One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has gone head-to-head with Australia’s youngest senator, Charlotte Walker, during a heated exchange over the Albanese government’s proposed tax reforms.
Speaking in the Senate on Monday night, Walker backed plans to restrict negative gearing to newly built homes and reduce the capital gains tax discount.
Walker, who entered Parliament in 2025 at just 21, argued the measures would help level the housing market and improve the chances of first-home buyers, particularly younger Australians.
‘For years Australians have been told that housing affordability is too hard, too complicated, too politically sensitive, too difficult to tackle,’ she said.
‘This government has decided that simply talking about the problem is no longer enough.’
Hanson, however, sharply rejected the South Australian senator’s argument.
‘I’ve got to reply to this because it’s just absolutely ridiculous that this is for the young ones,’ Hanson said.
‘It’s not, it’s ripping the guts out of the young ones.’
Senator Charlotte Walker (pictured) said Albanese’s tax reforms would help young people
Under the Albanese government’s reforms, negative gearing would apply only to new builds from May 12, with existing arrangements grandfathered.
The 50 per cent CGT discount would be replaced with a 30 per cent rate indexed to inflation. New housing would retain access to the current discount.
Walker, who represents Labor in South Australia, said the changes were a matter of intergenerational fairness.
‘It’s about recognising that young Australians deserve the same opportunities previous generations enjoyed,’ she said.
‘Because if you’re in your 20s or your 30s today, the housing market looks very different to the one your parents entered.’
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Walker rejected claims the CGT changes would increase tax burdens, citing Treasury estimates that the average tax rate on gross capital gains will rise from 19.3 per cent to 21.4 per cent over the medium term under the reforms.
She also criticised memes and false social media claims the tax rate would be as high as 47 per cent.
‘Not 47 per cent, not the figures being thrown around in memes, a modest increase that creates a fairer system,’ she said.
Pauline Hanson (pictured) said Walker’s speech was ‘absolutely ridiculous’
But Hanson dismissed Ms Walker’s argument, saying the reforms would harm young Australians by limiting housing options.
She added the negative gearing changes would push younger buyers away from established communities.
‘What you’re doing is you’re forcing young ones to move away from areas that they’ve actually grown up in, away from their parents, away from that support,’ she said.
‘You’re not giving them a choice, an opportunity to buy a house where they want to buy the house.’
Hanson also warned that the changes would add further complexity to the system.
‘This is just more compliance and red tape you’re putting on everyone while claiming you’re helping,’ she said.
‘You’re not helping anyone at all with this tax.’
Hanson and Walker first clashed in 2025, after Walker criticised Hanson’s stance on climate change.
‘She’s no sooner out of bloody university and out of her nappies than she’s telling me I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about when I’ve been on the floor of parliament for the last nine years,’ Hanson told Sky News at the time.
The Senate debate on the bill is set to continue over the next fortnight, with Labor hoping to secure Greens support to pass the changes.
