Posted by Jacqui Lambie calls on Coalition to back changes to stage-three tax cuts
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie has thrown her support behind the stage-three tax cut changes, and has called on the Coalition to do the same.
Speaking to the Today show earlier on, Lambie paid credit to the prime minister Anthony Albanese for “having the courage” to revise stage-three when economic circumstances changed.
I don’t see that as a lie. I see that as common sense and those people that need it most in society … we’re going to pass some down to you. And so we should [because] that is the Australian way.
She called on the Coalition to support the changes because otherwise “you’re going to let the Greens start negotiating”.
I think it’s common sense by the Liberal party to support them and knock the Greens clean out of the game.
Key events
Police officer charged with larceny-related offences
A police officer has been charged with larceny-related offences.
On 12 January, investigators executed a search warrant at the officer’s home and work locker.
Last Friday, the 42-year-old constable – with the command in the north-west metropolitan region – was served a court attendance notice for two counts of larceny as a public servant.
She will appear in Hornsby local court on 20 March, and is currently suspended from duty with pay.
Her employment status remains under review, police said in a statement.
Kylie Minogue wins inaugural Grammy for best pop dance record
Sian Cain
Over to a bit of Australian news in Los Angeles now: Kylie Minogue has won the inaugural Grammy for best pop dance record for her song Padam Padam, beating fellow Aussie Troye Sivan to the prize.
This is Kylie’s second ever Grammy win and comes 20 years after she won the Grammy for best dance recording for Come into My World in 2004.
Kylie was nominated only once this year, while Sivan was nominated twice. But he has lost in both categories, with the Beatles beating him in the category for best music video. Their win, for the music video for I’m Only Sleeping, marks 60 years since their first Grammy wins in 1964.
Public health leaders call for health levy on sugary drinks
Leading Australian public health organisations are calling for a 20% health levy on sugary drink manufacturers.
Members of the Rethink Sugary Drink alliance, which includes the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Cancer Council, Australian Dental Association, Food for Health Alliance and Heart Foundation are set to launch a new position statement in Canberra today, urging the 20% levy.
AMA research found the levy could raise $1bn each year to fund health initiatives, and slash the amount of sugar Australians consume each year by nearly 2.6kg.
AMA president Steve Robson said:
This policy really is a no-brainer – it would raise vital funds for preventive health and protect Australians’ health by decreasing the risk of diseases linked to excess weight like heart disease, type-two diabetes, stroke and some cancers.
Our modelling shows that a 20% health levy on sugary drink manufacturers could raise around $4bn over four years. These funds could be invested into crucial health promotion campaigns, reducing pressure on our stretched health system.
You can read the AMA’s report here.
Jacqui Lambie calls on Coalition to back changes to stage-three tax cuts
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie has thrown her support behind the stage-three tax cut changes, and has called on the Coalition to do the same.
Speaking to the Today show earlier on, Lambie paid credit to the prime minister Anthony Albanese for “having the courage” to revise stage-three when economic circumstances changed.
I don’t see that as a lie. I see that as common sense and those people that need it most in society … we’re going to pass some down to you. And so we should [because] that is the Australian way.
She called on the Coalition to support the changes because otherwise “you’re going to let the Greens start negotiating”.
I think it’s common sense by the Liberal party to support them and knock the Greens clean out of the game.
Search continues for missing swimmer caught in rip on Mornington Peninsula
Emergency services are continuing to search for a swimmer who disappeared off a beach in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, AAP reports.
Police have been searching the waters of 16th beach in Rye after a 20-year-old man went missing yesterday. It’s believed the man was swimming with two friends when they were all caught in a rip.
Two of the group were able to make it back to shore but their friend did not.
Air Wing, Lifesaving Victoria and Ambulance Victoria were alerted to the beach off Browns Road and Tasman Drive about 7pm where they searched the area, with the search resuming today.
