Ben Small
Forrest · Liberal Party · Australia
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Aussie legend Joseph Daoud spent $17½ thousand of his own money on billboards telling the Labor government to drop their ambition taxes. He's paid up again, winning an auctioned tennis match at the Lodge to get the Prime Minister's attention.”
“What creates that situation is where people are forced into a choice no Australian should have to make—a choice between getting care or keeping up with the bills. That's just not good enough.”
“Health care in this country, despite the press releases and the political spin, is under real pressure. In regional communities like mine, the pressure continues to mount on families who simply can't afford it. We're seeing hospitals under strain and emergency departments stretched thin.”
“I was recently contacted by Kim in my electorate who shared his telling experience with our local healthcare system. Kim doesn't need to see a doctor very often, but, on this occasion, he required a basic consultation by phone. He was told that it would cost him $75 for a few minutes on the phone.”
“The dissenting report the coalition has tabled in response to this details a litany of gross overreach on the part of this partisan witch-hunt because, ultimately, this is anything but a fair, balanced and impartial approach to assessing the feedback of the Australian community that we saw in the wake of the 2025 federal election.”
“By leave—Unfortunately, I stand here today to convey to the House that the coalition's position is that one of the most serious committees in the parliament has been reduced to a one-eyed, hyperpartisan witch-hunt of a group of religious Australians.”
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“I will put the wines of Margaret River up against any from around Australia in terms of their quality. In fact, perhaps the only thing better than a summer's afternoon with a crisp glass of Margaret River chardonnay is being curled up by the fire with a glass of Margaret River cabernet sauvignon, as I was just this last weekend. But the grape and wine sector across Australia is in for the fight of its life, and it is indeed high time for the Albanese Labor government to step up, put its money where its mouth is and support our viticultural industry. My electorate of Forrest ranks as one of the finest wine regions of the world, attracting large tourism numbers to the region every year, not to mention a swag of medals at every international wine show.”
“I won't focus on this, because we are debating tobacco here tonight, but the same point stands in that punitive taxation is creating an opportunity for organised crime to exploit ordinary Australians who are just after a little vice to make life that little bit better in their own way. I don't think that we should be making criminals out of those Australians. We should be focused on normalising excise tax at the same time as tightening up some of this enforcement. Legal tobacco sales are collapsing. They're hurting the retailers. They're hurting the small business people, who we should be backing in this country, and the consumers themselves are effectively ordinary Aussies we're making criminals out of. I think this bill falls a long way short of where we could be in this very needed and very timely debate in this country.”
“There have been almost 300 firebombings and arson attacks linked to tobacco turf wars alongside robberies, extortion, kidnapping and murder. This isn't something that we're talking about as the plot for a Hollywood thriller. This is playing out in communities across Australia. If we're honest about why, we ought to see the government taking action to slash the excise on tobacco. In my part of the world, we're also looking at the rise of bootlegging—black market alcohol—and it is far more prevalent than you might think. Indeed, the ATO themselves estimate some $800 million of forgone excise on alcohol..”
“So when you consider the risk-reward context, as my local police have put to me, running a black-market tobacco operation, where you might get a shutdown notice issued for 30 days and a small civil penalty applied to a person convicted of an offence—these are organisations that are making billions of dollars a year—versus the risks they take when they participate in the illicit drug trade, where people who are caught end up in jail for 10, 20 or more years, it's no wonder that even the criminals are turning their minds to the black market of cigarettes and going, 'This is where we're going to be playing.' It's just basic human behaviour. When you understand that behaviour, I think we need to be applying that to the way we legislate here.”
“Indeed, I understand that authorities have recognised the problem themselves and that the Australian Border Force have said, 'We can't seize our way out of this problem.' Indeed, I've seen some estimates that, provided more than 15 per cent of the product being illegally imported into the country makes it through our Customs and Border Force checks, these organised crime gangs are profitable.”
