion big build. Fifteen billion dollars—that is what happens when enterprise agreements become commercial assets to be bought and sold, rather than genuine instruments of collective bargaining, and that is the system that this bill proposes to reward with preferential access to public money. Commonwealth government spending for 2026-27 is $830 billion, which is 26.8 per cent of GDP. That is a record. Those billions are drawn from the taxes and borrowings of Australians, who expect it to be spent in their interests. Every dollar that doesn't go as far as it could is inflationary. In that environment, procurement cannot be filtered through an industrial relations test, and the Queensland experience shows where this leads.”
“The answer is not more government prescriptions attached to a growing share of government directed spending. This concern is not hypothetical. The Watson report, R otting from the top , examined the CFMEU in the Victorian construction industry. Watson found the enterprise agreement system had been thoroughly corrupted by what he called 'old-fashioned pay-to-play corruption'. There was no genuine bargaining. Agreements were awarded to friends of union officials and to known criminals in return for cash. Labour hire agreements were sold for up to $1 million. The CFMEU punished its enemies by refusing to issue agreements with no reason and no review. Watson found that the denial of an agreement could drive a decent contractor out of business. Watson conservatively estimated that this corruption cost Victorian taxpayers $15 billion.”
“They will obviously think, 'Oh, well, if some organisations will get preferenced if they have an EBA or the government can preference them because they have an EBA versus others, well then I need to enter an EBA.' What do you think unions will do? They will say, 'We need to have EBAs.' Again, I support this, but you might as well say that you require it, because, if this power that the government is intent on creating is used, that will be the difference that it makes. Let's put this in an economic context. Productivity is flatlining. Businesses are facing compounding pressures—inflation, regulatory expansion, complexity in industrial relations—which this government has not addressed. Even when it would be beneficial to workers to simplify the awards, the government has failed to do so.”
“The contradiction is striking. On 1 May this year, five weeks before the bill was introduced, the minister stated: The government has no intention of requiring employers to enter an enterprise agreement covered by a registered employee organisation as a condition of receiving Commonwealth government funding in the construction industry. And: … has no intention of replicating Queensland's former Best Practice Industry Conditions Scheme. Five weeks later, we've got this legislation and it gives the government exactly this power. The government will say: 'Well, we don't have to require it. This is not a requirement; it just is a consideration.' Just think of how this is going to play out. If this is something that could be positively taken into account, what do you think businesses will think they need to do?”
“Now, I support genuine enterprise bargaining. I wish it was actually easier for companies and unions and workers to come up with agreements that benefit them both, and I continue to urge, as I have since the day I was elected, the government to help people simplify the awards because that would make it easier for people to come up with enterprise bargaining agreements that are genuinely beneficial to all parties and that would genuinely actually improve the lives of workers. But what I oppose is a government using its growing economic footprint to compel a particular industrial model without adequate safeguards against corruption that has already been documented in this system, and in a way that is going to make it harder for smaller businesses and newer businesses to potentially access government contracts. I reject that completely.”
“A business with a union covered enterprise agreement could be preferred over an identical competitor that pays the same wages and meets every legal obligation but whose agreement does not name a union or that relies on an award, as most small businesses do because the industrial relations system, the awards and the EBAs are so complicated that it is extremely difficult for smaller businesses to negotiate EBAs. The powers are broad. They flow into Commonwealth linked supply chains. The minister can determine, by legislative instrument, additional contractual arrangements that fall within the exception. The explanatory memorandum gives no guidance on scope. The secure Australian jobs code is still in development. The practical reach of this measure is entirely uncertain and will sit well beyond the ongoing oversight of parliament.”
“But within these practical measures is something that has nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with industrial politics and is one that I reject. Part 9 creates new exceptions for the Fair Work Act's prohibitions on discrimination. It gives the Commonwealth a legal basis to favour one business over another—not because of their capability, not because of compliance, not because of price but because of the industrial instrument that covers its workforce.”
“Research presented at Senate estimates in June this year found that 40 to 50 per cent of applicants reported using AI to prepare their applications. Paid agents lodging speculative claims are compounding the problem. The bill responds by reversing the Federal Court's decision in Coles Supply Chain Pty Ltd v Milford, which required the commission to hold a formal hearing on whether a dismissal actually occurred before it could even begin conciliation. That procedural requirement turned many matters into two hearings instead of one. The bill also expands powers to dismiss frivolous and vexatious applications, creates a vexatious litigant order, allows matters to be determined on the papers with the parties consent and permits greater delegation of procedural functions to commission staff. These are sensible reforms and I support them.”
