“It's not for me to give advice to the government or Treasury, but it is time that they take this bill off the table. Listen to the concerns of the industry and work with industry on a solution to the problem the government is trying to solve. This is all that we've been saying over the last few years.”

Burgess said the SMSFA has been a “thorn in the side of the government” since the tax proposal was released and he said he makes no apology for that.

“Whichever political party is in place, we will always stand against bad policy and this is bad policy.”

He outlined the association’s strategy in fighting the introduction of the taxing of unrealised gains, from the beginning of 2024 until October last year, and said it has always been to try and salvage what it could “from a badly designed tax”.

“We were of the view that it was going to be extremely difficult to get this bill blocked in the Senate. We did expect that it would come down to the Senate crossbench. We knew the Greens probably support it, but that the Coalition wouldn't, which meant the government only needed three crossbench votes to get this bill over the line,” he said.

“There are 10 crossbenchers and the government only needed three so it appeared to us that we, the industry, faced an impossible task of trying to get this bill blocked. We also knew the Albanese government had quite a lot of success with the Senate crossbench so if this bill was going to be blocked, it was going to be the exception to the rule.”

He continued that the association worked on constructing amendments including the indexation amendment and calculating earnings, but he said it was only in October that the magnitude of the battle became apparent.

“It was October when we got our first look at the Senate crossbench and our first opportunity to sit down with each one of those 10 members and talk to them about this tax, how this tax will be calculated, and why this tax had been designed the way it had,” Burgess said.

“It's fair to say that we had significantly underestimated their willingness to vote against a tax on unrealised capital gains and also to vote against a tax that had been designed for the large funds with no regard to the carnage that would have created not just to the SMSF sector but also the broader community.”

He said the government had actually “kicked an own goal” with the introduction of taxing unrealised capital gains.

“The unique and unconventional design of this tax and the desire of the government and Treasury to cater for the needs of the large funds, there was no way they could fix the taxing of unrealised capital gains without sending this bill back to the drawing board,” he said.

“We knew the government had no desire for that and from that point on, it was all about blocking this bill. We knew that we were in with a chance of getting this bill blocked and were confident we had eight votes that would stand up against this bill.”

Following that, he said the strategy was about educating the crossbench, and the association organised meetings between them and industry leaders, CEOs of venture capital firms and even a high-profile biomedical scientist about the role SMSFs have played in funding research in the medical sector, and how medical breakthroughs had been the result.

“We also co-ordinated data, using some of our own and those of key stakeholders in our industry, such as the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, the Business Council of Australia, and the National Farmers’ Federation,” Burgess added.

“When the morning of 30 November came around, that chaotic morning when the government was attempting to add this bill to a guillotine motion to get it passed, we were confident that the crossbench would stand up against it, and stand up against it they did.”