“I don't think it's fair that we make criminals out of innocent people, I want to see the government shift its focus, if you like, away from this ever-increasing idea of more enforcement, more resourcing for agencies to chase these people down. The numbers speak for themselves. The ABF, the Australian Border Force, seize some 2½ billion cigarettes a year, which is a 320 per cent increase in seizures. That's great, but it's simply a drop in the ocean when it comes to the number of people who are freely accessing black-market cigarettes in this country.”
“We have to recognise why illegal tobacco is increasing. In this case, the answer is not necessarily obvious. We ought to be talking about slashing tobacco excise in this country—not by five per cent, not by 10 per cent but by more than 50 per cent—because, until the price of a lawful packet of cigarettes is within a couple of bucks of the price available through the black market, we are simply not going to change that behaviour. Worse than that, we are making criminals out of ordinary Aussies who are struggling to put food on the table, get their kids to school and maybe have a packet or two of cigarettes a week.”
“I do wonder if it's because they're seeing cigarettes that simply aren't subject to the health warnings and the like that we would otherwise require in this country. To see between $8 billion and $11.8 billion in excise being evaded every year, depending on whose estimate you accept, is having a massive impact on communities across the country that are crying out for basic services like new hospitals. Indeed, the Margaret River hospital in my electorate hasn't been upgraded in 25 years, despite the fact that the local population has more than tripled in that time and the number of people living there expands even more during peak tourist season. We are seeing this desperate need for investment in health infrastructure across the country and we are seeing a collapse in the revenue associated with tobacco excise.”
“The scale of this problem should be pretty apparent to everyone living in this country. But what is missing, and I know coalition speakers have focused on this for good reason, is the impact that the rise of black-market cigarettes has had on the budget. When we go back to 2012 or 2013, immediately after the plain-packaging legislation, we can see that excise tobacco was sitting at about $18 billion a year. The fact is that this year's budget papers have forecast tobacco excise at just $2½ billion, showing an almost complete collapse in the collection of that revenue, in the face of rising smoking in Australia—and that's the important point. This isn't reflective of the fact that we've eliminated smoking in the community. In fact, some evidence suggests quite the opposite, that we are seeing more and more smoking in young people.”
“WA is a long way from Canberra, and so the AFP are also stretched in their resourcing presence in Western Australia, naturally focusing on Perth. My electorate is a couple of hours south of Perth, and the problems we've had with illegal tobacco have gone right down to the bottom of my electorate, in Margaret River, and further south to Augusta. So you're talking about dragging police away from the very serious sorts of enforcement they need to be doing. They should be getting after murder and violent crime. They should be chasing down child exploitation. They should be monitoring our road safety. They should be doing all of these things. The police have readily admitted to me that a focus on tobacco enforcement is not included in their workload—and I understand why. It's simply outside the scope of their normal responsibilities.”
“Unless we acknowledge that human behaviour is at the centre of this, we're not going to be effective in tackling the scourge. Whilst stronger enforcement and the sorts of measures that are featured in this bill—including the increased appropriations to our enforcement agencies—are welcome, they're not going to fix the problem. That's where we need to be honest with the Australian people. They can see it happening around them every day. In my community, there have been a number of raids. Indeed, I met with the south-west police recently to discuss that. They have to admit that their resources are stretched. They are still trying to deal with all of the normal sorts of enforcement that, rightly, only the police can do.”
“There was nothing about the health risks of cigarette smoking on that packet of illegal cigarettes. Then he showed me what a lawful packet today looks like. I wasn't aware that, far beyond just having the plain packaging with the health warnings that we have, each cigarette lawfully purchased in Australia actually has to carry the health warning on it. So out of the packet which has health warnings all over it you take a cigarette that also has health warnings all over it. The idea that we can approach this issue of illegal tobacco ignorant of the fact that we're driving people away from a product that has all the health warnings on it towards a product that instead carries all the branding that the then Labor government banned more than 14 years ago seems to me to be an extraordinary oversight at the very best.”
