June 3, 2025 • 15 mins
Labor is poised to move forward with its plan to increase the tax on superannuation balances over $3 million.
Critics are calling the idea unfair and questioning why Labor’s super tax will apply to unrealised gains, rather than just money made.
But with Labor’s super majority in parliament – and support from the Greens in the senate – their opponents can only complain.
Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe, on Labor’s superannuation plan, and what it tells us about the government’s economic priorities in its second term.
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Guest: National correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Labor is poised to move forward with its plan to
increase the tax on superannuation balances over three million dollars.
Critics say it's unfair and question why Labour's super tax
will apply to unrealized gains rather than just money made.
But with Labour's majority in Parliament and support from the
Greens in the Senate, their opponents can't do much but complain.
(00:32):
Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper Mike Secam on
Labour's superannuation plan and what it tells us about the
government's economic priorities in its second term. It's Wednesday, June fourth,
(00:54):
So Mike, Labor wants to overhaul superannuation. But to begin with,
can we talk about how what we have at the moment,
it's the current super how it was created in the
first place? Because this goes back to Keating, doesn't it
in the nineties, So what was the purpose of superannuation?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, you're right, universal super goes back to Keating A
fortunate minority if people had it before then, of course,
but Keating's plan was that everyone should have it.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Anounable of prime ministers to speak of. This House last
night passed the Superannuation Guarantee levy, and doing so it
has entrenched in legislation a great reform which will be
of great benefit of coming generations of Australia. Let's speak,
for the first time in our history, well in advance
of reform in other advanced industrial countries. Ordinary Australians will
(01:42):
be able to build a decent nest egg for their retirement.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The idea was that it would provide people with a
comfortable retirement, but along the way it would also reduce
pressure on the pension which would be a good thing
for future taxpayers. And of course you know it gave
Australia this sort of huge fund of wealth sitting there
earning income on behalf of it citizenry.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
This is a long term project because workers in their
fifties and even in their forties on modest salaries simply
cannot set aside enough of current income to achieve financial
independence in their old age. To achieve this, these workers
would have to start contributing as a substantial percentage of
their income to super in their twenties. Is this likely
(02:21):
without compulsion?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The answer is no. To encourage people into this form
of saving, which is what it is. The government not
only required that a portion of your pay goes into SUPER,
so your employer puts it in, but you know you
can top that up, and a concessional tax rate was applied,
so fifteen percent was the tax on contributions and earnings.
(02:42):
So you know, that was well below the marginal rates
of what most people would otherwise pay. So you know,
it was a very attractive place to park your money.
And over the years the superpool has grown enormously. It's
now I think almost four trillion dollars or something like
that as of this moment. The Association of super Nuation
Funds in Australia reckons that for a comfortable retirement you
(03:04):
need six hundred and ninety thousand dollars for couples five
hundred and ninety five thousand dollars for singles. But over
time though super has drifted well past that purpose. You know,
a growing number of people have way more than they
need for a comfortable retirement. I mean, there are people
with tens of millions of dolls, even hundreds of millions
of dollars stashed away in their super and so there's
(03:25):
been a lot of complained about this. I spoke to
Brendan Coates, who's the director of the Housing and Economic
Security Program at the Graton Institute, and he told me
the thing was turning into a, as he called it,
tax subsidized inheritance scheme. Those big balances they often sit
inside self managed funds. They're stuffed with property or family businesses,
or real estate investments or even artworks. Then they're never
(03:47):
selling those assets, they're never paying tax on it, and
then when they die, they pass it on to their
children tax free. So it's a very good way of
minimizing tax in this life and maintaining family wealth in afterlife,
as it were.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right, Okay, so this is what Labor has identified then
as the problem that it wants to solve. So tell
me what exactly it's proposing.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, it's pretty straightforward, actually, you know how I said,
there was a fifteen percent tax on superannuation for people
with more than three million dollars in their accounts, that
would effectively double, so it would become thirty percent. So
you know, if you've got more than three million dollars
in your super on the amount over the three million,
so not all of it, only the extra you pay
(04:32):
a high rate of tax. And the estimate out of
Treasury when they ran the numbers on this was that
it would raise two point three billion dollars for government
revenue in the first year and that would create to
forty billion dollars over a decade. So you know, it's
not to be sneezed at, and actually not many people
would be caught by this, roughly eighty thousand, which is
(04:52):
about zero point five percent of people with superannuation funds.
Almost all of them, would you know, have much more
than three million dollars on average, in on their funds,
Like I said, some accounts have more than one hundred
million dollars. Where Labor's proposal is novel, however, is that
it would tax unrealized gains. So say you own, you know,
a super account with three million dollars in it at
(05:14):
the start of the year, and at the end of
the year that's worth on paper, worth four million dollars.
