ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - BILLS - Treasury Laws Amendment (2024 Tax and Other Measures No. 1) Bill 2024 - Second Reading
Whilst the Albanese Labor government will tell you that this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2024 Tax and Other Measures No. 1) Bill 2024, will help reduce red tape, there are many of us who suspect or know otherwise. We cannot forget the hypocrisy that Labor has shown when it comes to all things tax.
On 1 July, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, the member for Whitlam, announced significant new regulations and obligations for tax practitioners, planned to come into effect a month from then, on 1 August. This rushed announcement left many in the tax industry scrambling, fearing failure to comply by the starting date. This is so typical of Labor. They tell you that stakeholders, people with an interest in these matters, have been engaged with and consulted, yet anything such as that is furthest from the truth.
It was yet another example of Labor making the rules for the big end of town as they go along. Huge multinational accounting firms would have had the capacity and resources to make the changes necessary to adhere to these new obligations. I come from a regional area, and the businesses, including tax firms and accountancy practices, in my electorate don't have teams of people such as compliance officers, legal eagles and the like to meet the obligations or certainly to meet the expectation by the government that they would within four weeks adhere to the transformational—I use that word perhaps unwisely—regulations that were being brought in. I say 'unwisely' because, when you get transformational, usually it seems to be or should be a positive thing, and these weren't positive things. These were just more bureaucracy, red tape and onerous impositions being placed on small businesses. We only have to look at the number of small businesses going out the door backwards today, in figures released overnight, to see how badly small business is going under this Labor regime.
Small regional accounting firms, already inundated during tax season, would have had to face an unrealistic timeframe to comply with the new regulations Labor was introducing. Numerous concerns were being raised about these changes, and it was only halfway through July when the Tax Practitioners Board came out with further clarification, stating that guidance materials to assist tax practitioners in upholding the new obligations were yet to come and were expected to be released—wait for this—in September.
After considerable uproar and calls by the coalition to withdraw the changes and conduct further consultations, the minister, the member for Whitlam, made a last-minute decision on the day before the changes were due to go into effect to extend start dates to 1 July 2025 for firms with 100 or fewer employees and 1 January 2025 for firms for 101 or more employees. This was a last-minute win for the industry and for common sense, but it was a stark reminder, a chilling reminder if you like, of just how poorly this government consults with industry and with stakeholders. This government in this respect has form.
The 72,000 tax practitioners across Australia deserve clarity, they deserve better engagement from government when changes such as these are introduced. But you see right across the board, with the tax changes that Labor has either made or threatened to put in place—it's not just in financial services; it is, as I said, right across the board. It's in such things as the biosecurity levy—call it a tax; call it what it is—that Labor was going to put on our farmers. This levy was to pay for overseas goods to sit on the same shelves as our local homegrown products, and yet our farmers were going to be asked to pay for the biosecurity of their overseas competitors. What other country in the world would do that? What other country would expect its own farmers to pay for the biosecurity of their overseas competitors? It makes no sense.
Then of course we had that real doozy where the government was going to put an impost on our farmers for the increased land valuation of their farms and these farmers would be expected, even though the land was not for sale, to pay the tax office the incremental increase in the value of their land because their land value had increased. These sorts of things are just nuts, particularly for our farmers. And land prices have generally been going up and up in recent years, and in some cases from a low base.
Take a farmer from the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area whose holding has increased in price—let's say it's doubled in value. Why should that farmer have to pay an amount to the ATO simply because the value of his or her land has gone up? They've just been hit with an unseasonable frost which has wiped out their grape crop or their grain crop, if they're a grain grower. They've had their annual income just stripped, just wiped out, and yet they're then expected, because their land value has gone up, that they somehow owe the government something, they somehow owe the tax office something because the price of their land has increased. These policies are not well thought through. These are not policies made by people who have a sense and an understanding of regional Australia, of agriculture. Let's not forget that those opposite simply can't be trusted when it comes to tax policy. They simply can't.
Well done to Labor for two surplus budgets, but not well done for the fact those budgets have not been made on the back of any economic rationality or policies. They've been done on the back of the fact that global prices for iron ore, and for coal in particular, are peaking at the moment. They're at record levels. It's nothing to do with the Treasurer's, the member for Rankin's policies. It was on the back of some very hard, diligent work done by the former Treasurer, the former member for Kooyong, that set in place the markers by which this government could then come in on the back of, post pandemic. Once things settled in that regard, once the international borders were reopened, the economy got back in shape and we got record prices for those mining commodities.