“The rise of black-market cigarette sales has taken $1.5 million directly out of that business, a small, family owned business in my electorate. This is a crisis and not just in the terms that we have heard on both sides of the chamber tonight about the firebombings and the crime and the insurance premiums and the like but also from the kick in the guts to those retailers who are trying to do the right thing. This same IGA owner—I credit his meeting with me because I left vastly illuminated, as I'm not a smoker—made the point that these cigarettes he was able to buy very cheaply through Facebook and obviously therefore via organised crime were branded cigarettes. They were beautiful. There was a lovely packet with the gold embossing of 'Benson & Hedges' in all its glory.”
“Australians under pressure, as they are during this cost-of-living crisis, suffering under the rampant inflation in our economy that the Albanese government is overseeing, are responding by making the difficult choice of knowingly breaking the law, because illicit cigarettes are less than half the price. I met with an IGA owner in my own electorate some months ago who opened his books to me and also disclosed that he'd been doing some online shopping. He showed me the screenshots, and it appeared to me that Australia Post might well be the biggest courier of black-market cigarettes in this country. He was able to, through a Facebook group, buy cigarettes that were cheaper than the wholesale price that he pays through his IGA supermarket. Worse than that, he showed me his books over the last three years.”
“It wasn't just a punitive excise tax on drinking; it was just an outright ban: prohibition, which saw a nationwide surge in organised crime and black-market activity. I think that is useful to frame the conversation today about what is driving the illicit tobacco market, or the black market for cigarettes, in Australia. Any cursory examination would tell you that it is the excise tax. We have got to the untenable position where a lawful packet of cigarettes in Australia might cost you some $50 or $60, and the black-market cost for that same packet of cigarettes is about $15 or $20.”
“People then responded by blocking up chimneys, occasionally with fatal results from poor ventilation. In 1784, also in Britain—we could learn a thing or two from all these new tax ideas—bricks were taxed by the number of bricks taken to build a dwelling, so manufacturers simply made bricks bigger. That's why you see Georgian buildings featuring unusually large bricks. This is not a new phenomenon. We've seen wallpaper taxes, glass taxes, clock and watch taxes, beer taxes. There were salt taxes in France, driving mass salt smuggling, which was a genuine grievance feeding into the revolution. Indeed, a salt tax in India was part of the social disruption that led to Gandhi's 1930 salt march. We, of course, saw in the US a particularly dramatic example between 1920 and 1933.”
“In a debate like this, I think we should start with some pretty basic human behaviour because a brief study of human history would tell us that, whenever you seek to limit human behaviour with enforcement in the form of punitive taxes, human behaviour and human ingenuity always win. Let's go back to England and Wales in 1696, when a tax was levied on windows. People responded to this by bricking up their windows, and that's why you can still see Georgian buildings today with their window openings bricked up. It was known at the time as a tax on light and air and is sometimes credited as the source of the phrase 'daylight robbery'. When it comes to the tax levied on each cigarette in Australia today, some local constituents tell me that it resembles daylight robbery. At about the same time in England, in 1662, the fireplaces were taxed.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has said, time and time again, that he has changed his position on his toxic taxes, yet those taxes on savings, investments, housing and businesses continue to rise. Will the Prime Minister just cut to the chase and, like Julia Gillard before him, admit he's another Labor liar on taxes?”
“There is a disconnect between jobseekers and the available jobs that the current system is not resolving adequately. This motion asks the House to support an intention rather than assess performance, and it's for that reason the coalition won't support it.”
“When there are more than one million Australians receiving JobSeeker and similar income support payments and when that number has increased by over 70,000 in a single year—that's a 7½ per cent rise in just 12 months—those numbers suggest that this system is not consistently moving people from welfare into employment at all. When it comes to matching those potential employees and their future employers, you would expect that those businesses should be privately owned and prosperous, not government backed—because jobs that require taxpayer funding aren't contributing to the size of the pie in this country. There are more than 200,000 job advertisements across the country today indicating that demand is strong. Despite this, employers are consistently reporting in my part of the world that finding suitable employees is incredibly tough.”
