9:18
The government has used its raw political horsepower to drive its tax changes through the lower house, an attempt to wedge the opposition. So today, in front of the whole country, they have chosen higher taxes on workers. They've chosen to lock more Australians out of the housing market. What Australians see is a bad faith government playing a cynical tricky game cuz that's what they do. But the Senate where the government doesn't have a majority is a different beast altogether. I don't know if you noticed but those bills going right now is you voting against tax. No, we're voting against your tax. No, we're voting against your taxes. Your increased taxes and that will reduce the regulator.
Well, the bells have been going all morning and you are ultimately going to vote against tax cuts today. Build as the biggest tax reform in a generation, the basic elements have passed their first hurdle in the lower house. But there's a fight brewing in the Senate after the government set aside just 2 days later this month for an inquiry that's raised the eye of the coalition Greens and some crossbenches who say they're not being given enough time to consider the reforms. Changes to CGT should have a lengthy Senate inquiry so we can actually work out the details. The opposition leader was also urging the Greens to cut a deal and styy the government in the Senate.
The Greens have an opportunity here though to stop this legislation. Uh and we'll work with whoever we can to stop this uh toxic legislation getting through the parliament. Most if not all of the provisions in this legislation don't kick in until 1 July next year. So, um, there's nothing that a longer discussion in the parliamentary sense of this legislation would prevent from happening. While the Greens are inclined to back the government's tax overhaul, indeed, they've said it should go even further, the minority party has questioned whether it would grant the Treasurer discretionary powers to tweak tax law, triggering exasperation from one senior
minister. Is the government reforming capital gains tax treatment or not? Are you kidding me? Is that a serious question? No, it is a serious question because the obvious follow-up, Minister, is if you ask, why have you created commentary about our reforms to capital gains tax? You don't think that's real? Why would small businesses and farming families trust the treasurer with sweeping extraordinary powers? Just because you can get someone to write this rubbish doesn't make it true, Mr.
Speaker. It doesn't make it true. There is nothing extraordinary about treasurers of either political persuasion settling definitions in this manner. And I've finished my answer, Mr. Speaker. The opposition is also pushing back at the government's claim that its CGT changes are merely a return to the pre999 inflationbased discount introduced by Paul Keating. The Treasury Secretary today indicating there are key differences to what's now being legislated. Will the new capital gains tax system allow 5-year income averaging as the pre999 system did? That was not announced in the budget.
Did the pre999 system impose a minimum 30% tax rate as the new system? Will uh no it didn't. uh center. Will the prime minister correct Hansard and admit his assault on hardworking Australians is much more punitive than the pre 1999 system. What we've moved from is a discount of 50%. To the discount system that was in place prior to 1999, which was a discount system based upon real gains. Parliament will return after a fortnight's break, and the government is quietly confident it can get the Greens to pass its reforms by early July. But today's vote has laid bare how opposition to tax changes is broader than anticipated on budget night just over 3 weeks ago. The coalition was joined by a long list of
inner city teals and independents who voted against the government including prominent advocates of economic reform such as Algra Spender, Sophie Scumps, Kate Cheney, Nichollet Bullah and Zali Stegel. Once the government has done the modeling, consulted properly and settled the detail for other asset classes, the parliament can then have a proper debate about whether or not CGT changes should apply beyond property. Mr. speaker will be supporting the bill un amended. Well, since the budget was delivered a few weeks ago, there's been much focus on the softening property market. Most politicians have struggled to say whether they want house prices to go up
or down. Most, but not all. I think Australians are looking for authentic leadership. They're over the What they want to hear from their politicians are honest answers. And the honest truth is that house prices in this country are too high for young people and they should go down. Well, Andrew Bragg is the shadow housing minister. Welcome to the program, David. How are you? Very well. Let's embrace your spirit there of politicians giving honest answers. How far would you like to see house prices fall?
Well, we want to see more affordability, which is why I've made those statements because I think people want to see honesty that if you are a young person and you're looking at house prices being 10 or 15 times a multiple of your salary, then you're never going to be able to afford a house. So the fact that the government have pump primed house prices at the entry level with their 5% deposit scheme, I think it's been outrageous. They've made the problem worse, not better. Well, it's not just what the government's done with that home deposit scheme, uh, is it? I mean, you look at the nearly 10 years the coalition was in power. Entry- level house prices went up far more than that five or 6%.
