Address to Business Western Sydney’s 2026 Federal Budget Luncheon

ADDRESS TO BUSINESS WESTERN SYDNEY’S 2026 FEDERAL BUDGET LUNCHEON - 15 MAY 2026 

Labor’s Budget is broken.
‍They are simply spending too much, taxing too much, and creating a bureaucratic nightmare for businesses and everyday Australians. After having 5 goes at the Budget, they have come up with…wait for it:

• A massive new tax hike on everything, that is a sledgehammer on the economy and results in fewer houses, and
• An admission they failed on housing supply and their housing gimmicks aren’t building any houses. 

Who could believe that we'd live through a period in Australian history where we would see a government announce a new plan to smash Australians with $77 billion in new taxes and, at the same time, admit that as a result of those new taxes we would have 35,000 fewer houses? 

• Who would believe that that would be our reality? But that is our lived reality in Australia today. 

The issue with the $77 billion in new taxes is that it's going to hit the whole economy. It's going to hit younger generations. 

• It's going to hit people who don't have a lot of money and just want to invest in a couple of shares or a couple of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) or a small business or want to bootstrap a small startup. 
• Every single person with an ounce of self-starting initiative is going to be hit by this minimum tax rate of 30 per cent. We live with one of the most punitive pay-as-you-go systems in the world. 
• We have the second-highest pay-as-you-go system anywhere in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and we see no relief for working people. What we see is a new tax that hits them in every way that they might try and lower their tax burden to try to get going and make something for themselves.

On the issue of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) now becoming a minimum of 30 per cent, that gives us the world's highest CGT. Many people will be paying 33 to 47 per cent in capital gains tax, and it's going to be a jobs killer. 

• Why would you stay in Australia if you have the ability to do something with ingenuity, something innovative? 

In a housing supply crisis, why on earth would you deploy anything that is going to limit the number of houses you can get and - what's more - why would you have a policy that is going to reduce housing supply? 

• But, when you are spending $80 billion to build fewer houses, again, maybe this is a natural design feature. 
• Who could believe that you could spend all this money, billions and billions of dollars, on these housing bureaucracies - Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), Housing Australia, these measures that don't build houses - and you could then say, 'We now think we're going to have a new tax policy that's going to collapse housing supply by 35,000'?

I'm surprised the government decided that, on page 158 of the 2026-27 Budget papers, they would so clearly say, 'As a result of our new taxes on housing, there will now be 35,000 fewer houses.'

• Yes, higher taxes do mean less stuff. So there'll be 35,000 fewer houses, and we've already gone from an average of 200,000 houses a year under the last government to 170,000 houses a year, and now we're looking at fewer houses even though the government have allowed 1.4 million people to come into the country and have built only 600,000 houses over the course of that time. This is the worst possible time to be deploying more taxes which reduce supply. 

Of course, they've tried to cover the tracks by saying, 'We're going to spend more money on infrastructure to cover our tracks.' But who could believe that this government could properly administer a program that would actually result in trunk funding going to places where it will supply more housing and actually provide the roads, sewerage and water that are needed to unlock supply? 

• They've had four years, wherein they collapsed housing supply from an average of 200,000 down to an average of 170,000. 

When you have a bigger population, you need more houses. The housing problem is only going to be solved through building more of them. It seems insane to me that the government's policy is to build fewer houses. 

• This Budget guarantees and locks in Labor's policy of having more people in this country but fewer houses. 
• This is a budget that guarantees that younger people won't get a go. They won't get ago if they want to invest in small business or a start-up. 

Then there's the hypocrisy. The Prime Minister, who spent decades negatively gearing and building up a property portfolio, now wants to cut that opportunity for young people. 

• It's all good for Mr Albanese to use negative gearing to build his own portfolio, but it's no good for someone else who's a young person who wants to do negative gearing, wants to build some wealth or wants to rentvest because that's their only way in. 
• What's more, they're also carving out their best mates in the super funds. The super funds who support the Labor Party politically and fund their campaigns are carved out of all of this. They're all good. If you're a super fund, you can do whatever you want. 

Then we have them giving up on their other housing policies. They're giving up on their New Home Bonus program, where they pay the states to build houses. 

• They've gutted $2 billion for that because they've given up on their housing target agenda. They've clearly discovered that they can't be bothered asking the states to build more houses, so why on earth would they pay them? 

They've also admitted in the Budget that their housing fund is 'at risk'. The HAFF has been a disaster. It has wasted $10 billion just to build no houses. 