Police recover body of swimmer who went missing in Sydney’s Georges River
Police have recovered the body of a man who went missing while swimming in the Georges River in Sydney’s south-west yesterday.
Emergency services were called to Kentlyn Basin in the Keith Longhurst Reserve, near Campbelltown, about 3.45pm yesterday after a swimmer failed to surface.
A search was initiated involving local police, SES and the police dive unit, and police divers found the man’s body shortly before 7pm.
A report will be prepared for the coroner.
‘This is not genuine tax reform,’ shadow finance minister says of Labor’s stage-three changes
Shadow finance minister Jane Hume also spoke to ABC RN this morning about the changes to stage-three tax cuts. The Coalition received the stage-three legislation yesterday, she said, and will “need to go through parliamentary processes”.
Hume said the Coalition will “always support lower and simpler tax”, but argued the stage-three changes have “done away with any reform that could have gone through in the future”.
This is not genuine tax reform. This is simply a political response to what the government has seen as their tanking popularity and with a byelection on the horizon, we know that this is really the driver of the changes to the stage-three tax cuts.
Later in the interview, host Patricia Karvelas said Hume was raising other issues and asked “doesn’t that demonstrate that you accept this change is actually popular in the community?”
Hume:
Well, if you’re a drowning man you’ve reached for a life raft, no matter what that life raft is.
Karvelas: Does that mean that under your taxation policy, men were drowning?
Hume:
No, in fact, what it means is that real disposable incomes have gone backwards under this government. You are feeling poorer, your standard of living has gone down and your quality of life has gone down, and all of that has happened under a Labor government … This is the only solution because they have said anything else we have done has been ineffective.
Like treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked earlier this morning, Katy Gallagher was also asked whether she would be prepared for a Senate inquiry into the stage-three changes.
Gallagher said the bill is “three or four pages” and a “very simple bill”, and flagged she could talk about it at the cost-of-living inquiry later this week, or at estimates:
I’ll be appearing I think before the cost of living inquiry later this week … we have estimates next week where I’ll appear with Treasury for a day and a half [so] there is opportunity for the Senate to have a look at it through that process.
Finance minister Katy Gallagher was asked about the Grattan Institute research (we had this earlier in the blog) showing that a third of households don’t pay tax and therefore miss out on the benefits.
Will the government consider raising jobseeker?
Gallagher:
I think the treasurer and I have made it clear that every budget, we look at all aspects of expenditure across government, that would include looking at our payments and looking at our services … I think the PM committed to that before the election, this is something that we keep under consideration. It has to be balanced up with all of the other competing pressures where people want additional spending as well.
Changes to stage-three motivated by ‘what we can do to help people’, says finance minister
Finance minister Katy Gallagher just spoke to ABC RN about the stage-three tax cut changes, set to be introduced to parliament this week.
She was also asked about the Newspoll figures, showing apparent support for the change.
Host Patricia Karvelas: This is all despite you breaking a promise not to touch them. Have you won the argument on that?
Gallagher:
I think people are up for a rational and reasonable discussion… We made this decision based on putting people before politics.
Karvelas: Is the lesson here that you can break promises as long as people aren’t worse off as a result?
Gallagher said there will be “opinion writing [and] lessons and all the rest of it”, but the focus has been on easing the cost of living.
I’m sure there’ll be others that will write things about [this] in future, but that hasn’t been something that we’ve been conscious of, it really has been about what we can do to help people – particularly those that have been feeling the crunch from the interest rate increases.
Voters back PM’s revised stage-three tax cuts: Newspoll
Voters support the government’s decision to change the stage-three tax cuts, polling shows, but Labor’s lead over the Coalition remains unchanged, AAP reports.
The latest Newspoll shows while 62% of voters believe prime minister Anthony Albanese made the right choice to modify the stage three tax cuts, only 38% of them said they would be better off under the proposed changes.
Labor leads the Coalition 52% to 48% on a two-party-preferred basis, the latest Newspoll in the Australian reveals, unchanged from the previous December poll.
