Estimates exposes shambolic Albanese Budget

The shambolic Albanese Government Budget continued to unravel in the second week of Senate Estimates hearings with Ministers and officials unable to explain basic details or give adequate reasons for decisions that have angered the nation.

The key Economics committee heard alarming and often contradictory evidence from what the Albanese Government has been trying to sell to the public.

Simple questions about how the tax changes work remain unanswered or are clouded in confusing explanations.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Michaelia Cash said: “The more this Budget is interrogated the worse it looks.”

“The Australian people have called out the Albanese Government for a Budget built on lies and fraud and nothing they said during Estimates could explain their decisions,’’ Senator Cash said.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Anne Ruston said: “The Opposition has been able to hold the Albanese Government to account across all portfolios, despite this Labor government’s aversion to transparency.’’

“While Labor members in the House of Representatives were voting 11 times against the Coalition’s lower taxes, including our Tax Back Guarantee, their Senators were either dodging questions or doing a poor job of explaining their budget at estimates,’’ she said.

Treasury Secretary confirms Prime Minister either does not understand his tax changes, or is lying about them

Under questioning from Shadow Finance Minister Claire Chandler, Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson confirmed that contrary to the Prime Minister’s claims, a 30% minimum tax rate was not a feature of the pre-1999 taxation system. The Prime Minister doesn’t have a clue what is in his budget. He claimed that all the government was doing was returning the CGT regime to the pre-1999 system. This is just another Labor Lie.

Government failed to model budget’s impact on productivity

Despite selling the budget as a ‘productivity budget’ – under questioning from the Leader of the Nationals, Senator Canavan, the government was unable to say how the budget increases productivity. This came in the wake of the Treasurer misleading the House of Representatives where he claimed that inflation in the March quarter of 2022 was -2.3%, when it was in fact 0.6%. The Secretary and Finance Minister were unable to explain the productivity impact of the budget and instead referred senators to a “glossy”. This is just another example of Labor not having a clue about what is in the budget, and the impact it will have on Australians. Productivity has declined by more than 5% under Labor, and they don’t have a plan on how to fix it.

Even the public servants who designed Labor’s tax changes can’t explain how they work

Labor has spent weeks claiming its $77 billion tax package is simple, fair and well-designed. But Senate Estimates showed even the Treasury officials who designed the program struggled to explain how the changes would apply in basic real-world scenarios. When Coalition Senators put simple examples to officials, including examples based on the Government’s own Budget papers, the answer kept coming back: “It depends.” Will low-income taxpayers be worse off under Labor’s new minimum 30 per cent tax on capital gains? It depends. That is despite the Government’s own Budget papers showing the tax increase applies to low-income taxpayers like self-funded retirees and part-time working parents. On trusts and other capital gains tax changes, the answer was the same. It depends on the structure, the timing, the taxpayer and the detail. If Treasury’s own tax experts cannot explain Labor’s reforms in plain English, what chance do small businesses, farmers, investors, retirees and families have of understanding them?

Treasurer using Department to do political dirty work… again

It was revealed that Jim Chalmers is using Q&A briefing documents from his department to issue media briefing documents on Opposition policies. Senator Claire Chandler uncovered that the Treasurer’s office requests Q&A briefing documents from the department and then uses them to distribute background information on the Opposition’s policies. These documents confirm that Australians will pay $212 billion more over the next 9 years in income tax because of the stealth tax of inflation. The Coalition’s Tax Back Guarantee would provide an automatic permanent tax cut every year that gets larger when inflation is higher. The Treasurer should spend more time fixing the inflation crisis, productivity crisis, and getting taxes on working Australians down instead of wasting his department’s time preparing secret hit pieces on the Opposition’s plan for lower taxes.

Inflation too high before Iran

The RBA Governor confirmed, again, that inflation was too high before the conflict in the Middle East began. Jim Chalmers might try and blame external factors for all of the economic problems, but that claim just doesn’t measure up to reality. Inflation was too high before the Iran conflict began because of the Government’s addiction to spending. Labor’s economic model is to stoke the inflation, tax the inflation, spend the inflation, and keep the vicious cycle going. Wash, rinse, repeat. The Government’s active inflation agenda is making Australian families poorer. The Coalition’s Tax Back Guarantee would protect Australian workers from bracket creep caused by inflation. It would deliver automatic, permanent and larger tax cuts for every working Australian, every year.

Government failed to assess financial stability impacts on tax changes

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has told Senate Estimates it was not consulted on the Government’s capital gains and negative gearing tax changes despite its core responsibility being the stability, competitiveness and efficiency of Australia’s financial system. For changes of this magnitude, consulting every relevant authority and agency is not optional, it’s the bare minimum. The Government’s failure to do so should concern every Australian.

Industry Minister refuses to meet with industry affected by tax changes

Industry Minister Tim Ayres has failed to name a single business or start up that he has met with to discuss the impact of Labor’s toxic taxes. Nor could he name a business that has expressed support for Labor’s Budget despite insisting there is “strong support and interest”. At a time when Australian industry requires support, the Albanese Government has its head in the sand.

Labor can’t say when or why it decided to break its promises

With the Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson at the table, Senator Hume attempted to get to the bottom of when the work on Labor’s so-called ‘tax reform’ package began and whether it was done through a hunting license process or not. Minister Gallagher denied media reports that the tax reform process was conducted via hunting licenses. There were few real answers but plenty of defensiveness from Minister Gallagher about the “busy budget session”.

Ministers Gallagher – responsible for the budget process – and Minister Ayres – responsible for business – repeatedly refused to outline the timeframe or circumstances of their broken promise under questioning across the two weeks. Despite claiming to be ‘upfront’ about why the government broke its promises – Labor refuses to answer basic questions about how and why they decided to break them.

Tim Ayres does not care about business impacts of tax start ups

Despite business.gov.au receiving more than 355,000 online enquiries since 5 May, Minister Ayres admitted he has not asked his department for the feedback it has received from Australian industry on Labor’s Budget saying, “it’s not a polling exercise”. This is a Minister who is ambivalent about genuine concerns Australian businesses have about Labor’s toxic taxes.

Ayres unaware of Charlton’s roundtables

Meanwhile, Cabinet Secretary, Andrew Charlton, seems to be taking matters into his own hands and doing the Minster’s job for him. Dr Charlton recently hosted a series of industry roundtables in response to concerns about Labor’s Budget. Not only was the Minister not present, but neither he nor his department were aware that Dr Chartlon’s roundtables had taken place.

Defence refuse to outline capability cuts

The Department of Defence has refused to detail $10 billion of secret cuts to defence capability at Senate Estimates, in further evidence of Labor’s contempt for transparency on defence. Defence officials confirmed that the Albanese Government has cut four projects from the IIP, but refused to outline what these are other than the C-27 Spartan aircraft and Integrated Air and Missile Defence command and control, saying “it is up to the Government to announce that.” Defence also confirmed that 18 unidentified projects had been delayed or de-scoped.

Labor’s 1.2 million jobs created is a lie

In response to questioning from Senator Hume about the latest Labour Force data on Tuesday, officials from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations confirmed that Labor’s 1.2 million jobs is just keeping up with population growth.

DEWR: I can say that as at April this year, the employment to population ratio was 63.7% as I mentioned before. So that’s 63 per ce...

Liberal Party of Australia

Message History

Delivery option(s)