• This was confirmed in the Budget papers - zero houses built in 2025-26 by the HAFF. And through my questioning in the Senate. 

Then we have this claim that, according to Treasury modelling 75,000 people will be able to own a house. Well, the last time the government did modelling on housing was just after the election. 

• They said that the five per cent deposit scheme was going to push up prices by 0.6 per cent over six years, and it resulted in prices of eligible properties going up by six per cent in six months. 
• That's how good the 5% deposit scheme modelling was. It would literally be one of the worst modelling exercises ever undertaken in the history of the Commonwealth. That's why this government has fought tooth and nail to cover it up. They're embarrassed.

Another Labor failure has been the National Construction Code (NCC). 

• The Senate Committee hearings into productivity and red tape in the housing sector which I chaired in late April, laid bare the Government’s failure to cut red tape in housing.
• Labor expanded the NCC in 2022 to over 2,000 pages. It remains a handbrake on housing supply.
• Successive additions to the 2022 and the latest 2025 NCC preview draft have added tens of thousands of dollars to new builds, around $50,000 to the cost of each dwelling - according to industry feedback and independent research. This amounts to some 10% of the cost of building an average new dwelling. 
  
  • Master Builders Australia warned that “construction industry productivity is a shadow of its former self.” In the higher density side of the market, they noted it takes some 33 months to build a new apartment, compared to 21 months a decade ago.
  • Examples of changes relate to accessibility standards for housing such as reinforcement of bathroom and sanitary compartment walls for grab rails. Further, sizes within habitable areas such as living rooms and bedrooms had to be sacrificed to allow for increased wet area sizes.

• This has made new home building impractical and unaffordable for Australians on average incomes. Why should young Australians have to pay for mandatory grab rails in bathrooms? 
• It is goldplating on steroids and has destroyed the ability of an Australian to build a cheap house if that is their wish. 

The main point is this: Labor has failed on housing supply. 

• This is the way to fix the housing crisis; as the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have said time and time again. 
• So this is the metric and scorecard the government must be judged on: actual housing completions. 

So far the scorecard is not looking good. 

• Dwelling completions for the December 2025 quarter were 43,536 - falling by 1.7 per cent since the September 2025 quarter and down by 3.9 per cent since December 2024. On a rolling 12-month basis, completions totalled just over 172,000 dwellings.
  
  • This is well short of what is needed. Under the Coalition government, completions averaged around 200,000 a year. 
• Labor is 100,000 dwelling completions behind their own 1.2 million housing target by mid-2029; and will miss the target by more than 200,000 dwellings. To reach the target, they would need to build at least 260,000 additional houses, yearly. This has never happened before.
• The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) just downgraded its dwelling investment outlook further into negative territory - investment goes into negative territory from December 2027 and falls further afterwards. The RBA says its higher interest rates are expected to ‘weigh on growth’ in dwelling investment.

So here we are, with $77 billion of new taxes over the next 10 years, 35,000 fewer houses projected over the course of the next decade, more taxes on everything, a sclerotic economy, with low productivity, high inflation and high interest rates, and these bribes and more housing gimmicks. 

• Gimmicks don't work - like the HAFF, the 5% deposit scheme, and new taxes that will make things worse, not better. 
• It seems unbelievable that that's their housing suite, but there you go.

Labor seems to be out of ideas and has no answers. It lacks genuine solutions to solve Australia’s housing supply crisis. Labor must be judged by the objective scorecard. And on this they have objectively failed.

Australia's housing crisis is real, it is worsening, and needs to be fixed.

What we lack is a credible policy response from Labor commensurate to this crisis. Australia needs more homes, lower taxes, less red tape and no gimmicks. 

This is why the Coalition will:

• Get stalled housing projects moving again by investing in $5 billion in supporting infrastructure like roads, water, power, and sewerage,
• Cut red tape by paring back the NCC, to reduce the costs of building a new home, and
• Link migration numbers to the number of homes constructed each year, to ensure the people coming to Australia can be supported by the available housing, infrastructure and other services.

We can deliver on this. For example, the Senate Committee heard the ambition of the industry to get back to an NCC closer to the original 200 pages, when it was first created in 1988. 

• This is seen to be achievable by creating a Basic Australian Standard - by focusing on the core standards necessary for safety as the basis. And adding anything else as optional. A graduated NCC that delivers a basic cheap house for Australians should be considered.

We need to build our way out of the housing crisis. 

We are determined to ensure that all Australians can experience the dream of owning their own home.

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