The Newspoll also shows Labor leader Albanese (56%) has maintained his lead over the Coalition’s Peter Dutton (35%) as preferred leader.
While Labor’s primary vote was up one percentage point (34%), it remains behind the Liberal-National Coalition (36%) on the primary vote.
The Greens’ primary vote dropped one point to 12% and One Nation’s was unchanged at 7% while the independents and minor parties remained at 11%.
The poll of 1,245 voters was conducted between 31 January and Saturday.
Coalition ‘out of touch’ with middle Australia, treasurer says
The treasurer Jim Chalmers also took aim at the Coalition party room and shadow ministry, who will no doubt be meeting today and tomorrow to discuss their position on the stage-three changes.
Chalmers told ABC News Breakfast that “whatever” position they take, the Coalition has “already shown how diabolically out of touch they are with middle Australia and the pressures that people are under”.
We already know via Sussan Ley that their position is to unwind these tax cuts if they get the opportunity. So whatever position we hear from the opposition today and tomorrow, it’s already clear that they are out of touch. It’s already clear that they want to unwind these changes.
There is a bit of a back-and-forth over what Ley actually said, or intended to say. I broke this down in last week’s blog for a bit of context.
Essentially, before the stage-three changes were announced, Ley was asked if she would “roll back whatever changes are made”, and told Sky: “Well this is our position. This is absolutely our position.”
She later walked back the comments, clarifying that the opposition’s position was to support stage-three as it existed before the changes, and denied promising to roll them back.
Coalition has ‘no more excuses’ to delay changes to stage-three tax cuts, Chalmers says
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, told ABC News Breakfast this morning the Coalition has “no more excuses” to delay changes to stage-three.
Asked whether the government was willing to negotiate on the changes with the Coalition or Greens to get the changes through the Senate, Chalmers said the Coalition “has the legislation [and] the detail” and they have “no more excuses”.
I say to the Coalition, and I say to the Greens, don’t stand in the way of a bigger tax cut for more workers to help with the cost of living … No more stumbling around and stuffing around, it’s time for the Coalition, in particular, but also the other crossbench members, to come to a position. The detail is out there. The legislation is out there. There are no more excuses.
Asked whether he would support a “short, sharp” Senate inquiry into the changes, Chalmers argued the impacts are “really well-known”:
We’ve put out the impacts on the different income levels, people know that there are cost-of-living pressures in our community. I think this is an important opportunity to do the right thing by people who are doing it tough.
Josh Butler
‘Biggest loser from the revised tax plan may end up being the federal budget’: Grattan Institute analysis
Sticking with analysis on stage-three from the Grattan Institute:
Coates and Moloney predicted “the biggest loser from the revised tax plan may end up being the federal budget” – pointing to the commonwealth’s reduced spending power.
These tax cuts will make it harder for this government, and future governments, to meet community demands for more spending in areas such as healthcare, aged care, disability care, and defence.
The commitment of both major parties to big income tax cuts now, means there will be less money in future to ‘buy’ more worthwhile reforms.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, claimed yesterday that Labor’s changes hadn’t done enough to fix the “unfairness” in the original stage-three plan.
If Labor’s spending $300bn, why do they need to give tax cuts to politicians and billionaires when low- and middle-income earners are still doing it tough?
Bandt flagged plans to “fight for more” for low-income earners. He last week indicated the party may put a rise to the tax-free threshold, a rise in the jobseeker welfare payment, or adding dental into the Medicare system, on the negotiating table – even as Albanese claimed the government wasn’t keen to horse-trade.
The government requires the support of the Coalition or the Greens to pass the tax cuts changes through the Senate.
Josh Butler
Urgent calls to raise jobseeker payments and rent assistance
There are calls to urgently increase jobseeker payments and rent assistance for those missing out under the federal government’s overhaul announced in late January.
Analysis from the Grattan Institute found that about a third of households – such as the unemployed, those with a disability and retirees – don’t pay tax and therefore miss out on the benefits.
