Page 3025 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022
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We have increased the Home Buyer Concession Scheme income eligibility threshold from $160,000 to $170,000, noting that, if the household has children, that income threshold increases by $3,330 for each child up to a maximum of five. So a household with five children would have an income eligibility threshold approaching $187,000. At the other end of the age spectrum, we have increased the deferred duty level and the Disability Duty Concession Scheme price for stamp duty eligibility from $750,000 to $1 million.
During the five years of the stage three tax reform, which, I remind members, commenced in 2021, we have kept the increase in average general rates for residential and commercial properties to 3.75 per cent. We are continuing to reduce stamp duty in every territory budget. Stamp duty reductions will be greatest for those purchasing lower value new land, lower value off the plan units and lower value homes. This is a deliberate policy intervention aimed at stimulating new affordable housing construction. Residential stamp duty tax rates are set out each year in the budget. We will continue this reform, as I outlined in response to a question this week. On the commercial side, we are increasing the commercial stamp duty tax-free threshold each year, it will reach $2 million in fiscal 2025.
I want to take a moment to talk about debt and debt. This is perennial debate in Australian fiscal policy, and so it should be. But all we have heard in response to this budget is concern about debt and deficit, but then a series of speaker after speaker demanding more expenditure and less taxation and somehow those two factors combining to reduce deficit and debt.
Mr Davis absolutely nailed it yesterday, pointing out that that is just ‘magic pudding’ economics and that it is simply a continuation of the same policy theme that we have heard from those opposite for a decade. Are we are going into election No 4 on this ‘magic pudding’ economics? It would seem so. What we need is a clear position from those opposite that, if they want smaller deficit, where are the cuts?
We know the Leader of the Opposition wants a commission of audit. So did Campbell Newman, so did Tony Abbott and so did Joe Hockey. In fact, every incoming conservative administration has gone down that path. Commissions of audit are code for cuts. Everyone knows it. Everyone has seen it play out in every state and territory.
Mr Parton: You do you, Andrew.
MR BARR: You know when you have hit on a raw nerve when they start interjecting.
Mr Parton: Is that how you know?
MR BARR: That is how we know.
Mr Parton: So, when you start, is that how we know that we have got to you?
MR BARR: As this fiscal debate crystalises over the remaining two years of this parliamentary term and we go into the next territory election, there will again be a choice on how the territory budget is managed and what the priorities are. That is as it
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