ALICIA PAYNE, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Good morning, everyone. I'm Alicia Payne, the Member for Canberra, and I'm thrilled this morning to be here with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and Housing Minister Clare O’Neil to talk about what we are doing to help more Australians into housing. We've just visited the home of my constituents, Mika and Matt, and I really thank them for hosting us this morning. They're another young couple who have benefited from our five per cent deposit scheme, and it was really heartwarming to see how them and their gorgeous dog, Pikelet, are settling into their new home. Our government is making sure that Australians can get into stable housing, whether it's achieving the dream of owning their own home, or young homeless people getting into social housing. Our Budget has really invested in that. We're also levelling the playing field so that incentive is skewed towards investing in new homes, and young people can get that start they need in the housing market. It's my great pleasure now to hand over to the Prime Minister.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Alicia, and it's great to be in your electorate this morning with Matt and Mika and their dog, Pikelet. There's bits of Pikelet still on all of us, I think here. A young Labrador who was very enthusiastic about our first home owner scheme that's allowed for just five per cent deposits. One of the things that Matt and Mika have said is that owning their own home and having the security of a roof over their head. Matt grew up in regional Victoria, Mika in Sydney, has meant the difference to them, being able that every single dollar that they're putting towards their mortgage is building up an asset for them. It's how they've been able to have a dog in Pikelet in their new flat here in Kingston, in Canberra. They're able to walk to work. They're able to have that security of not having to move each and every year. And they're just one family of the 250,000 people now that I can announce, have now benefited from our five per cent deposit scheme. That's 250,000 families for whom that five per cent deposit has meant the difference between renting and paying off someone else's mortgage and paying off their own home, having that security that comes with that.
Now, Tuesday night's Budget was an opportunity as well for us to further advance our housing agenda. We have our $47 billion Homes for Australia Plan. That includes the $2 billion of additional funding for that little bit of extra infrastructure that you need for homes to go from the planning stage into construction. It might be sewerage, water, electricity, a little road infrastructure that will make a difference as well. But quite clearly, all of the measures that we've put in place for supply haven't been enough. We need to do more. We need to throw everything at this. And that's why we're changing negative gearing so that when someone wants to invest in their own future wealth and a future asset for themselves, if they invest in a new home rather than an existing home, where they're competing at an auction with first home buyers, and they have an advantage over people who are trying to buy a home for themselves and have that roof over their head. If they invest in a new home, what they're doing as well is not just investing in their own future wealth and assets, they're investing in the nation, because they're assisting in supply. Because people will be skewed who are investors towards the new housing market rather than competing in the existing housing market with first home buyers. This is a really practical change. It's a practical change which will change people's lives and make an enormous difference.
And the fact that the Coalition, who I didn't know that Angus Taylor had employed Malcolm Roberts as a speechwriter, but last night that's what it looked like. And then you couldn't have any answers about costings or anything else. They’ve just been a mess and haven't been able to hold the line this morning. And the Treasurer will say more about the chaos that is the three ring circus of the Coalition, the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation all competing against each other, drifting Australia further and further down the hard right agenda. But our Minister for Housing, Clare O'Neil, who I'll spend a bit of time with over the next week, she has done an amazing job and is very focused. Unlike the former government, who for most of the time they were in office, couldn't actually have one of their many Prime Ministers turn to a Housing Minister, because they didn't have one. They didn't have a Minister, they didn't have an agenda. All they had was the housing pressures build up and up and up. Well, we've taken hard decisions this week to make sure that we continue to deliver more and more for the benefit of particularly young Australians, but also by the grandfathering that's there, make sure that we also look after people who've made those investments under the negative gearing scheme.
CLARE O’NEIL, MINISTER FOR HOUSING: Thanks so much, boss. One of the most amazing things that I get the chance to do as Housing Minister is speak to incredible young people across the country who have benefited from our policies. We met with Matt and Mika and little Pikelet, well, actually quite big Pikelet earlier, we all got a kiss from a very enthusiastic Golden Retriever. These are exactly the sort of people that our government has in mind when we about the nation's challenge on housing. We recognise we've got a housing market in this country that's cooked. Young people are not getting the fair opportunity that they deserve to get into stable housing. We want them to get ahead and we want them to get the chance to own their own home. Now, this beautiful young couple bought their home through our five per cent deposit program. We have now seen a quarter of a million Australians get the keys to their own home because of our Prime Minister and his commitment to this issue. And I don't care what your politics is, a quarter of a million people in four years. That is a hell of a lot of people in housing stability who deserve that opportunity and took it. Now, we are really proud of this program, but I want every single one of those quarter of a million people to know that this is a program that the Liberals want to unwind. That beautiful young couple that we met before, the Liberals say that these people are the children of billionaires. This is how much they don't understand the situation faced by Australia's young people. They don't understand that it is the ordinary experience of young Australians today to struggle greatly in the housing market. And that's why our government is stepping up and doing something about it.
