There are three topics that I’d like to deal with tonight in my contribution on the legislation that we’re currently debating here in the House, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living Tax Cuts) Bill 2024 and Treasury Laws Amendment (Cost of Living—Medicare Levy) Bill 2024.
These bills are about proposed changes that the Labor government is making to legislated tax cuts, the stage 3 tax cuts, in fact, that were legislated by agreement some time ago. Those three areas are: firstly, honesty and transparency in politics; secondly, the cost of living and the impact that it’s having broadly on Australia, but specifically in my community on the Gold Coast; and, thirdly, the implications of the tax cuts and the legislation that we are debating here tonight.
If I can start with honesty and transparency in politics: this is an issue that does get widely debated. Unfortunately, it doesn’t generally get widely debated within the House or within this place at all, but it is something that does get discussed quite widely in our communities. I think it’s very disappointing to have to say that many people are disappointed in the honesty and transparency that currently exists in Australian federal politics. In relation to the situation that is before us now with regard to the tax cuts: the position that was taken to the last election, given that it was a legislated stage 3 tax cut, was that the tax cuts would be implemented in full. That was a position that the Labor government continued to hold, effectively, until just before there were briefings and media reports that there were going to be changes to the tax cuts that had been legislated. What that indicates to the Australian public is in fact that promises made by politicians are not often, or not always, upheld, and that policies taken to elections—that members of the public choose either to support or to change their vote and move to another party, or perhaps to an independent—are not necessarily going to be what’s implemented when a particular party takes place. I think that’s particularly disappointing. We need to work much harder to ensure that promises made by politicians are actually upheld when they come into this place. If they’re going to be broken, if they’re going to be changed, then, surely, as much notice and as much consultation with the community need to be undertaken as is possible.
That was clearly not the case in this case. The situation that we have is that, without a doubt, millions of people are going to benefit from these changes, so a bit of a blind eye has been shown to the fact that this was a broken promise by the Labor government. I think that’s disappointing because what that actually does is to set up for the future the very real possibility, when there are changes to positions that have been taken to elections, and when policies which have been clearly enunciated are to the benefit of some people, they will choose to turn a blind eye to those changes. In the case where it is disadvantageous to people, they may well choose to say: ‘Actually, there needs to be far more transparency. That’s a broken promise and we can’t have that.’ That’s actually not what our democracy should be about. It should be about the major parties—and I’m a strong supporter of the major parties—enunciating very clearly what their policies are. And they should stick to them.
So let’s be very clear on what is being proposed here with these stage 3 tax cuts. It’s a significant movement from the policy that the Labor government undertook to continue when it was elected. It held that position quite clearly until just before it announced that there were going to be changes to the stage 3 tax cuts as had been legislated. If we put this in the perspective of the cost-of-living increases, it’s understandable why many people in the community are supportive of the changes that are being proposed; it’s because they’ll be beneficiaries. The cost of living is really hitting our communities particularly hard at the moment, and it has been for many months. For at least the last eight to 12 months, many members of our community have been very clearly suffering. It’s really in two parts: firstly, there’s the housing affordability issues and, secondly, is the increase in costs for the basic groceries that they need every single day. Let me deal with that in two parts.
I’ll go to housing affordability and look at my own community, which is based on the southern part of the Gold Coast in Queensland. Just before coming into the chamber tonight, I actually checked the rental prices in one of the major suburbs in my electorate, Robina. I actually searched for rent on a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Robina. Using real estate.com.au, at the time that I searched there were four properties that came up. They were around $750, $850 and $880, from memory. There was definitely one at $880, and I think the cheapest was $750. That’s a per week rental, which is a significant cost. That’s in a suburb on the Gold Coast and, whilst it is central, it isn’t on the beach. If you start to move closer to the beachside suburbs then the rents increase quite significantly. Four properties for rent for a family in Robina—there aren’t very many properties, though it’s a significant price. Many people on the Gold Coast are finding it very difficult to find anywhere at all to live. If they can find somewhere to rent, it is at a significant cost. Many people are struggling. Many people are couch surfing. Many people are living in properties that are well below what they would like, but they simply cannot afford to live in a property that is going to offer them and their families the convenience and the services that they need to survive.