“The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 makes several changes to the Fair Work Act and related legislation. Most I support; one I specifically do not. This bill ensures road transport contractors can access workplace protections through a new industry-specific high-income threshold that reflects their actual cost structure. It fixes a practical impossibility in the CFMEU's administrator reporting requirements. And, significantly, it enables the Fair Work Commission to manage a case load that has grown by 70 per cent in three years. The commission's president, Justice Hatcher, has said publicly that this surge is principally driven by the use of AI tools by potential litigants.”
“The second is Kids Breaking Bread, started by four local mums who wanted to build stronger ties between communities through their children. Students from Kincoppal-Rose Bay and Emanuel School came together to make breads that hold deep meaning in both Jewish and Christian cultures. They braided friendship bread, shared stories and simply got to know each other. As co-founder Anna put it, 'The children are actively learning and embracing the similarities in our different cultures.' Both initiatives remind us about the power of connection and what young people can achieve when given the space to lead. They are both enormously inspiring, and I congratulate everyone involved in Kids Breaking Bread and Cosy Companion for the leadership they're showing in our community.”
“I'm thrilled to speak about two amazing initiatives from my electorate. The first is Cosy Companion, started by a young constituent Skye and her friend Ina. Both had grandparents in aged care and saw firsthand how isolating that experience can be. They created a youth led movement where student volunteers spend time with residents, having conversations, doing activities, organising concerts and writing to pen pals, building friendships that span generations. Cosy Companion now collaborates with six schools and 13 aged-care homes across Sydney, with over 50 volunteers having touched the lives of more than 70 elderly Australians. I commend Skye and Ina for their community spirit, and I look forward to watching that grow. Please get involved if you can.”
“The illicit tobacco crisis is not just a story of inadequate penalties, though penalties matter. It's not simply a story about insufficient border enforcement, though that matters too. It is a story about a market that has been structurally handed to organised crime by a combination of extreme pricing and inadequate supply-side management, which now operates so openly on so many street corners that its normalisation is one of the greatest strengths. This is about organised crime happening in broad daylight. The government must do better in this space.”
“That resourcing must be sufficient and targeted to disrupting the import chains, not just the retail end. Seizures are symptoms. The supply chain is the disease. Finally, there is resourcing of state enforcement agencies. The current disparity between states is a weakness when criminal networks move supply across jurisdictions and the moment one state tightens its laws. The ITEC Commissioner has documented exactly this dynamic. Organised crime doesn't stand still; it relocates wherever the barriers are lowest. A national approach with consistent standards is the only way to stop that arbitrage In conclusion, Australia was once a global leader in tobacco control. That record is worth defending, but defending it means being honest when a policy has gone completely wrong.”
“A genuine national licensing scheme with meaningful barriers to entry, regular compliance checks and real consequences for illegal selling is a prerequisite for enforcement to work. Several states have moved on this, but there is no nationally consistent floor, and it is the job of the government to work across the states for a national approach. Third is proper resourcing of border enforcement. The ABF's Operation PRINTWALL has delivered record seizure results—over a kilotonne of illicit tobacco deterred since December 2025, with 87 tonnes seized in a single week in April. These are significant achievements, but the ABF has been explicit that it cannot seize its way out of this problem. The government has committed $188.5 million to border enforcement and an additional $156 million for the current financial year.”
“Neither is achievable when an illegal packet costs less than half the legal price. Enforcement alone cannot close a gap that wide, and significant excise reduction calibrated to substitution behaviour needs to be on the table. Secondly, the bar must be lifted on retail licensing. Australian Council on Smoking and Health, ACOSH, chief executive Laura Hunter put it plainly: 'It is far too easy to become a tobacco retailer in Australia.' She noted that obtaining a tobacco licence involves none of the property checks, police checks or community consultations that are routine in a liquor licence. There are 40,000 tobacco retailers in this country, serving eight per cent of the population—a number that makes compliance monitoring operationally impossible. There are 10 times more tobacconists than the four major supermarkets combined.”
“The think tank e61 concludes that the entrenchment of the illicit market necessitates a combination of stricter enforcement, meaningful financial levers and a coalition of policy actors willing to confront the full picture. I note that this bill arrives while the inquiry of the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee is still underway, with its report due on 30 June. I welcome that process, but it does raise the question of why we are debating this bill now, before that inquiry has reported, rather than using its findings to shape a more complete legislative response. So passing this bill is necessary, but it is far from sufficient. The government must consider all options, starting with demand. The goal is fewer smokers. The second best is that smokers buy legal tobacco.”