While you pay tax on that paper gain, whether or
not you know you've actually sold anything and put any
money in your own pocket, you still pay on the
notional gain. And this is something that is contentious, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So it's this idea of taxing unrealized gains that opponents
are particularly Again, so tell me more about their argument
as to why that is unfair on principle.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Really, they say that this is not done very often
in the tax fhere. In fact, some complain about the
very idea of the wealthy paying more tax. I mean,
there are some practical issues that have been raised. You know,
some critics say, well, some people might not actually have
the readies to pay the tax when it comes to
you. You know that they've got all these assets sitting there
in their account, but they mightn't have the money to
pay the tax on the notional gain, and so they
(06:06):
might be forced to sell up. You know, we've had
the specter raised of you know, farmers having to sell
their farms. You know, small business people having to sell
their business and so on. They complain that, you know,
for volatile investments like for example, startups, that it will
discourage investment in those Why.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Did the government choose not to allow people who can
calculate their actual earnings and they're realized versus unrealized gains.
Why did you choose to tax everybody on unrealized gains?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
People like a Legraspender, the tear independent MP for Wentworth
who opposes this measure. She argues that it will capture
gains essentially that may never be realized. Others would say
that's in fact the entire point of the exercise.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
This legislation is suggesting is going to tax unrealized gains
in super which I think is bad policy. And both
have bad tax policy, but particularly bad for and particularly
damaging I am concerned to see potentially for the venture
and the startup and scale up sector.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A second concern for a Legra Spender, and also I
might say the Greens, is that the three million dollar
figure will not be indexed, so as inflation rises. At
this stage, there's no prospect that the threshold for paying
the extra tax for rise, which means that over time
more and more people will wind up paying it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So basically, Mike critics say that this breaks with established
principles and unfairly penalizes a small group of people who,
at least in their view, have I guess, played by
the existing rules of superannuation.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
What do you make of those arguments?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
The point I would make is that a lot of
people came out in opposition to this more recently, quite
a number of experts have come out and said, hang on,
these are you know, kind of weak arguments. So one
of the experts I spoke to, for example, was Professor
Miranda Stuart, who is a tax specialist at the University
of Melbourne Law School, and she says, this idea of
you know that it's a real novel idea to tax
(08:01):
unrealized gains is not really true. We tax unrealized gains
in land tax, We tax unrealized gains in council rates.
So you know, even if it's a bit novel in
the context of superannuation earnings, that doesn't necessarily make it
a bad way to go about reining in what have
become pretty gross inequalities in the current system. As for
(08:25):
the so called hit to innovation, Brendan Coates from the
Granton Institute, you know, he says, when it comes to
providing venture capital for startup companies, only five percent roughly
of that venture capital money comes from self managed super funds.
In fact, is all the tax experts that I spoke
to say, really, you shouldn't be running businesses or property
(08:45):
portfolios inside your super That's not what it's there for.
They say, it's purely and simply a tax dodge, and
that this new tax goes quite some way to fixing
that problem.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Coming up after the break, what does labours move on? Super?
Tell us about their bigger economic plans.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Mike, these changes to superannuation, they were actually introduced in
the last parliament, but the bill didn't pass, it was
killed off and he mentioned Alec Respender earlier as she
was opposed to these reforms.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Who else voted against it?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, this is kind of interesting because in the House
of Representatives, every Teal member voted against the government and
with the Dutton opposition. So that's Allegra Spender, Kate Cheney,
Zoe Daniel Manik, Ryan, Sophie Scomp's, Kylie Tink, Zarie Steggel.
