Source: Prime Minister of Australia
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Thank you so much for joining us. Our tax reforms will make it easier for Australians to buy their first home and they’ll cut taxes for every Australian worker. Our tax reforms give support to small business. And we will amend our legislation to give every active small business generous capital gains tax concessions. Our tax reforms will give better alignment for income earned from work with income earned from assets and wealth. Most Australians have nothing to sell but their time. Nothing to give but their hard work. And that’s how they earn an income. That’s how they put food on the table. And we want those people, those hard-working Australians, to have the opportunity to own their own home.
Today we have secured support to get this legislation through the Parliament with the majority of senators. I expect that just as the three right-wing parties have opposed every one of our tax cuts, every pay rise for workers, every cost of living measure, every policy to build more homes and help more people buy a first home, they will oppose these measures and continue in their race to the bottom to see who can be more anti-aspirational, more anti-worker and confirm that they’re defined purely by what they’re against. My government is defined by what we are in favour of. Delivering real change in the national interest, making difficult decisions, but so that Australia can move forward. We’ll continue to be defined by that. These reforms are important. They’re a result of an ambitious Budget that was handed down in the interests of the Australian people. We’ll hear from the Treasurer, then the Health Minister, then the Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Finance Minister and then we’ll take questions.
< JIM CHALMERS, TREASURER
There is also, agreed with The Greens in the Senate that we will take an additional step when it comes to limited recourse borrowing arrangements. Now, many of you would know that super funds are, generally, are prohibited from borrowing to make investments, but this has been an exception in the system. And so the changes that we’ve agreed today will strengthen the rules that limit borrowing by superannuation funds. We will ban these arrangements for residential property going forward, but we will leave the existing arrangements in place for those existing investments and also have a 45 day transition period for any investments which are currently midstream, and that’s important as well. In 2014, David Murray, in the review that he led for the Coalition, recommended that these arrangements be banned. In 2019 and 2022, the Council of Financial Regulators also highlighted the risks in these arrangements and we will be dealing with that with this amendment in the Senate. This is a very small part of the housing market. SMSFs, for example, are less than one per cent of total residential property borrowing and less than half a per cent of new residential borrowing each year. So, a small part of the market. Now, this is an important change in its own right, but it also reflects the realities of a Senate where nobody has the numbers on their own. And that’s why we are willing to support these arrangements today, the changes to these arrangements today. I’ll hand you to Mark and then to Katy.
< MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH
It was obviously pretty clear to us as we came back to Parliament that it was going to be next to impossible to have this bill dealt with over the course of this fortnight. The Opposition had indicated, in spite of some encouraging comments from the Leader of the Opposition in his Budget Reply speech, that they were looking at a six month delay to this bill being dealt with in the Parliament. Let me be clear, a six month extension would cost the Budget billions of dollars, but would also delay our ability to get those cost blowouts under control, to clear up eligibility rules and to crack down on the fraud and the integrity issues that the community knows are there with the NDIS. And that is why we have agreed to an extension of this inquiry that’s been underway for the last several weeks, for another eight weeks to report on 14 August. This is another opportunity for us to provide ongoing reassurances about our intentions around this package and the degree to which this is an important reform to secure the long term future of this important social program. We’ve also agreed to a series of amendments in areas that we’d been considering over the course of this inquiry to make it very clear what support determinations would be able to be made and restricting them only to social activity and therapy areas, making sure that there is no impact on the ability of participants to continue to engage in employment. Also to clarify what appropriate treatment might be that we would expect participants or applicants for the scheme to undertake before they would be considered for entry into the scheme, particularly to ensure that that does not involve any restrictive practices and also only considers treatment that would be publicly funded. So, this is obviously, as Jim said, a reflection of the realities in the Senate. We think this reform is the right direction for the country. We think reform is urgent and needs to be considered by the Parliament immediately after this report is delivered on the 14th of August. But there obviously was not, there was not a pathway to consider this bill over the course of this fortnight.
< KATY GALLAGHER, MANAGER OF GOVERNMENT BUSINESS IN THE SENATE
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< PRIME MINISTERWest Australian. That’s something that wasn’t done. And when I went to Geoscience Australia, I was somewhat shocked. I encourage people who are Canberrans here or people who are visitors to our great bush capital here to go and visit them, see the work that they’re doing, the scientists making an enormous difference for Australia. So, we’ll work constructively, we’ll engage constructively because that’s what defines our government.
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