“What’s missing from the government’s package is relief for those genuinely struggling the most, and who don’t benefit from these tax cuts,” said Brendan Coates, Grattan’s economic policy program director, and Joey Moloney in the paper.
Many of these Australians are among those doing it toughest.
The government should “urgently” expand cost-of-living relief to those households, the authors said, suggesting further boosts to commonwealth rent assistance of $1,000 a year and a $55 weekly rise to jobseeker.
Those combined increases would cost around $4.7bn a year, Grattan said, less than a quarter of the $20bn yearly cost of the tax cuts.
Josh Butler
Labor’s stage-three cut changes leave behind vulnerable, analysis warns
Labor’s changes to the stage-three tax cuts still leave behind vulnerable people including the unemployed, people with a disability and retirees, new Grattan Institute analysis warns.
The federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says his amended tax cuts will better address bracket creep for middle-income earners compared with the Morrison-era plan currently legislated.
But the “biggest loser” under Labor’s stage-three cuts could be budget and crucial services like health and defence, the Grattan Institute forecasts, with the $20bn annual price tag making it harder for the government to meet community demand.
According to Chalmers’ figures, the average worker on $73,000 a year would pay a 21% average tax rate under the current Coalition-legislated plan in 2024-25, but 19.9% under Labor’s plan. Out to 2027-28, that worker would pay 22.4% under current settings, but 21.5% under Labor’s plan.
The Grattan Institute’s analysis said bracket creep would gradually erode the value of the tax changes, noting Labor’s plan to keep the 37% tax bracket – which would be abolished under the current plan – would see average tax rates rise faster for those earning between $135,000 and $190,000.
Grattan’s figures suggested “the vast bulk of Australian taxpayers benefit” from the changes, especially middle-income earners, with average income earners to pay $8,040 less tax over the next decade. However, those earning above $150,000 – an income higher than 90% of taxpayers – would pay about $23,000 more over the decade.
Grattan estimated 83% of taxpayers would pay the same or less tax over the next decade under Labor’s changes, compared with the Coalition stage-three plan.
Woman dies, man hurt in riverbank boat crash in Sydney
A woman in her 30s has died following a boat crash in Sydney’s north-west.
Just after 9pm last night, emergency services were called to a boat ramp in Wilberforce, following reports a boat had crashed into the riverbank.
Paramedics treated the woman, however she died at the scene. She has not been formally identified.
A 38-year-old man sustained minor injuries and was taken to Westmead hospital for mandatory testing.
The vessel was seized for examination and an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident has commenced.
A report will be prepared for the coroner.
Good morning
Emily Wind
And happy Monday – welcome back to a new week on the Australia news live blog. I’m Emily Wind and I’ll bring you our rolling coverage today.
Parliament will return for the year tomorrow, and the revised stage-three tax cuts will surely be the main focus. Treasurer Jim Chalmers told ABC News Breakfast this morning the Coalition has “no more excuses” to delay the changes.
He was asked whether the government was willing to negotiate on the changes with the Coalition or Greens to get the changes through the Senate, and said:
No more excuses, no more stumbling around and stuffing around. It’s time for the Coalition, in particular, but also the other crossbench members, to come to a position. The detail is out there. The legislation is out there. There are no more excuses.
Meanwhile the latest Newspoll was released overnight, and as AAP reports, voters support the government’s decision to change the stage-three tax cuts, but Labor’s lead over the Coalition remains unchanged.
Meanwhile, the Albanese government unveiled its long-awaited plan for fuel-efficiency standards at the weekend, due to be introduced to parliament in the first half of this year and take effect from January 2025.
You can read all the details from Henry Belot bellow:
We’ll bring you more on these stories – and more – shortly. If you see something that needs attention on the blog, you can get in touch via X, @emilywindwrites, or send me an email: emily.wind@theguardian.com.
Let’s get into it.