But in the end it was blocked in the Senate
where David Pocock, who's sort of a Teal and Jackie
Lamby who's definitely not a Teal but is another independent
(09:47):
they opposed it, and Allegra Spender claims credit for persuading
them to vote against it. In a way that makes sense,
you know, as the political scientists will point out to you,
Allegra Spender's electorate went worth is the richest in the nation,
you know, point pipe of all clues those kind of suburbs,
you can bet there will be a lot of people
with three million dollar plus balances in their superannuation. So
(10:12):
you know, you might argue that the Teals, all of
whom are quite affluent seats. So you know, when Labor
targets a concession, even though it's enjoyed by only zero
point five percent of all Australian it affects many more
people in the Teal seats. And we see kind of
a clash I guess between the teals progressive branding and
the financial interests of their constituents. And you know, I
(10:33):
think that it might come as a bit of a
surprise to progressive voters, you know, who have tactically switched
their votes from Labor to the Greens and voted for
a Teal candidate with the intention of keeping out a liberal,
because you know, when it comes to this, effectively, the
Teals are liberals. And yet during this election campaign, even
during the previous one, we had Conservatives, we had Peter Dutton,
(10:56):
we had Advanced we had other members of the coalition
out there saying or the Teals are just Greens in disguise,
but when you look at how they vote on economic issues,
they're not. They align very frequently with the Conservative side
of parliament. They're smaller liberals.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So that was the last parliament, Mike, But this time around,
the Tills and the Coalition are essentially powerless. Labor can
just rely on the Greens in the Senate. So given
that this legislation it's likely to pass, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Well, yes, so you know the Coalition is up in arms,
you know, saying that they will fight these reforms. Tim Wilson,
the newly elected Liberal member for Goldstein, said that it
would be his first priority in Parliament was to actually
do something about this.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But what can he actually do.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
He can complain in the hope of stirring enough popular
opposition to convince the government to back off. Really, that's
all that's happening, and I think the chances of that
happening are just about zero frankly. But you know that
has not deterred these wealthy superannums and their supporters in
politics and in the conservative of financial media.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Now we've been speaking a lot about farmers and other
Australians may have to sell property or assets to pay
their tax bill as a result of Labour's new supertax.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I mean, the Australian and the finn Review have just
been full of stories about what a terrible thing this is, as.
Speaker 7 (12:13):
If life wasn't hard enough already for our farmers with
this cost of living crisis, with weather fluctuations, and now
they're worried about having to sell up to meet a
tax liability on increased land valuations. I mean, it's insane
and quite frankly unethical.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So there's been an almighty campaign run against the reforms,
but you know Labour went to an election on it,
so it can claim a mandate. The Greens certainly support
raising the tax on high balanced super accounts. In fact,
they would say that the threshold should be two million,
not three million. So a lot of complaining from the sidelines,
but there's really nothing that the Coalition and the Tals
(12:51):
can do about it.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And are we likely to see this play out for
the next three years, Mike, You know, given the Labor
government's mandate, is this what opposition to any policy will
look back in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Well, not always. I mean there are many issues where
Labor is closer to the Libs and the Gnats than
it is to the Greens. You know, if development of
fossil fuel projects, for example, you know, the Greens say
there should be no more. Labor is every bit as
keen on opening up new gas developments and coal mines
as the coalition ever was. But when it comes to
tax and to economic policy, the government can probably do
(13:24):
most of what it was and the Greens will back it.
The question here is how much does the government actually
want to change. You know, two elections ago they went
with the plan of winding back capital gains and negative
gearing and they lost the election and since then that's
been put in the two hard basket. Well, a lot
of people would say, now that you've got all this
(13:45):
political capital, why not pull those things back out and
propose them again, you know, even if you propose them
as something to be done past the next election, so
that you know, you can claim amandate, you can claim
to have gone to an election with it, like John
how did with the GST. So you know, it depends really,
I think ultimately on how brave labor is when it
(14:06):
comes to reform. And you know, I would just make
the observation here that political capital is not like the
capital and you're a super account. You know, it doesn't
earn interest if you don't do something with it. You know,
if you've got political capital, spend it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Mike, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Nowheres Thanks Rum.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Also in the news today, the national minimum wage will
be raised to twenty four dollars and ninety five cents
an hour, or nine hundred and forty eight dollars per week,
based on a full time, thirty eight hour work week.
The decision by the Fair Work Commission will translate to
a three point five percent pay increase from July one
for millions of Australian workers. The raise is above the
(14:56):
rate of inflation, which is currently at two point four percent.
And the last seat in doubt after the May three
federal election is likely to be called today. The Australian
Electoral Commission says it expects to finalize the count and
the seat of Bradfield by this afternoon. After a type contest,
Independent candidate Nicole Buller was leading Liberal candidate Giselle Capterian
by just thirty votes yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.
From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Labor is poised to move forward with its plan to
increase the tax on superannuation balances over three million dollars.
Critics say it's unfair and question why Labour's super tax
will apply to unrealized gains rather than just money made.
But with Labour's majority in Parliament and support from the
Greens in the Senate, their opponents can't do much but complain.