Well, the supply piece is essential here. And as you know, the government have spent $80 billion on housing to build 30,000 fewer houses a year. Plus, they've had a large migration program. So, the combination of those factors of having a larger than usual migration program, a collapse in supply, and the 5% deposits have pumped prime prices, particularly this has been a long run uh story. Those entry- level house prices have been going up for a very long time and indeed much faster when the coalition was in office. Well, we haven't built enough houses which has pushed up the prices and that is of course one of the great problems that we see. I mean cities like Melbourne and Sydney are some of the
most unaffordable cities in the world and the people who live in those cities know that they feel that. So I think we have to be honest about these problems. It's of course very difficult problem to solve but there are some levers that the federal government has at its disposal. Well I'll come to those but just back to the original question. You want prices now to fall by how much? Well, I think by at least as much as the Labor Party have pumped primed them, I think they should at least give that
money back to people. Well, as you know, they push up prices by 6% over 6 months. Okay. So, you want a 6% fall in property prices. Well, for the entry level properties, David, we're talking about here for people who are I'm not worried about people who, you know, have great wealth and already have terrific opportunities. I'm worried about the people who can't get an access can't get access to the Australian dream. I think this is a great shame that a person on an average wage can't get access to a house. I mean, in decades gone by.
Does Angus Taylor agree with you then on the need for a fall of around 6% in the price of entry- level homes? Well, I'm giving you an example. Our point is that we want to see affordability improve which of course you do by building more houses and not having crazy ideas like having a 5% deposit scheme which is not means tested which is not capped uh and then not having migration calibrated with house building. So there are a lot of factors here that you can deploy to stabilize and improve affordability. That's our focus. And so what the government's now doing with negative gearing and capital gains tax changes is aimed at rebalancing the market. Uh One Nation also supports changes to negative gearing. You're saying keep the status
quo. Uh do you accept that the market does need some rebalancing away from investors to owner occupiers? No, I don't because I think we need to be building like crazy. We need to build more houses. And the idea that there's some forms of bad investment like moms and dads. Labour think moms and dads are bad investors, but there are good investors like super funds and governments. I think that's insane. It's intellectually dishonest. We need to be building more houses. So the government have a deliberate design feature to reduce supply by 35,000 according to their own budget papers. I think that is crazy and we don't support that. We support to be clear for that with
infrastructure spending. But just back on the point there, you've just said you don't think there is any need for rebalancing. You don't think there are too many investors in the market compared to owner occupiers, but we want more investment to get more houses. That's how things work. You want more investors in the market. We want more investment in the housing system to create more houses for Australians. And as you know, we've been a proud migrant nation for 250 years, probably the greatest and most successful migrant nation uh ever. And if we want to house Australians and new Australians, we need to be building more like a quarter of a million houses each year, this government will be lucky to give us 170,000 houses this year. And
under the last Liberal government, we used to have 200,000 on average. Okay. Accept your point about the need for more supply. But yeah, it's key. Can I just be clear about this? You saying you'd like more property investors owning homes than owner occupiers? I want more investment in housing. I don't care who the investors are. The idea that there's good investment and bad investment is just stupid. You don't think there's any it's out of whack at the moment with too many investors owning properties compared to owner occupiers.
I want to grow the pie. I want to improve the number of houses that are available for people to live in. Understand that country, but you're saying there's no problem with the balance. I'm not interested in recalibration. I'm not interested in communism or socialism. No. So you're fine with the number of property investors compared to owner occupiers. I want to improve the number of first home owners and you do that by building more houses. It's very clear that you need to build more homes. You need to have a proper migration program and you need to find creative ways to help first
home buyers. There are different ways you can do this. The government have gone for the politically expedient process which is just giving away these 5% deposits to everyone and anyone into a supply constrained market one which they have deliberately reduced. So when your solution then what's your solution to boost supply and fix the whole problem? Well we've already announced that we would invest heavily in infrastructure. We've announced that we would recalibrate migration. We have announced that we would freeze and change the national construction code to get it down to a more reasonable size. But we also need to keep looking at other ideas to improve the viability of home
building. Now I know this is not politically sexy, but one of the main issues in housing is that it's very hard to make a buck out of it. So we need to look at all the taxes and all the regulatory charges that actually mean it's very hard to get the houses built in this country. So a big part of our policy development process be looking at this supply side and taxation and regulation. And you did mention migration in a list. It's it's the main thing that Angus Taylor talks about as the solution to this getting migration down. Whereas you have said even if you cut migration to zero, you'd still have a whopping housing crisis. So going back to that
that spirit of politicians giving honest answers, Andrew Brag, would cutting migration really make a big difference? I've been very clear that it is one of the factors in the housing system and in fact the RBA this week has said and today it's an estimate that migration is one of those factors. So well it's a significant factor. It is one of the factors that you need to resolve to get the housing system back under control. I mean the fact that people can't afford to buy a house on an average salary is one of our great challenges that we have to resolve in our generation. Otherwise, the millennial generation will give up, I think, on Australia as a democracy as we know it. Senator Andrew Brag, thanks for joining us tonight.
Thanks, David.