Even before the Budget on Tuesday, we had the most ambitious Australian government agenda on housing for 70 years. We're building more homes, we're getting renters a better deal and we're getting more Australians into home ownership. Now, on Tuesday night, we built significantly on that agenda, and the Budget for housing was about two really important things. It's about levelling the playing field for our nation's first home buyers and it's about building more homes for the country. Now, we've seen already the Liberals come out and say that they are going to unwind this, they're going to unwind the five per cent deposit program, they're going to unwind the tax changes that are going to level the playing field. And this tells us everything about where the Liberals are. They are literally the only people in this country who can't see that we've got a cooked housing market. And while they're defending the status quo, our government is standing up and fighting for the people of this nation who deserve better housing opportunities. And we'll continue to do that. And I'd say to the people of this country, we've got a big fight on our hands here against an assortment of right wing parties who want to defend the status quo, point the finger at migrants and say, ‘this is everyone else's fault’. We are going to stand up, we are going to fight for you and we are going to make the housing situation for our country better.
JIM CHALMERS, TREASURER: Look, thanks very much, everyone. It's nice to be in Alicia's electorate. Alicia is a wonderful local member, but also a very influential voice on policy. So, acknowledge her, the PM, of course, and Clare O’Neil. Budgets are big collective efforts and Clare’s contribution to this Budget has been immense, and so I wanted to acknowledge that as well.
Housing is really the defining intergenerational challenge in our economy and in our society, and our Budget does something about it. There's no point having a ladder if the first few rungs are missing. And what we're trying to do with this Budget, in addition to all of our work on supply and five per cent deposits, is to make the tax system and the housing market fairer for all Australians, but particularly for younger Australians who've been locked out for too long. That's the motivation behind this Budget. Now, we could have taken a politically easier path and left everything exactly as it is, but that would have made life harder for tens of thousands of Australians, and particularly younger Australians who are getting a raw deal at the intersection of the housing market and the tax system. So, we took the difficult decision to change our policy on negative gearing and Capital Gains to give people a fairer deal, particularly younger people in a housing market and in a tax system which isn't working for them. That's really one of the key elements of the Budget that we handed down on Tuesday night.
Now, ours is a plan to strengthen the economy. Angus Taylor's is a ploy to stave off One Nation. What we saw last night from Angus Taylor was not a Budget Reply, it was a binfire. It wasn't a Budget Reply, it was a bin fire of higher deficits, more debt, more inflation and more division. Angus Taylor's recipe is for higher inflation, bigger deficits, more debt and more division in our society. Now, he was asked last night, immediately after giving this speech, how much would his tax plan cost and he couldn't say. Now, he won't tell you what he needs to cut to pay for his policies, because he can't tell you how much it costs. Now, I have seen a lot of Budget replies in my time. The PM has seen a few as well. But I've never seen one that has died within half an hour of delivery. But that's what happened last night. In the very first interview that Angus Taylor gave about his Budget in Reply speech, he couldn't tell the Australian people how much his plan cost. And that means he can't tell you how much and how he'll cut to pay for those tax policies. He can't tell you what it means for Medicare. We know when the Liberals and Nationals won't tell you where the cuts are coming from, we know that they're going after Medicare again to pay for this uncosted, unfunded shambles of a Budget Reply that we saw last night. So, we work through these very serious issues in our economy in a considered and in a methodical way. What Angus Taylor released last night was uncosted. It was unfunded. It was a recipe for much bigger deficits, much more debt and much more division as well. Angus Taylor is focused exclusively on staving off One Nation. This government is focused on strengthening our economy, making it work for more people, and housing is a really important part of that.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you've talked a lot about the ambition in this Budget. Do you have an ambition to be the Prime Minister that beats bracket creep by either indexing the tax brackets or through some other means?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I have an ambition to make a difference for the country. What we saw from Angus Taylor last night, as the Treasurer said, Angus Taylor is focused on fighting off One Nation. We're interested in building our nation. That's the difference. And last night Angus Taylor spoke about uncosted, couldn't say how much these measures would cost, but could say that he would rip the guts out of essential housing programs. He said last night that the Housing Australia Future Fund, the HAFF, that they resisted for so long. He regards that as waste. That's about building public housing. Everything that we are doing, whether it is that or Build to Rent, that he again said last night it would go. That's about private developers building units like this one here for rentals, for rentals, boosting the supply market. Now, Angus Taylor has no solutions. He can come up with a whole range of things. Without any costings, they can't be taken seriously. And Angus Taylor isn't taken seriously by his own party. He said that if they removed the first woman to lead the Liberal Party, in Sussan Ley, if they removed her prior to her even being given the chance of giving a single Budget Reply, things would get better for the Liberal Party. The truth is they're getting worse. The Coalition are down to 41 members of the House of Representatives. I suspect that when we come back that will decrease further, when we come back during these Budget sittings. And it is just a debacle, those Opposite.