Then we, of course, have the Greens running around, wanting to shut all mining down, full stop. The member for Griffith throws his head back and sighs loudly, but it's true.
Mr Chandler-Mather interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: I'm sorry; I've now stirred him into action. Our country once rode on the sheep's back, and wool prices kept our economy going very nicely, thank you very much. In more recent decades, it's been on the back of the hard work, determination and sweat on the brow of our miners. We have a government which is wanting to talk its credibility up in the tax space, through the treasury laws amendment and other measures bill and through other bills. Yet, on the other hand, it has stopped live sheep exports, cruelling that industry which has been going for many many decades and which has been particularly profitable for Western Australian farmers, many of whom know nothing else; that's what they do for a living. So what did the government do? It put more than $100 million on the table in the last budget—as the highest expenditure item for the Labor government in agriculture in the 2024-25 budget—to shut down an industry, to stop doing something and to stop our farmers doing what they do best in the whole world.
In the budget before last under this Labor government, we had a Treasurer who, for the very first time in 25 years, couldn't bring himself to use the word 'infrastructure' and also talked about the things that we 'sell overseas'. I put that in quotes because the things that we sell overseas are—yes—agriculture but primarily the big-ticket items. The big profit-making items at the moment are iron ore and coal. Of course, he can't bring himself to say that because then he doesn't want those Greens in those inner city electorates saying how terrible that is that you've got a Treasurer running around using that four-letter word 'coal'.
After weeks of speculation, Australians still don't know with real clarity if the Prime Minister or the Treasurer will impose broken-promise tax hikes. They do not know that. But I note with interest that there has been a flurry of activity around the Chamber and around the parliament in the past 24 hours. One just suspects—one just gets this little inkling—that there might be an election coming before we know it. It is due before the end of May—we all know that—but you just get the sense that Labor's hurriedly getting the deckchairs in line. Let's hope, for his sake, that the Prime Minister is not like Captain Smith on the Titanic.
Voters out there are concerned. They are concerned because they think back to what it was like pre-May 2022, when a house was more affordable, when going to the supermarket didn't mean that you needed to almost extend the mortgage, when filling up at the petrol station—albeit petrol prices at Wagga Wagga at the moment are the cheapest in the state.
An honourable member interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: They are; it's good. But, generally speaking, fuel prices have been way too high. The cost of living has gone through the roof. People do not feel they are better off now than what they were prior to this government coming in. This government has pushed prices up and up and up. The inflation is on Labor's watch. It's on the member for Rankin's watch.
Challenged in parliament on 8 October, the Treasurer said:
We've made it really clear that our policy is not to knock off negative gearing or the capital gains discount.
Well, we'll believe that when we see it. Does this mean no change? Does it mean some change? What does it actually mean? Does it mean that negative gearing stands to be gutted under Labor, remaining in name only?
Honourable members interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: I hear, 'Hear, hear.' The member for Griffith might actually have a chat to some of his Greens colleagues who own more houses than the average Australian. He might just have a chat to his deputy leader, Senator Faruqi, who recently bulldozed some trees; I think that was at her Port Macquarie property. We talk about hypocrisy. There it is, absolutely writ large.
But this is of concern to many Australians who have worked hard, who are property investors, and why shouldn't people be able to invest?
Mr Chandler-Mather interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: I know that under your communist regime you would love everybody's wealth to be distributed but, in a capitalist country like Australia and a free and fair democracy, people are entitled to earn money and then to spend that money on what they like rather than have to give it to somebody who doesn't want to work, who doesn't want to actually do anything for a living and who then expects a handout to the government.
Let me tell you, the biggest concern whether it is the treasury laws amendment or whether it is any other tax policy is that the Greens never get any say on the Treasury benches of this country because if they did then God help us all. God help those property investors. God help anybody who has any investment or any money tucked away anywhere because the Greens will come for it. Labor could do very well and very nicely, thank you very much, if they put the Greens last on their ballot paper. Take a leaf out of my book. Have a look at any of my how to vote cards in any of the elections I've ever run. The Greens have always been last and will always be last.