In brief
- Labor MPs have responded to new polling suggesting the federal budget was not popular with respondents.
- Jim Chalmers argued it was worth the short-term political cost to address intergenerational inequality in the housing market.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has responded to a recent poll that suggests the Labor Party’s federal budget is the least favored since 1993. According to the findings, 52% of people believe the budget will leave them worse off.
A Newspoll conducted after the budget’s release, which was commissioned by The Australian newspaper, shows that just over half of Australians think Tuesday’s budget will negatively impact their finances. This survey positions it as the least favorable economic plan since 1993.
The poll also revealed that 47% of participants feel the budget is creating a gap between the younger and older generations, whereas 26% think it is leveling the playing field and promoting fairness.
This fiscal strategy ranks lower than the controversial austerity budget of the Abbott government in 2014, marking it as the least popular since the Keating government abandoned its promised “L-A-W” tax cuts in 1993.
Despite the criticism, the Labor Party’s primary vote and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s approval ratings have remained steady.
A separate poll from Resolve, which is conducted on behalf of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, found Opposition leader Angus Taylor leading Albanese as preferred prime minister 33 to 30 per cent — the first time he has nudged ahead in that metric.
But Chalmers insisted that despite Labor breaking its election promise not to change negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, the budget reforms were worthwhile.
“We’re fixing that broken status quo in housing over the years to come, and that is worth any near-term political cost that we might pay,” he told reporters in Brisbane on Monday.
Taylor says trust changes create ‘death tax by stealth’
Amid a furious campaign against changes to the tax treatment of some trusts, Albanese denied the reforms amounted to a death tax.
“There’s a range of exemptions that were outlined (in the budget) on Tuesday,” he told reporters in Adelaide.
“If you have an existing discretionary testamentary trust, for example, they continue going forward, and when it comes to fixed trusts, they continue as well to be exempted.”
But Taylor said the 30 per cent tax on new discretionary testamentary trusts — which are used by some wealthy families to divide money in a will — was clearly a “death tax by stealth”.
The financial structure allows a person to directly allocate how much money goes to each beneficiary and is preferred by some families as it helps ring-fence the money from disputes, while minimising tax exposure in some cases.
“This is a structure that most small businesses in this country use … in this government’s assault on aspiration, they want to force every one of those small businesses to restructure,” Taylor said.
Data shows there were just over 10,000 testamentary trusts in the 2022/23 financial year.
Many voters were still undecided about the budget, Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said.
“They take a little while to listen to everything that they’re hearing on TV, in the newspapers, from our leaders, and they’ll make their mind up over time,” she told Seven’s Sunrise program.
“It’s one poll, and we’ll keep doing our job of reminding people why we’ve made this decision. We’ve made this decision because we want kids today, and the next generation, and the next generation to have what we have — a home of our own.”
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said the government had taken a hit because it had broken an election promise.
“The reason that the prime minister of Australia and the treasurer are finding it hard to explain what’s going on is because they lied,” he told Seven’s Sunrise.
“They lied before the election, they said they weren’t going to change things, but they lied, and now people have woken up.”
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