55 minutes ago
It’s question time
Angus Taylor takes the first question and asks why did the government “lie to Australians” about “your plan to tax them more”.
The speaker, Milton Dick takes issue with the word “lie” and says that it shouldn’t be directed to an individual (because that would be unparliamentary).
Anthony Albanese gets up but before he can complete a sentence, the speaker tells Phil Thompson to stop holding up props.
He’s got a copy of the Daily Telegraph with the front page declaring: “Your capital, his gain”. About a sentence in to Albanese’s answer, Thompson doesn’t listen and he gets booted out under 94a. Dick asks everyone to be respectful.
Albanese says – once again – that the decision was a “change in our policy”.
When I talk to young Australians who are this close to giving up any opportunity to aspire to own their own home, when I speak to their parents and grandparents, who say that they are worried that their children and grandchildren will never be able to own their own home, what we are not prepared to do is sit back and kick the can further down the road.
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Tim Wilson is back and brings an example with him. He says “Jack” earns $25,000 and realises a capital gain of $10,000, currently the tax on his capital gain is $1400, which is equal to his marginal rate of 14%, but under Labor’s reforms his tax would more than double.
Jim Chalmers says that any objective observer of the housing market would conclude that it “makes it too hard for Australians, particularly younger Australians, to get a toehold in the housing market”.
Then he tries to quote from Wilson’s book – which immediately gets Dan Tehan standing up to stop him from doing so.
Someone from the Labor benches shouts “who would read his book” and they erupt with laughter.
Milton Dick warns that the quote needs to be directly relevant. He says “I haven’t read the book” which again gets the House roaring with laughter, before he adds, “I haven’t read the book yet” which gets a nod from Wilson.
Chalmers continues:
The member for Wannon (Tehan) might not think the Shadow Treasurer’s views are relevant but I do, Mr Speaker. (cue even more laughs).
This is what the Shadow Treasurer said: capital gains from appreciation of holding assets is taxed at half the applied rate, effectively entrenching the benefit of having and holding assets, which can only exist if you’re established. There’s no intergenerational justice in such preferential arrangements.
‘When he blows on the dog whistle they can hear it in Goldstein too’: Chalmers to Wilson
Back to the opposition, Tim Wilson asks the treasurer where new migrants are going to live, when 1.4 million migrants have arrived since Labor came into power, but the government’s housing target is 77,000 behind this year alone.
Jim Chalmers answers and immediately gets personal:
I hope the shadow treasurer is aware that when he blows on the dog whistle they can hear it in Goldstein too.
He then points out that when Labor came into office, migration was already surging (after Covid restrictions had been lifted).
Overall, net overseas migration has come down. I didn’t see you mentioning that when you’re traipsing from disappointed door to disappointed door in Farrer.
Katter calls for gas price caps to save phosphate plant
Over to the crossbench, Bob Katter asks his most normal question yet.
He says that the only phosphate plant in Australia (which is critical for fertiliser), in his electorate, is being squeezed by the major supermarkets and high gas prices. He welcomes the east coast gas reserve but asks if the government will introduce price caps to stop the “monopolistic” situation:
Will you save Australia’s phosphate plant and 17,000 jobs or so will your government continue with this free market teacher’s pet mentality and import 100% fertiliser.
Anthony Albanese says the government already worked with Queensland’s Crisafulli government to intervene and defend the industry last year, and if they hadn’t, “then we would have been in a really dire situation right now”.
The resources minister, Madeleine King, then takes the question and says that the government is working to secure the supply chain for urea – another critical fertiliser ingredient, and takes a shot at the opposition for not doing more when it was in government.
Second Liberal MP booted from the chamber during question time
Before the next question, WA Liberal MP Ben Small gets yeeted from the chamber for interrupting too much. Milton Dick is not having it today and warns, “plenty of people will follow him today if that continues”.
That’s two booted so far from just two opposition questions.
Angus Taylor asks the PM if he will confirm that 35,000 fewer homes will be built as a result of Labor’s new taxes – according to the budget.
The PM says that housing supply will increase by “at least 30,000”, and that the tax changes will prioritise new housing.
The $2bn local infrastructure fund will support up to 65,000 new homes over the decade.
We want to make sure that we continue to give Australians a fair crack going forward … Labor is the party of aspiration, and this budget last night shows that.
It’s question time
Angus Taylor takes the first question and asks why did the government “lie to Australians” about “your plan to tax them more”.
The speaker, Milton Dick takes issue with the word “lie” and says that it shouldn’t be directed to an individual (because that would be unparliamentary).
Anthony Albanese gets up but before he can complete a sentence, the speaker tells Phil Thompson to stop holding up props.
He’s got a copy of the Daily Telegraph with the front page declaring: “Your capital, his gain”. About a sentence in to Albanese’s answer, Thompson doesn’t listen and he gets booted out under 94a. Dick asks everyone to be respectful.
Albanese says – once again – that the decision was a “change in our policy”.
When I talk to young Australians who are this close to giving up any opportunity to aspire to own their own home, when I speak to their parents and grandparents, who say that they are worried that their children and grandchildren will never be able to own their own home, what we are not prepared to do is sit back and kick the can further down the road.