If you look at the cost of purchasing a house on the Gold Coast—and, again, it depends on the area that you’re looking at—as you get closer to the beachside suburbs, and right on the beachfront, housing prices have literally gone through the roof over the last year or year and a half. Housing is no longer affordable for people. The building of high-rises, particularly along the coastal strip, is pushing many of our families out of that area, pushing them further back, where there is very limited public transport. That is having a serious impact on their ability to get to work, to get the kids to school and to get their shopping home. This is leading to significant cost-of-living issues.
If you then start to look at the cost of groceries, you see that they have gone through the roof. I recently spoke to some of our coffee shop owners. I went into their shops and asked them what they were seeing from the customers that were coming in. They indicated to me that they were still getting about the same number of people coming in to purchase something from their shops, but the people who used to come in at lunchtime and buy lunch and a cup of coffee were not doing that anymore; they were coming in and getting coffee and maybe a snack—a piece of cake or something—and the people who had previously come in for coffee and cake were just buying coffee. It had even got to the point where coffee shop owners had noticed an obvious change to the type of milk people were choosing for their coffee. Whereas almond lattes and soy lattes used to be commonplace, people were moving to cows milk—lattes, flat whites or whatever—to save the 50c or 70c per cup of coffee, moving from the speciality milks to the cows milk equivalent. This cost-of-living increase is really starting to bite. Store owners are telling me that people are no longer buying much, if any, seafood. They’re moving towards the cheaper cuts of meat. They’re looking for the lowest prices on just about everything that they buy. Sadly, there is a level of acceptance that house prices are high and rentals are higher; there is very little that people seem to be able to do about that at the moment. That is a fixed price for them, so they are cutting costs everywhere else that they possibly can.
Against that, if we look at these tax cuts, yes, there are millions of people who are going to be better off because of the changes to the legislation, and I think we need to recognise that supporting this legislation put forward by the Labor government is something that we all must do to try and ease the cost-of-living burden, but these tax cuts aren’t the entire answer to the problems that people are facing. This is a very short-term fix. The cost of living has gone up so significantly that the tax cuts, whilst they will be of some benefit, do not go anywhere near as far as is needed to alleviate the pain that people are feeling in their hip pockets at the moment.
Looking at the legislation that is currently being proposed, I won’t go through what the changes are to the legislated stage 3 tax cuts that were passed previously. What we can say is that over the past 18 months, as I’ve touched on already, the real net disposable income per person has collapsed. It’s gone backwards by about 8.6 per cent. That means the average income earner is about $8,000 worse off. The proposed tax cuts do not go anywhere near as far as is needed to alleviate the pain that those people are experiencing. We’re talking about $8,000, and that’s without the increases to mortgage repayments from successive interest rate rises. So it’s a significant burden that people are facing at the moment. The coalition’s promise and position going forward is that we are very committed to going to the next election with a tax reform package that is in keeping with the intent of the stage 3 tax cuts. We remain incredibly committed to making sure that we are fighting bracket creep, because that is one of the single most significant issues when we’re actually looking at dealing with the aspirations of so many Australians. It’s not uncommon for us to hear that people are concerned about working additional hours or looking at a more highly paid job simply because that will take them into a different tax bracket. That slowly increases over time with bracket creep, in any event. It is a concern to those people, and we are undertaking to develop the appropriate policies and take those to the next election.
What will our package deliver? Let me just go through that. We will be making sure that we are developing policies and a taxation package that is going to deliver lower, simpler and fairer taxes. It will deal with fighting the bracket creep, that is currently the bane of so many taxpayers around Australia. It will be a package that rewards hard work for Australians and inspires people to look at what they can deliver for themselves and for this nation. We will unite Australians rather than pit them against each other. Let’s be clear that any government should be elected to govern for all people, not necessarily to pick individual winners and losers when they start to look at their policies and at any proposed changes to the legislation that is already in place. So the coalition will go to the next government with a package that is going to be in the best interests of all Australians. We’re also undertaking to make sure that we are fully costing the policies that we take through to the next election so that the Australian voting community, our population here, can be very confident that what the coalition takes to the next election will be properly budgeted, and we will make sure that we have the capacity and the capability to deal with implementing our policies.