“But scale alone doesn't guarantee effectiveness or success in converting people off welfare and into jobs for the long term. That is the only outcome that matters. Presently, some 670,000 Australians are still unemployed, and underemployment is a massive issue in the Australian economy which means that many Australians who do have work are still not getting enough hours to support themselves and their families properly. There are signs that the labour market is softening, with Labor's rampant inflation and their addiction to spending undermining the private sector's prosperity and its capacity to employ in this country. Our position is that reform should always be judged on whether it's putting people into sustained work, not simply on how it appears in glossy media releases and brochures.”
“So, when we talk about the best form of welfare being a job, I can say from my personal experience that not only have I seen it with my own eyes but I'm very proud I've been part of giving someone that opportunity. It is that sense of purpose that employment gives someone that government programs alone cannot replace. That individual got a 13-week wage subsidy and, after that, had to carry his own weight, and I'm so proud of the fact that he did. Australians don't judge success in these sorts of endeavours based on announcements, intentions or media releases. They judge success based on whether more Australians are getting into jobs and staying in them over the long term. The government's described these proposed changes as the biggest reform to employment services in 30 years.”
“Could you possibly find him a role in your hospitality venue?' I talked to my business partner because someone that's suffering from autism and severe anxiety isn't necessarily the greatest fit for a busy, thriving, noisy and bright venue. But we thought the easy thing would be to say that, no, we couldn't find him a spot. So we sat down with our head chef and said, 'Chef, we've got to find a way to give this guy a go.' We did. He started with rolling pizza bases in the kitchen long before opening, when there was no-one else in the venue. Seven years later, we sold that business and that employee was still there. He was doing day shifts. He was doing night shifts. He was a valued part of the team. He was fundamentally a different person to the chap that walked in the door those many years ago.”
“I absolutely agree that the dignity of work is fundamental to what it means to be a proud Australian, and I can tell you why. A couple of years ago, I started a bar with a friend of mine. Neither of us had ever pulled a pint, waited a table or poured a coffee for a customer, but we took the plunge into small business nonetheless. One of our regulars at the bar happened to be the general manager of an employment services provider in the south-west of WA. That regular patron provided us a challenge. She said: 'I've got a customer who has never yet been gainfully employed. He's someone with autism and severe anxiety.”
“The NDIS must protect the vulnerable, not force them into a battle for basic supports they cannot live without—up against lawyers, backed by taxpayer money, who are actively seeking to deny them the very supports the scheme was designed to provide.”
“Despite clear medical evidence, he has faced months of delay and neglect. When my office visited his home, we found conditions that no Australian should endure. His wheelchair broke in January and his request for a powered wheelchair has languished on a desk somewhere, leaving him trapped, unable to safely leave his home or spend meaningful time with his daughters. Worse still, his mobility supports were paused during an unrelated appeal. Fraser has already fallen into active traffic due to failing equipment. His plight simply cannot be ignored any longer. Across the NDIS, people like Fraser are being failed. Instead of tackling the fraud and waste, the organised crime and the corruption, this government seems to have turned its focus on participants.”
“This is a straightforward and commonsense reform that would lift their take-home pay and send a clear message that our police across Australia are genuinely valued, like other frontline workers. People across Forrest are telling me that they want to back our police officers, with thousands already signing my petition. It's time we stood up for those who stand up for us every day: our men and women in blue. I rise today to speak on behalf of Fraser, a father of two and a profoundly vulnerable NDIS participant from my part of Australia who is being failed by the system that was meant to support him. Fraser lives with spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, which is a mouthful. It is a rare, progressive, devastating neurodegenerative disease that robs him of coordination, strength, speech and, fundamentally, his independence.”
