TED O’BRIEN MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR FAIRFAX
MEDIA STATEMENT
Jim Chalmers has been forced into a humiliating backflip on his proposal to tax super unrealised gains, as his Prime Minister jetted off overseas leaving him holding the bag.
This is a humiliating moment for the Treasurer who spent two years defending the indefensible—a policy so unfair it united people from all walks of life.
This is a victory for the Coalition of Commonsense over a tax-hungry Labor Government that simply cannot stop its spending spree.
I thank my Coalition colleagues, all of whom stood resolutely against Labor’s super tax, along with the economists, industry experts and Labor luminaries who also fought this super big, super bad, super tax.
Jim Chalmers has spent years assuring us that there was simply no other way than to tax unrealised gains without indexation—but today he was finally forced to admit that he was wrong.
Taxing theoretical profits was always a reckless idea, but the Treasurer was determined to take from Australians’ life savings to feed his rapidly deteriorating budget bottom line.
Now he is left with a $4.2-billion budget black hole over the forward estimates, and is no doubt cooking up all sorts of new taxes on everyday Australians to fill it.
After two years of chaos and spin, Labor has cobbled together a new model with multiple thresholds and other moving parts. Who knows what unintended consequences will be buried in the fine print.
No amount of spin from the Treasurer hides the fact that this is a full knock-down rebuild of an utterly failed policy.
We await the final details of the new policy, including how it will operate and who will be affected. Australians deserve stability and predictability in superannuation, not constant changes driven by a government in desperate search of higher taxes.
Spending under Labor is growing more than four times faster than the economy and has reached its highest level outside of a recession since 1986. That tells you everything you need to know about their addiction to big government and why they can’t be trusted to manage people’s retirement savings or the economy.
The Coalition’s principles remain clear: super should be about helping Australians build a nest egg, not a blank cheque for the government to fund its spending spree.