“It is clear that Australia has passed the revenue-maximising point of the Laffer curve, not because fewer people are smoking but because the price differential between illegal and legal products has become so large that criminal substitution has overwhelmed any deterrence effect. This bill seeks to rebalance the risk-to-reward calculation by addressing risk. Reward is the other side of the equation. Undeniably, the excise settings have created enormous profit margins for illegal operators to exploit. It should be reviewed, but cutting the excise alone is unlikely to reverse this trend. A comprehensive approach is needed. Illegal-cigarette purchasing has been normalised by consumers over years, and tobacconists have strongly established retail networks. They cannot simply be priced out.”
“Authorities seized triple the quantity of illegal cigarettes last financial year compared with four years ago. It's a record result. In January, 52 tobacco stores were shut down in New South Wales following raids targeting illicit tobacco. Yet the market keeps growing. Across states and territories, law enforcement personnel are stretched, and resourcing is uneven. Victoria has just 14 enforcement officers, compared with more than 200 in Queensland. The Australian Border Force's submission to the Senate inquiry highlighted that the scale, profitability and adaptability of supply chains limited the efficacy of enforcement alone.”
“Increasing penalties will create a greater deterrence, and the expanded unexplained-wealth powers are particularly important. They go after the money, not just the product. Criminal networks that absorb seizure losses as a cost of doing business are far more vulnerable to asset confiscation. But I have to be honest about what this bill alone cannot do. Illicit tobacco has reached a crisis point. Failure to act on an emerging and growing issue—by both sides of parliament, but particularly by the government, who's been responsible for the last four years—has increased the complexity and cost of addressing it. The central question in this debate is whether enforcement alone can solve a problem of this scale. I do not believe it can, and I believe that the government must act further.”
“In a recent investigation, 30 per cent of licensed bottle shops were found to be selling suspected illicit product, bringing with it the risk of methanol poisoning. So let's turn to this bill. The Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026 does take a useful step in response to this crisis and enacts recommendations from the ITAC Commissioner's 2024-25 report. It creates new criminal offences for large-scale illicit tobacco activity linked to organised crime. It increases penalties across importing, possessing, buying, selling, producing and manufacturing. It expands unexplained-wealth provisions and proceeds-of-crime tools. And it enables enhanced law enforcement powers, including wiretaps for serious tobacco offences, with imprisonment terms of up to 15 years for the most serious conduct. I support this bill.”
“The decline in government revenues is a direct fiscal consequence of a market that has been ceded to organised crime. The third is community safety. Organised crime has not just entered this market; it has taken over. The growth of the illicit market has been accompanied by more than 200 gangland firebombings of tobacco shops since 2013, violence and intimidation against small business owners and skyrocketing insurance premiums for businesses that simply have the misfortune to be located next to a tobacconist. In what other sector are illegal businesses able to operate in plain sight on every main street in very suburb in every city—and in my electorate? What is concerning me even further is that illicit alcohol is starting to follow the same trajectory. The ATO puts the market at over $700 million a year.”
“The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has warned that illegal tobacco often contains higher than expected nicotine concentrations and unregulated ingredients, like heavy metals, pesticides and moulds. These products disproportionately reach lower socioeconomic communities, regional and rural Australians and First Nations people, widening health inequalities. The second is government revenue. The tobacco excise peaked at $16.3 billion a year in 2019-20. This year, just $4.1 billion is expected, and it's expected to decline over the forwards, not because Australians are smoking less but because of the illegal tobacco industry growing. We're collecting 25 per cent of the excise we did five years ago, and yet we have more people smoking than ever. It is painfully clear that the tobacco tax is not working.”
“Instead, they have simply found a cheaper, unregulated, criminal alternative. Illicit tobacco now makes up an estimated 80 per cent of tobacco consumed in Australia, up from 12 per cent in 2017, according to recent data from the ABS. That's four out of every five smokers breaking the law, and almost all vapers are too. The illicit market is systematically undermining 25 years of progress, creating a triple blow to public health, government revenue and community safety, and there are enormous consequences. The first is public health. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Australia. It costs us 66 lives every single day. The loved ones lost and childhood exposure to second-hand smoke drove early efforts to deter smoking. Smoking kills. Illegal tobacco is worse still.”