“Police officers have our backs every single day, and we think it's time that we had theirs. Across Australia, officers are facing more pressure than ever. They're being asked to do more with fewer resources, all the while navigating a system that makes an already demanding job even harder. Too often they feel undervalued and unsupported by policies that fail to recognise the reality of frontline policing. We can and we must do more to stand with those who keep our community safe every day. That's why the Liberals are calling on the Albanese Labor government to cut taxes for police by extending FBT concessions, bringing them into line with ambulance officers and other frontline workers.”
“We all know someone like this—someone who comes to a barbecue, brings a six pack, drinks 12 and takes a carton home. We won't stand for it. We are proposing a tax-back guarantee. Instead, this mob have voted for higher taxes on every Australian, every year. They should hang their heads in shame or perhaps turn on the comments on social media and see what Aussies really think of their sneaky taxes.”
“Today, the Albanese Labor government had the chance to vote for our tax-back guarantee for bigger and better tax cuts for every working Australian. But, instead, every single member of the Labor Party decided to vote to take more tax from hardworking Australians. They promised no new taxes 50 times in the Prime Minister's own words, and now Australians are faced with more tax than ever before. Labor's broken promises include taxes on housing, small businesses and savings. They've raided Australians to tune of $80 billion, but their secret inflation tax will take more than $200 billion from Australians. Our tax-back guarantee is an automatic tax cut that gets bigger every year. It means that tax thresholds rise with inflation. As much as this Prime Minister promises to give a little, he's taking a lot.”
“This is a real reduction in the resources available to sell Australia to the world. It means less capacity to compete in key international markets, less marketing firepower, fewer partnerships and weaker support for regional Australia. And again I'd like to know why.”
“This is the core function that gets people on planes, fills hotel rooms, supports the aviation recovery and drives visitors back to regional Australia—like my part in south-west WA. That funding is down by almost $42 million over the comparison period. Again I'd like to know why, because my constituents, who are doing it tough being ignored by this government, are now staring down the barrel of budget cuts at the worst possible time for a regional economy like mine. It seems to me that the government cannot continue to credibly claim that it supports tourism, that it supports regional Australia, while continuing to cut the very programs that are designed to drive demand and convert it into bookings and businesses for those small and family owned businesses who rely on tourists coming to our part of the world and spending up big.”
“Indeed, this budget exposes some $50 million in reductions for Tourism Australia over the forward estimates. Again I'd like to know why. This is a time when international holidaymakers still have not recovered, as I said. The fuel crisis is hurting travel confidence as Australian families find it more and more difficult and, indeed, more and more expensive to get out into the regional parts of Australia. And so this cancellation, this cut, is sending exactly the wrong signal. In 2026-27 alone, Tourism Australia's total expenses are $15.1 million lower than the government itself forecast in last year's budget. The most concerning cut, though, is to Tourism Australia's demand-building work.”
“Shortly after international borders reopened after COVID, as one of its first acts, Labor cut $35 million from Tourism Australia at the exact moment that we needed to be shouting to the world that we were open again, competing again and ready to welcome tourists back to our country—pockets full of cash with lots to spend it on. In 2026, the visitor economy is still not back to where it needs to be. Total international visitation remains below 2019 levels, and genuine holidaymakers—the sorts of people who fill hotels, book tours, hire cars, visit attractions and, importantly, spend money at cellar doors and otherwise keep our regional communities afloat, are still at less than 90 per cent of the 2019 levels. So here we go again—another Labor budget and more cuts to Tourism Australia.”
“I don't know about you, but I'd put the quality wine of Margaret River up against any in the world, let alone just in Australia. I don't think it's worth celebrating on behalf of a government that portends to represent regional Australia. It's such a slap in the face. Producers who export Australian prosecco now face a forced transition away from the name that they've built their export businesses on, and I'd like to know why. Additionally, it's extremely important to the south-west of WA that organisations like Tourism Australia are well funded and well resourced to ensure that 'Brand Australia' is on point internationally and attracting tourism to our shores.”