Penry Buckley
NSW Greens defend ‘principled work’ of committee investigating alleged Labor misconduct
The NSW Greens MLC Abigail Boyd has defended the “principled work” of a parliamentary committee investigating alleged Labor misconduct, after the premier described its inquiry into a controversial Labor grants scheme as a “kangaroo court” with less credibility than “Scooby Doo’s Mystery Incorporated”.
In response, Boyd, the chair of the public accountability and works committee, told Guardian Australia:
I stand by the principled work of the highly respected public accountability and works committee. The premier’s ad hominem attacks are textbook spin tactics – he is yet to rebut or refute any part of the reports findings or evidentiary basis. This is an entirely predictable and immature response from a government caught out doing demonstrably the wrong thing – attacking the messenger rather than grapple with their own profound shortcomings.
As reported earlier, Chris Minns made the comments in question time in response to a question about a report published by the committee, which found that a minister had misled parliament in relation to the grants scheme, and called for two staffers to be considered for prosecutions.
The public accountability and works committee is also investigating the administration of donations in the premier’s seat of Kogarah between 2014 and 2016, including in relation to a fundraiser for Minns at the Sunny Harbour Seafood restaurant in Hurstville in 2014. The NSW Electoral Commission (EC) had reportedly reopened an investigation into the matter. Minns has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Penry Buckley
NSW premier hits out at inquiry into Labor election ‘slush fund’
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has described an inquiry into a Labor election “slush fund” as a “kangaroo court”, after it recommended two Labor staffers be considered for prosecutions.
The scheme allowed Labor candidates in all 93 lower house electorates in 2023 to nominate projects for $400,000 of public funding, regardless of whether they won their seats. As of June 2025, $37m in grants had been approved.
As we reported yesterday, the crossbench- and opposition led-inquiry into the scheme found the minister responsible for its implementation, John Graham, misled parliament on multiple occasions during hearings. It described the scheme as “utterly inappropriate and anti-democratic”, and recommended two Labor staffers be considered for prosecutions for allegedly making false statements under oath to the inquiry.
Asked about the report at question time today, the premier said “Scooby Doo’s Mystery Incorporated has more credibility”, accusing the upper house Greens member Abigail Boyd of running a “kangaroo court”. Boyd has been contacted for comment.
Read more here:
Jordyn Beazley
Police formally identify body as Julian Ingram
Leaving politics for a moment, police have formally identified the body found next to a ute in NSW’s central west as Julian Ingram, the gunman suspected of killing his pregnant former partner, her boyfriend, and her aunt.
Ingram’s body was found in a “decomposed state” next to an abandoned ute 50km north-west of Lake Cargelligo on Monday, ending a four-month long manhunt that had been under way for the 37-year-old since January.
He was last seen on 22 January fleeing town in a ute after he allegedly shot and killed Sophie Quinn, John Harris and Nerida Quinn.
Police said in a statement on Wednesday that a postmortem examination would be conducted to determine the cause of Ingram’s death:
Investigations under Strike Force Doberta remain ongoing and a report will be prepared for the Coroner.
On Tuesday, assistant commissioner Andrew Holland said “there’s certain indications at this point” that Ingram, who was found next to a gun, took his own life “some time ago”.
Submarine agency budget blows out
Chalmers gets a final question on the blowout of the Australian submarine agency in the budget by 33% with the agency now growing to about $512m.
The reporter asks Chalmers if other parts of the defence force will be “cannibalised” if the bill on submarines and the Aukus program keeps escalating.
Chalmers says that he believes big investments in national security “make a lot of sense” and admits that defence projects often go over budget.
There will always be the risk in some of these big Defence projects that the cost blows out.
Negative gearing and CGT changes strike a ‘balance’, Chalmers says
Next up is my colleague, Patrick Commins, who asks the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, if completely grandfathering negative gearing (i.e. cutting off the incentives completely even to those who already own investment properties) would have raised more revenue, and why the government didn’t choose to do that.
Chalmers says that the reforms strike the right balance – the argument he’s made to those who say the policy goes too far and to those who say it doesn’t go far enough.
We respect and recognise decisions that people have taken in the past, and so [this] is essentially a prospective set of tax reforms that we are proposing.
We’ve balanced respecting and recognising those former investments at the same time as we’re changing the system for the future, so that we continue to provide a discount in the CGT system, but calculated in a way that minimises some of these other distortions.
Drastic cuts to NDIS ‘difficult but doable’, says Chalmers
The lion’s share of the more than $60bn in savings in last night’s budget comes from drastic cuts to the national disability insurance scheme – changes that haven’t yet been introduced to parliament.
Nine newspaper’s Paul Sakkal asks how the government will bank all those savings when even the health minister, Mark Butler, has admitted that the changes to eligibility will be hard to work out and some of the states are dragging their feet.
Chalmers says he’s confident that the government can achieve the savings, and says that while there is “a level of trepidation” among commentators, the reform to the NDIS is necessary.
There are a number of elements of the budget which are difficult but doable … We’re very cautious about changes that we make to the NDIS, but our motivation there is really clear. We’re trying to save the thing from itself. It was growing too fast. It would have consumed itself. Some future government with different motivations to ours would have been tempted to end or effectively ruin the scheme.
I understand that it will take a lot of work, and not just at the Commonwealth level, to make sure that the numbers that we’ve accounted for in the budget come to a fruition, but I’m confident that we can