“Australia once led the world on tobacco control. Plain packaging, graphic warnings, non-smoking areas, information campaigns and excise yielded substantial government revenues and, more importantly, created a generation of Australians that never took up smoking. Smoking rates went from one in three to one in 10 in little more than a generation. We were right to be proud of this record. We were wrong to be complacent. Smoking rates are now higher than they were 10 years ago. Australians are consuming 40 per cent more nicotine than in 2017, far outpacing the 14 per cent population growth. This is despite prices tripling since 2016 due to annual excise price increases. Taxes now make up $30 of the price of a 20-pack, and this has risen rapidly against a backdrop of strained household budgets. But Australians are not smoking less.”
“We have the mechanisms, we have the reporting in place to put real impetus behind this, but the government hasn't acted. What we have imposed is red tape without outcomes. We must stop this, and we need to get small businesses paid on time. This is a sensible, real-world amendment that can start to use the power of government procurement to get better outcomes for small business, and I urge the government to accept it.”
“There'll be four exemptions in this bill that will require written acknowledgement by the finance minister. 1. Firstly, that there is a 'critical national interest' consideration. 2. Secondly, that there is no viable alternative provider. 3. Thirdly, that exclusion doesn't result in significant deterioration in value for money. 4. Finally, that the slow payer has a credible, achievable remediation pathway. This bill has a commencement date of 1 July 2027, giving businesses 12 months to make adjustments to payment practices before facing potential exclusion Conclusion In a productivity crisis, we need to be seriously evaluating reporting and red tape requirements that we have put on businesses and, if they're not achieving their objectives, either improve it or remove it. Small businesses deserve to be paid on time.”
“Under this new approach, a business will be considered a restricted payer if, over the three most recent reporting cycles, they consistently either had an average payment time exceeding 30 days or failed to report altogether. This standalone test focuses on consistent performance and compliance, rather than relative peer comparison, to prioritise real-world impacts on small businesses. However, it still allows for flexibility—if a business has a reporting cycle with an average payment time under 30 days, they are not a restricted payer. Exemptions While this bill will create a bigger stick, the bill acknowledges that the primary purpose of procurement is not enforcement, but value for taxpayers' money. That's why there'll be some important exemptions that protect unintended consequences while preserving the intention of this bill.”
“In fairness to the government, in 2024, some of the more administrative recommendations of the review were implemented. However, it did very little to change incentives on businesses to improve their payment times. This bill So this is what this bill does. It picks up on recommendation 14 of the Emerson review and recommendation 6 of the ASBFEO review of 2017 to link payment reporting times to government procurement. The bill amends the Public Government Performance and Accountability Act to prevent Australia's slowest payers from accessing government contracts. This would not create any additional reporting requirements—it would use the existing data we already collect. The bill uses a different definition of 'restricted payer' than the 'slow small business payer' concept in the Payment Times Reporting Act.”
“These averages mask the extent to which slow payment is rife in Australia. From the same reporting period, only four per cent of businesses had all their payments made within 30 days, and just as many businesses had at least one payment over 100 days. These numbers are not widely different to what the ASBFEO reported back in 2023, indicating that behaviour has not improved. It's not getting better. Regulation and red tape And, while these stats are concerning, the scheme is not costless as it is. It's not meeting its outcomes. But reporting in itself is a significant cause of frustration from those reporting entities, with regular and onerous reports. If—as the review found—the scheme is not working, we need to either improve it or remove it.”
“Emerson review This scheme has noble intentions of trying to make it easier for small businesses, but it just isn't working. A review of the scheme, conducted in 2023, known as the Emerson review, found no evidence that the scheme was causing the kind of behavioural change it set out to achieve nor any evidence that small businesses had the luxury of choosing their large-business customers based on their payment time status. Basically, let's be real—a small business can't say no to a big customer just because they know they go a bit slower in terms of their payment times. Analysis of the last payment times reporting cycle, ending December 2025, shows that the average proportion of payments made within 30 days was 70 per cent. That leaves 24 per cent of payments between 30 and 60 days and six per cent over 60 days.”
“But in some cases, the ombudsman argues, it can be an exertion of market power from large participants to manage their own cash flow, effectively using delayed payment as a cheap form of credit. Since 2020, Australia has operated the Payment Times Reporting Scheme as the primary tool for setting higher expectations around acceptable payment times and processes. This scheme requires large reporting entities with consolidated revenue of more than $100 million to report their payment times and terms to the payment times regulator in six-monthly reporting cycles. Under this scheme, the regulator can designate 'slow payers', determined as the slowest 20 per cent of all reporting entities for a given reporting cycle. These businesses face no strict consequences besides naming and shaming on the register.”