JOURNALIST: It's fair to want to get rid of bracket creep though, isn't it, Prime Minister? That's a fair ambition, is it not?
PRIME MINISTER: We have tax cuts in the Budget. The Working Australian Tax Offset is one of the five tax cuts that this Treasurer, that this Treasurer has delivered. Firstly, the changes that we made in Stage Three, so that we took from people like us here, and perhaps yourself, and gave it to low and middle income earners, very consciously. A tough decision to change our position in order to deliver for people who really needed that tax cut. People on those first rates would have got nothing under the system that they had in place. Now, they said that they would oppose it, then they said they would reverse it, then they said we should have an election on it, and then they voted for it, because it was good reform. Now we have another tax cut, begins on July 1 this year, another tax cut on July 1 next year, the $1,000 automatic tax deduction for, particularly, will help those people who don't have accountants, ordinary workers who just battle away, that will help them. And then our Working Australian Tax Offset, a permanent commitment to working Australians, making a difference. That's what we have – five tax cuts, all of them properly costed. What they had was nothing of any substance whatsoever.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, regarding your changes to trusts, can you clarify, do they impact testamentary, discretionary trusts and if so, how does that not constitute an increased tax on inheritance?
TREASURER: I saw that story this morning, Jack, and I want to make it really clear that we are not changing the arrangements for inheritance taxes. The government was very clear and the documents on Budget night were very clear that deceased estates, fixed trusts, existing discretionary testamentary trusts, they're all exempt from the changes that we made on Tuesday night and announced on Tuesday night. And people can continue to set up a fixed testamentary trust into the future. But to be really clear, the arrangements, the exemptions for deceased estates, for fixed trusts and for existing discretionary testamentary trusts, they haven't changed. If people want to avoid paying the minimum tax in the future, they can still set up a fixed testamentary trust for that purpose.
JOURNALIST: When you discretionary, testamentary trusts, though, they will face a higher tax rate?
TREASURER: Yes, people will have the choice to set up a fixed testamentary trust if they want to avoid paying the minimum tax. It's very clear in the documents on Tuesday night, deceased estates continue to be exempt, fixed trusts continue to be exempt, existing discretionary testamentary trusts continue to be exempt. And I know that people will run all kinds of scare campaigns about this. We expect that. People are trying to focus on things that aren't in the Budget on Tuesday night, because they don't want to engage on the things that are in the Budget on Tuesday night. Now, we know that people who want to defend the status quo, including in housing and in the tax system, they want to pretend that this is fundamentally about politics or they want to pretend that it's fundamentally about the things that we're not doing. We came to a view on Capital Gains and negative gearing and trusts. We announced that on Tuesday night. We explained why we had shifted our position, and that's because what we're trying to do here is we're trying to better align the tax treatment of people who work for a living, with people who get their income in other legitimate ways. That's our motivation here. And part of that, what makes it so relevant to Matt and Mika today and Pikelet, is one of the reasons for that is because we want to make it easier for people to get a toehold in the housing market. Too many Australians have been locked out for too long.
