Anthony Albanese’s insult to people with Tourette’s syndrome overshadowed the fact that he did not very clearly rule out the introduction of a new tax on family housing.
The First Minister delivered a lengthy parliamentary tirade on Tuesday afternoon after shadow treasurer Angus Taylor asked whether Labor had any plans to tax owner-occupiers’ properties.
“Will the Prime Minister rule out any changes to the tax treatment of owner-occupied family homes and negative gearing?” Mr. Taylor asked.
But Albanese simply ridiculed the opposition with sarcasm rather than explicitly ruling out the introduction of a capital gains tax on family homes, which is exempt under existing laws.
‘In fact, now they ask me about a new element. “It seems that now we are going for the family home,” the prime minister responded.
‘Let’s go after the family house!
“According to them, we’re going to walk in, they’re going to knock on the door and we’re going to say, ‘We’re the government. We are here to take away your home. We are going to nationalize the house.”
Things got really heated when Mr Taylor asked him to rule out taxing the family home on a point of order.
‘It was a very simple question. It wasn’t about the opposition. “It was about the government’s proposal: its secret tax on family housing,” he said.
President Milton Dick then ordered Albanese to answer the question, only for him to use Tourette syndrome as an insult to insult Taylor.
Do you have Tourette’s or something? You sit there, “babble, babble, babble,” he said, before immediately apologizing and withdrawing the comment.
Anthony Albanese’s insult to people with Tourette’s syndrome overshadowed how he had not completely ruled out the introduction of a new family home tax (pictured on Tuesday)
Amid the uproar at question time, Albanese accused the opposition of asking about policies that Labor had not announced, belatedly confirming that the government had no plans to introduce a capital gains tax on family homes.
But it took the Prime Minister three minutes, from the moment of Mr Taylor’s initial question about the family home, to explain that it was not part of Labour’s plan.
“We have all our tax policies and all the ones they want to talk about are things we’re not doing,” he said.
Along the way, Albanese had hinted that the opposition was engaged in a “fishing expedition” and sarcastically suggested that Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Julie Collins answer the question about the family home.
The family home, or a person’s main place of residence, has been exempt from capital gains tax since its introduction in September 1985.
This meant that only investors paid capital gains tax.
Labor lost the 2016 and 2019 elections by promising to remove negative gearing for future purchases of existing investment properties and limit it to new-build homes.
The family home, or someone’s main place of residence, has been exempt from capital gains tax since it was introduced in September 1985 (pictured, an auction in Sydney).
In opposition, the Labor Party had also campaigned to cut the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount introduced in September 1999.
A 25 percent capital gains tax discount would have required investors to report 75 percent of the capital growth on their tax return instead of 50 percent.
But former Labor leader Bill Shorten had not proposed introducing a capital gains tax on family homes.
Existing laws mean that an older couple who bought their family home in the late 1980s does not have to pay capital gains taxes when they sell it.
But a younger investor buying a home in Logan, south of Brisbane, would have to pay capital gains tax if they sold a property that had doubled in value over the past five years.
Albanese went on a lengthy parliamentary tirade after shadow treasurer Angus Taylor (pictured) asked him if Labor had plans to tax owner-occupiers’ properties.
Younger property buyers, shut out of Sydney’s property market, had been investing in more affordable markets such as Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, where prices have risen by double digits over the past year despite 13 rate hikes. Reserve Bank interest in 2022 and 2023. .
A Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey of 1,200 people in early October found that between 70 and 75 per cent of respondents expected house prices to rise in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
Last month, Treasurer Jim Chalmers confirmed that he had asked his department to model the economic effects of changing the negative gearing rules so that a limit could hypothetically be applied to the number of properties on which an investor owner could get a reduction of taxes.
Investors can claim rental losses on their annual tax return under negative gearing.