“Payment Times Reporting Scheme Let's talk about payment times now, because the failure of customers to pay their suppliers on time significantly contributes to headaches around cash flow for small businesses. I know I've met small businesses who have actually sold the work. They can actually run on the basis of the profit that they can make. But, because they're not being paid on time, at a certain point they go to the wall because of those cash flow issues. It's those payment times I want to address in this bill. Indeed, according to the ASBFEO quarterly report Q1 2026, around 35 per cent of disputes that came to them in Q1 this year related to payment disputes. Slow payment can sometimes be honest miscommunication.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. It has been an incredibly challenging few years for Australia's small-business community. We've had the COVID lockdowns. We've had high inflation. We've had high interest rates. We have a fuel crisis and sluggish consumer demands. We in this place need to be doing everything we can to build and grow and support our small- and medium-business areas. And so I want to talk about one of the issues most important to small-business owners, and that is cash flow. I've run a business. I ran a family business for 10 years, and I know how vitally important cash flow is. It is the lifeblood that keeps a business running, and any blockage is the thing that can send a business to the wall. According to ASIC, cash flow management is the No. 1 cause of insolvency among Australian small businesses.”
“Indexing is something that needs to be funded, particularly by spending restraint. This package would represent the sort of budget-neutral reforms that help all Australians by lowering marginal rates while also reducing concessions on asset income. This is, I think, the best way for the government to get support for what it is trying to do, which is I think reducing concessions on assets by reducing marginal tax rates. I think this is, economically, the right thing, and it's the right thing for the community. It is not inflationary, because it is put up in future years. I think this would be the right thing for the government to do, and I think they should support it.”
“That is why I am moving an additional amendment that would, in addition to the WATO, cut the marginal tax rates in line with the $77 billion raised over the medium term. This would, in the estimates we have done, involve cutting the 45 per cent rate to 44 per cent in 2029-30, cutting the 37 per cent rate to 36 per cent in 2030-31 and cutting the 30 per cent rate to 29 per cent in 2031-32. The lowest marginal tax rate has already been lowered under previous cuts, which I support, and will still substantially benefit from the WATO. An alternative proposal would be to introduce some form of indexing, as members of the crossbench suggested prior to the election, and the coalition has suggested this year. But I believe that this change represents an opportunity to lower rates before locking them in.”
“It provides a $250 working tax offset for Australians annually from 2027-28 and rested justification on previous tax cuts already given under this government or tax cuts which may be given in the future. Those are welcome. But, after a period of high inflation, those tax cuts are shown by the average Australian marginal tax rate to be eaten up by bracket creep. The government has introduced a WATO. This is positive, but it doesn't do anything for our comparatively higher rates that kick in at relatively modest incomes. Cutting marginal tax rates would protect workers, drive aspiration and increase the trust in the community that the government's measures to increase taxes in certain areas or reduce tax concessions are about supporting younger people and not just about supporting government spending.”
“I have been fiercely advocating for tax reform since getting into this parliament. I believe strongly in reforms that ensure younger Australians get a fair go and the energy transition is as cheap as possible and that restore productivity. On personal income, my advocacy has always started with lowering income taxes, funded by reducing concessions. It has always been my firm view that tax reform should be budget neutral. Reforms to CGT and negative gearing might give younger people an edge back at the auction. I support that. I support reductions to the CGT rate and I support changes to negative gearing, but I've always believed that the best way to support younger working Australians is to let them keep more of what they earn. This budget fails at this task. Of the $100 billion it raises over the medium term, it keeps about $77 billion.”
“But, at this stage, I think there are issues with what the government has done, and they need to be resolved, and they should be resolved in the House before we're obliged to pass the legislation.”
“I think that is not an unreasonable mechanism. It would deal with many of the issues the government is trying to deal with in relation to the 30 per cent minimum real tax rate but would do it in a way that people would find easy to understand and that is simpler. Those are the three changes I have put forward in terms of this bill. I recognise that none of these amendments are perfect, but I also don't think the bill is perfect. The government is not giving this bill enough scrutiny in the Senate and it is not giving enough consideration to the real issues with the bill, nor is it trying to make the bill better. I stand on the basis that I want this bill to be better. I want the government to make really substantial tax changes that make a real difference to the country over a long period of time.”
