Low and middle-income Australians are set to have their $1,000-a-year tax cuts delayed as Labor and the Greens gang up to block them in the Senate.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition government was unexpectedly re-elected in May after promising $158billion worth of income tax relief.
The Liberal and National parties won a third consecutive term after campaigning to give $1,080 worth of tax cuts to those earning between $48,000 and $90,000 a year with smaller amounts going to those earning up to $126,000.
Low and middle-income Australians are set to have their $1,000-a-year tax cuts delayed as Labor and the Greens gang up to block them in the Senate
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition government was unexpectedly re-elected in May after promising $158billion worth of income tax relief
The relief, announced in the April Budget, was designed to give something back to 10.1million workers and salary earners, with 4.5million of those on median and average salaries to receive the full amount.
With Parliament returning next week for the first time in three months, the Labor Opposition has vowed to block the tax cuts package to stop the rich paying less tax.
The Greens also want the tax relief restricted to lower-income earners.
The government’s tax cuts package was broken up into three stages and is yet to pass both houses of Parliament.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has indicated he is opposed to the third stage of the package, which from July 2024 would see Australia’s tax brackets reduced from five to four for the first time since 1984.
The government wants those earning $45,001 to $200,000 to pay a marginal rate of 30 per cent, at a cost of $95billion, as the 37 per cent threshold was abolished.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has indicated he is opposed to the third stage of the package, which from July 2024 would see Australia’s tax brackets reduced from five to four for the first time since 1984
However, Mr Albanese said it was economically irresponsible to give tax cuts to higher income earners with the economy growing at the slowest pace in a decade.
‘We think that stage three, at a cost of some $95billion, down the track, for an economy which is very soft at the moment,’ he told reporters on Monday.
‘No one can say what the economy looks like in 2024-25.
‘It’s really a triumph of hope over economic reality.’
Former Labor cabinet minister Graham Richardson slammed Mr Albanese’s reluctance to pass the tax cuts package.
‘This is completely and utterly stupid. I do not understand it, I won’t defend it even for a second,’ he told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Ben Fordham on Monday.
Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale, whose party has nine senators, is vowing to block the tax cuts package because it wants unemployment benefits increased instead.
‘We don’t support the tax cut package because it will make economic inequality much worse in Australia,’ he told Sky News on Tuesday.
‘Look, what we’ve got is a government that’s continuing with the same old failed, trickle-down economics: you give a big tax cut to people who need it least and somehow everyone’s going to be better off. It doesn’t work that way.’
Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale, whose party has nine senators, is vowing to block the tax cuts package because the party wants unemployment benefits increased instead
Mr Morrison pointed out that Labor, with a primary vote of just 33 per cent, didn’t have a mandate to opposed the tax cuts.
‘It’s a one-in-100 year message from the Australian people that they should be backing aspiration,’ he told reporters.
Acting Treasurer Simon Birmingham said the Coalition had won the right to have its tax cuts package passed in full.
‘The Australian people expect us to do as we promised at the election, expect us to do as we announced at the budget prior to the election and that is to legislate tax relief for 10 million Australians,’ he told the ABC’s 7.30 program on Monday night.
Parliament resumes on July 2, with both the House of Representatives and the Senate to sit a day after former New South Wales governor David Hurley takes over as the new Governor-General.