“It's interesting to note that the government's first contribution here was all about boosting their expenditure—nothing to mention about the cuts in this budget. Representing a region like mine, home to the Margaret River wine region, it's interesting that in the European Union free trade agreement the government has sold out Australian producers and their right to export their wine as prosecco, surrendering the name to EU producers after a 10 year phase-out, which is clearly a blow-off for the Australian producers who currently export Australian prosecco. Not only is this a slap in the face for Australian producers, to add insult to injury, the Minister for Social Services was on social media promoting the EU free trade agreement and celebrating access to cheap European wine and champagne.”
“I'm looking forward to hearing from the government as to whether or not those concerns have been addressed through this process. As a proud Western Australian, when it comes to the energy portfolio, there is nothing more important to me than the government's proposal around the gas industry and the imposition of a nationwide reservation scheme, which in principle is the sort of thing we've been calling for for quite some time. But the interaction with Western Australia's long established 15 per cent domestic gas reservation scheme seems to be very unclear because ministers have been out saying different things. The industry doesn't know, because it can't get a straight answer. This is deeply impactful when you consider things like the Browse Project being on the horizon.”
“We're still waiting for the $275 power price reduction that we were promised before the 2022 election! It seems that RepuTex modelling is a phrase that we don't say in this place either! The member for Wannon referred to the Cheaper Home Batteries Program blowout from $2.3 billion to $8.5 billion. I'd like to know whether the minister, who is not here, has done any work to understand what the distribution of those grants has been in relation to household income. Early criticism of the scheme was that this was reckless spending; it wasn't targeted in any way. The government tells us this budget is predicated on fiscal responsibility and restraint, so you'd think such a program, now running at $8.5 billion and counting, would have been carefully targeted on some sort of socioeconomic base or subject to means testing.”
“If the government can't categorically confirm that it will lower power prices in south-west WA, the question is why on earth are these proposals proceeding at all? Offshore wind is being cancelled around the world. Large turbine manufacturers are making significant parts of their workforce redundant in response to turbine cancellations, which does beg the question: why is this government so intent on pushing ahead with these projects at the same time the rest of the world seems to have woken up? Until we get some straight answers on these three projects, south-west residents will remain sceptical of the approach this government takes to managing climate change and energy, not least because we'd have a hard time believing any commitment the government does make with regard to the lower power prices.”
“The question really is whether this government—which has, as I said, bungled the consultation process—failed to realise that the imposition of the vast exclusion zone threatens the activities that are the lifeblood of our community. This includes fishing, or what's left of it after the state Labor government decided to ban commercial fishing, boating and diving, as well as the important contribution that tourism makes to our local economy. Given that these three ventures are foreign owned—Westward Wind is a joint venture with Spain's EDP Renewables and France's EDF—the question is whether these feasibility licences will be progressed by this government and whether the Geographe Bay offshore wind farms will actually lower power bills for households and businesses in WA's south-west.”
“Long-time listeners of the Federation Chamber won't be surprised to know that the focus of my questions today begins with Labor's offshore wind proposal for Geographe Bay. It started at 8,000 square kilometres, an area some 10 times the size of Singapore, being locked up for an offshore wind farm. That's hundreds of the most modern turbines, each taller than the biggest skyscraper in Perth, being connected across Geographe Bay, a whale migration superhighway. My community was outraged. After a community backlash at the bungled consultation process, the zone was halved to 3,995 square kilometres, which was declared in August 2024. In January this year, the government granted the final feasibility licences to three projects across 732 square kilometres of that zone.”
“The last correspondence from the Commonwealth, on 31 October 2025, said nothing about the sustainability of the sector, yet 33 days later the industry had its licence to operate cancelled. I'd like to know what consultation the Commonwealth received from the WA government before making this decision and how the Commonwealth departments were seemingly so unaware of the precarious state—if we're to believe the state Labor government—of the demersal fishery. I've galloped through that, Deputy Speaker Fernando, so we can hear from the minister.”
