As Labor faces pressure to abandon them, the stage three tax cuts have been given a boost by one of the new Teal independents.
As reported by The Australian Financial Review, Kylea Tink (North Sydney) told a forum hosted by investment bank Citi that not all beneficiaries of the cuts are wealthy.
“Right here, right now, it is unfair to put people in that income bracket of around that $120,000 to $140,000 mark as rich,” Tink said. “They are not rich. There’s been significant creep through our taxation levels and we need to be aware of that.” Tink, whose harbourside seat is one of Australia’s richest, made similar comments to Sky News last week.
The Morrison government legislated the tax cuts with the support of the Albanese-led opposition. Labor, which failed at the 2019 election with an ambitious redistributive agenda, feared being wedged on the issue. Now Labor is coming under pressure to reverse the cuts, scheduled for 2024, and bank the estimated $243 billion savings over 10 years.
Labor will continue to be pressured on the cuts, with critics deriding them as overwhelmingly favouring the wealthy, and wealthy males to boot. On Thursday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers batted aside questions about whether there would be changes to the scheduled tax cuts in the October 25 Budget, pointing out (rightly) that the cuts are three Budgets away.
The other Teal MPs have not been so forthright as Tink, although Allegra Spender (Wentworth) advocates tax reform, including a possible rise in the GST. And Zali Steggall (Warringah) vowed to oppose Labor’s tax agenda when campaigning in 2019.
It is no criticism of MPs that they put constituents first. In voting for Teal MPs, these wealthy electorates are no longer tied, as they were under party representation, to some of Australia’s poorest electorates (a point that has been made by MWM but few, if any, others).
The hopeful news is that the Albanese government may use the cuts as the basis for wide-reaching changes to make the tax system fairer.
Read their lips: media won’t stop talking about those tax cuts
Mark Sawyer is a journalist with extensive experience in print and digital media in Sydney, Melbourne and rural Australia.