“I recognise there are integrity issues around this, and I recognise the government is sincere in trying to deal with them, but, honestly, this is a significant issue in this model of indexation of CGT. I think, if the government isn't willing to deal with these issues, it needs to recognise this model is not perfect either and that other models should be considered. Finally, I think that, instead of using a flat 30 per cent minimum real tax rate, the government should income average over the life of the asset or up to a maximum of 10 years. This is different to the Keating model, because the Keating model did allow for game playing in terms of some of the issues that have been rightfully identified. It would ensure that people pay tax at the marginal rate of the time that they held the asset, on their CGT.”
“Regardless, given that the government has moved forward with this CGT model, I think there are three amendments that deal with three of the known challenges to the model the government has put forward. Firstly, I've moved an amendment to remove active businesses from the new indexation CGT regime and remain under a flat discount regime until such a time as the issues around startups and small businesses are resolved. I recognise the government is serious about trying to resolve some of these issues, but these changes should not be made until those issues are resolved. Secondly, a second amendment would allow regulation to deal with the issue of capital gains being taxed on a real basis and losses being taxed on a nominal basis.”
“I think we also need to consider international competitiveness and incentives for risk taking that make it easy for people to plan and are simple enough for them to understand. That helps create a fair society. Those are the other considerations. I think the government should, instead of the work that they're doing, move to a reduced flat discount to, say, 35 or 40 per cent rather than an indexation approach, because I think that would narrow the gap between the taxation of labour and capital, produce a model comparable to other countries, raise similar amounts of revenue, not have issues with high-growth businesses or high-growth investments, and people would understand it.”
“Some of it—$77 billion—has gone to the government, and I don't believe that's what the community wants. Secondly, I think there are real issues that are unresolved with the CGT model the government has chosen. Thirdly, this bill has been rushed through in an unacceptable way. You cannot say that this is the most important tax reform in a generation and then rush it through as it has been. I have put amendments forward in relation to the CGT model because I think this is an area where there is an opportunity to get it right. I recognise that the government has an intellectually consistent approach, which is trying to make sure we only tax real gains, and that is what they're trying to do in this budget. I accept that they've done that well, but I don't think that's the main objective we should have in how we tax CGT.”
“I've been advocating for tax reform since I was first elected, and I welcome the government's guts to bring a serious proposal forward. I share many of the ambitions the Treasurer has identified in his budget, but I cannot support the bill's proposals in their current form. It's not because I don't support the intent. The government has correctly diagnosed significant problems in Australia's tax system. It's not because I don't support the broad direction of measures. I believe we do need to rebalance the tax system to reduce our reliance on wages and to pay for that by reducing concessions on assets alongside reducing spending as well. But I cannot support the bill in its current form for three reasons. Firstly, not all of the revenue is being returned to the taxpayers.”
“There is a choice: a government that grows its own footprint and crowds out the choices of its citizens or one that trusts people to build their own futures. There are a number of issues with the government's budget, and these are the fundamentals that need to be addressed. I can see that the government is trying to address some of the issues in relation to spending, but it needs to go significantly further. Our economy has changed; our population is ageing. That does put additional spending pressures on the budget. But the speed at which the government has moved from a more traditional percentage of GDP spending to its current level of spending does not reflect demographic changes. It just reflects a different way of running the country, which is a way I don't think the Australian people have supported.”
“Finally, the government must commit to real timeframes to deliver its national single market and deregulation agenda. When government takes income through taxation and returns it through spending, it substitutes its own judgement for that of the people who earned it. That is sometimes right, but it should not be the default. The people of Wentworth are not asking for more programs; they're asking for better ones. They're asking for the room to shape their own lives on their own terms. That requires lower taxes on working incomes. The income tax cuts in this budget are welcome, but they are insufficient and are undermined by an expenditure trajectory that keeps pressure on the fiscal position indefinitely.”
“The government's centrepiece growth thesis is Future Made in Australia. I support investment in clean energy where Australia has a genuine comparative advantage, but building strategic redundancy in the name of national security is the explicit antithesis to productivity. There may be a price worth paying, but it should be named honestly, costed honestly and evaluated honestly. We do not have that. So the government must do three things. Firstly, a bottom-up build of every portfolio, with existing measures scrutinised line by line and justified in, with the goal of returning to structural surplus without raising taxes. Secondly, every policy proposal must state publicly what they think success looks like, by when and against what benchmark, and programs that don't meet the mark must be reconsidered.”