JOURNALIST: I just wanted to ask, is the government potentially talking to startups around potential carve ups on change to the Capital Gains Tax?
TREASURER: We were doing that even before the Budget on Tuesday night. So, we recognise that there's an especially dynamic part of the economy which has a different kind of cost base, a very small part of the economy, but we want it to be bigger, we want it to make a bigger contribution. If you look right across the Budget, there's a lot of new incentives for startups and venture capital in the tech sector in the tax changes that we are proposing. $3.5 billion dollar tax cut for business in the Budget as well hasn't got quite as much attention as the other elements of the tax package, but really, really important because we want to encourage that part of the economy. So, we had already been engaging with the tech sector, in particular, with the VC and startup sector to make sure that the changes accurately reflect the contribution that we seek from that part of the economy, really important part of the economy. I'm not going to pre-empt that consultation but it has been underway for a little while now and it will continue. I've done some of that consultation myself, the Treasury as well, and we'll make sure that we get it right.
JOURNALIST: My question is in the same sort of vein but I do want to put it to you PM, you probably wouldn't have seen but there is a social media trend about the Capital Gains Tax changes going around some startup founders, tech people, entrepreneurs, are AI generating photos of you into their photos and saying, this is jokingly, ‘this is our new co-founder, this is our new partner, he's going to take 47 per cent of our profits, or our gains, or what have you’, talking about if they're going to move to Dubai or what have you to do their startup. So, what do you say to people that are in that sector, in that sort of niche, narrow bracket as the Treasurer spoke about, but might be worried about starting a business starting to start up in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER: What I say is we support the sector. There are a range of incentives that we have in the Budget, indeed, to give them an advantage. But we also, when it comes to the changes, as the Treasurer has said and said previously in Parliament, that we're consulting on those measures, that's what we do. We're a government that wants to see innovation. There was substantial increased funding for innovation, for research with new funds in the Budget to really drive it, including, of course, a substantial amount of funds, additional funds going to the CSIRO, for example. But also, we're the party that backs innovation. What we also want to do is to back – when those research breakthroughs come through and when Australia does what we do best, which is to come up with new ideas that make a difference and transform the world, like Wi-Fi, we commercialise the opportunities. There's not a solar panel in the world that does not have some intellectual property from ANU or from the University of New South Wales, but we make bugger all here. We used to. We went backwards from the production facilities that were there at Homebush and in Adelaide. What we want to do is not just back innovation, but when we get the breakthroughs, we want to make sure that we commercialise those opportunities. But last night, again, they criticised the National Reconstruction Fund. This is a Fund to back Australia, the Future Made in Australia agenda, not just send it all offshore. From the bloke who wanted our fuel reserves to be in Texas, it's not surprising that he just doesn't get the need to do things here in Australia and to back our Australian economy.
JOURNALIST: If I can just bring you back to the debate about indexation. You've given a pretty strong defence of the tax settings as your government currently has them. So, can you be upfront with voters and tell them that you're not going to index tax brackets under a government you lead?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we're doing is what was in the Budget. That was what we're doing. And that stands in contrast with what Australians will think about, you know, just one element of our opponents. I note last night, I've never seen that before – after Angus Taylor gave his media appearance about a reply, you had a reply to the reply from Barnaby Joyce. This is the tail wagging the Coalition dog. And dog is an appropriate term because a lot of the speech is about dog whistling, trying to send a message that's there. I mean, I never thought, and a question for Angus Taylor – I wonder what the distinction between Australians and migrants is, because I've never seen that used before in a country like ours, in a country like ours. You know, we have people who are in senior positions in our government, in business, you know, some of the giants of business in this country came here as refugees and as migrants. Are they separate from Australians? You know, we are a government that wants to represent all Australians, across the board, that has serious policies. When we put out a policy, it's costed and we back it in. And we don't just make easy decisions. As the Treasurer said, we could have sat back and gone, ‘oh, well, this is, this is pretty hard, you know’, and thought to ourselves, you know, ‘if there's only something we could do about people, young people, being locked out of the housing market. If only there's something we could do’. We haven't done that. What we've done is make the right decisions for the right reasons and it will make a difference, not just for young Australians, but when you build social cohesion and you have an economy that works for people, not the other way around, when you give people a stake in the economy, what you are doing is building the resilience of our nation, and that is what the Budget on Tuesday night did. Thanks very much.