“It's globally renowned for its quality wine but an industry that is nonetheless facing its worst oversupply crisis in recent memory, so the axing of the cellar door grant program in the out years of this budget and the allocation of nothing towards the transition funding that the industry has advocated for over several years now is a disappointing oversight in the budget. Minister, your government's own forecasts show that farm incomes are expected to fall significantly in the year ahead, and this budget contains so little by way of direct support to help farmers facing lower incomes and tougher conditions over the coming years. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the demersal fishing ban that has crippled our local fishing industry in WA as a result of the Western Australian government's ban on demersal gillnet fishery.”
“I do want to acknowledge the presence of the minister here today. She's offered to respond to our questions, so I'll be nice and brief to reflect that. Invasive species are a concern to anyone involved in the agricultural sector. Indeed, on my own property in the Ferguson Valley, I've got a problem with pigs, and a south-west farmer recently spoke to me about their property, which has been in the family for 170 years. Never have they had a problem with pigs, but they do now. So I do want to know why this budget, of all budgets, has seen the axing of the established pest weeds control program. Additionally, my patch is home to that little emerging wine region called Margaret River.”
“Self-starters are what built this country, and an Australian government should always look them in the eye when seeking to take more of their hard earned money and fritter it away on whatever else they're spending. This is a budget that also contains $18.2 billion in new spending for net zero, including more than $1 billion for green hydrogen, which, I note, even the most prominent mining billionaires in this country who have had quite the infatuation with green hydrogen for many years now have walked away from.”
“There is a reason that Australians feel poorer today when they leave a shop, a cafe or a local business than when the Prime Minister came to office, and that's because they are. Real GDP per capita has gone backwards since this government came to power. I've noticed that government MPs are now plopping the word 'real' in front of lots of different things, but it doesn't change the simple economics that, when inflation is outpacing growth, people in this country are going backwards. That's why we will fight these toxic taxes tooth and nail. If they become law under this government, we will seek to repeal them when, inevitably, Australians boot them out of office. Further than that, we will stop this happening into the future with our plan to index income tax thresholds.”
“It seems to me he had quite the epiphany after the election, and it is simply because, addicted to spending as he is and his government is, this is a prime minister who has run out of money. That's why this is not a budget of tax reform. It is a budget of a tax raid. Unfortunately, the targets are those families who save and sacrifice, who invest and work hard, the very Australians that have built this country into the sort of place that it is today. Rather than seeking to contain his spending to limit the growth of government and to empower the private sector to do what it does best in lifting living standards in this country, he has presided over the largest collapse in real living standards in the developed world.”
“But the fact is that there are fewer homes being built today in Australia than when the government took over. Is that about to change? Well, it is. It's about to get worse. The budget papers also contain, on page 158 of Budget Paper No. 1, the admission that there will be 35,000 fewer dwellings built in this country as a result of the tax policy changes contained in it. But this is not actually a revelation. Prior to the election, when Mr My Word Is My Bond, the Prime Minister, was denying strenuously at every opportunity that he would touch these taxes, he was quoted before that election saying that changes to negative gearing would do nothing to boost the supply of housing in this country.”
“A former leader of the opposition, Mr Shorten, did take a plan like that to an election, and he got flogged because Australians were not going to stand by and see taxes on aspiration—the very thing that underpins the prosperity of our nation being attacked in such a way. But here we are now with a government reeling from a housing crisis of its own making because it failed abjectly to control migration to this country at the same time as it layered red tape and regulation on the construction sector, seeing housing completions fall quarter on quarter for the last year in my great state of Western Australia. At the same time, they have blown every single budget estimate of net overseas migration to this country since they came to power.”
“That is the central dishonesty of this budget being exposed on page 140 of Budget Paper No. 1. This is not tax reform. This is a tax grab by a government addicted to spending. Apparently it is the fault of the capital gains tax reform in 1999 that the housing market is so unbalanced today. But, when you pause to think about that for a moment, the fact is that the current housing crisis has nothing to do with those reforms in 1999, because the Labor Party have been in government for a full 10 years of the period since, and it never occurred to them in any of those 10 years to take a plan to reform capital gains tax to an election. Well, actually, it did.”