(00:32):
Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper Mike Secam on
Labour's superannuation plan and what it tells us about the
government's economic priorities in its second term. It's Wednesday, June fourth,
(00:54):
So Mike, Labor wants to overhaul superannuation. But to begin with,
can we talk about how what we have at the moment,
it's the current super how it was created in the
first place? Because this goes back to Keating, doesn't it
in the nineties, So what was the purpose of superannuation?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, you're right, universal super goes back to Keating A
fortunate minority if people had it before then, of course,
but Keating's plan was that everyone should have it.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Anounable of prime ministers to speak of. This House last
night passed the Superannuation Guarantee levy, and doing so it
has entrenched in legislation a great reform which will be
of great benefit of coming generations of Australia. Let's speak,
for the first time in our history, well in advance
of reform in other advanced industrial countries. Ordinary Australians will
(01:42):
be able to build a decent nest egg for their retirement.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The idea was that it would provide people with a
comfortable retirement, but along the way it would also reduce
pressure on the pension which would be a good thing
for future taxpayers. And of course you know it gave
Australia this sort of huge fund of wealth sitting there
earning income on behalf of it citizenry.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
This is a long term project because workers in their
fifties and even in their forties on modest salaries simply
cannot set aside enough of current income to achieve financial
independence in their old age. To achieve this, these workers
would have to start contributing as a substantial percentage of
their income to super in their twenties. Is this likely
(02:21):
without compulsion?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The answer is no. To encourage people into this form
of saving, which is what it is. The government not
only required that a portion of your pay goes into SUPER,
so your employer puts it in, but you know you
can top that up, and a concessional tax rate was applied,
so fifteen percent was the tax on contributions and earnings.
(02:42):
So you know, that was well below the marginal rates
of what most people would otherwise pay. So you know,
it was a very attractive place to park your money.
And over the years the superpool has grown enormously. It's
now I think almost four trillion dollars or something like
that as of this moment. The Association of super Nuation
Funds in Australia reckons that for a comfortable retirement you
(03:04):
need six hundred and ninety thousand dollars for couples five
hundred and ninety five thousand dollars for singles. But over
time though super has drifted well past that purpose. You know,
a growing number of people have way more than they
need for a comfortable retirement. I mean, there are people
with tens of millions of dolls, even hundreds of millions
of dollars stashed away in their super and so there's
(03:25):
been a lot of complained about this. I spoke to
Brendan Coates, who's the director of the Housing and Economic
Security Program at the Graton Institute, and he told me
the thing was turning into a, as he called it,
tax subsidized inheritance scheme. Those big balances they often sit
inside self managed funds. They're stuffed with property or family businesses,
or real estate investments or even artworks. Then they're never
(03:47):
selling those assets, they're never paying tax on it, and
then when they die, they pass it on to their
children tax free. So it's a very good way of
minimizing tax in this life and maintaining family wealth in afterlife,
as it were.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Right, Okay, so this is what Labor has identified then
as the problem that it wants to solve. So tell
me what exactly it's proposing.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Well, it's pretty straightforward, actually, you know how I said,
there was a fifteen percent tax on superannuation for people
with more than three million dollars in their accounts, that
would effectively double, so it would become thirty percent. So
you know, if you've got more than three million dollars
in your super on the amount over the three million,
so not all of it, only the extra you pay
(04:32):
a high rate of tax. And the estimate out of
Treasury when they ran the numbers on this was that
it would raise two point three billion dollars for government
revenue in the first year and that would create to
forty billion dollars over a decade. So you know, it's
not to be sneezed at, and actually not many people
would be caught by this, roughly eighty thousand, which is
(04:52):
about zero point five percent of people with superannuation funds.
Almost all of them, would you know, have much more
than three million dollars on average, in on their funds,
Like I said, some accounts have more than one hundred
million dollars. Where Labor's proposal is novel, however, is that
it would tax unrealized gains. So say you own, you know,
a super account with three million dollars in it at
(05:14):
the start of the year, and at the end of
the year that's worth on paper, worth four million dollars.
While you pay tax on that paper gain, whether or
not you know you've actually sold anything and put any
money in your own pocket, you still pay on the
notional gain. And this is something that is contentious, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So it's this idea of taxing unrealized gains that opponents
are particularly Again, so tell me more about their argument
as to why that is unfair on principle.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Really, they say that this is not done very often
in the tax fhere. In fact, some complain about the
very idea of the wealthy paying more tax. I mean,
there are some practical issues that have been raised. You know,
some critics say, well, some people might not actually have
the readies to pay the tax when it comes to
you. You know that they've got all these assets sitting there
in their account, but they mightn't have the money to
pay the tax on the notional gain, and so they
(06:06):
might be forced to sell up. You know, we've had
the specter raised of you know, farmers having to sell
their farms. You know, small business people having to sell
their business and so on. They complain that, you know,
for volatile investments like for example, startups, that it will
discourage investment in those Why.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Did the government choose not to allow people who can
calculate their actual earnings and they're realized versus unrealized gains.
Why did you choose to tax everybody on unrealized gains?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
People like a Legraspender, the tear independent MP for Wentworth
who opposes this measure. She argues that it will capture
gains essentially that may never be realized. Others would say
that's in fact the entire point of the exercise.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
This legislation is suggesting is going to tax unrealized gains
in super which I think is bad policy. And both
have bad tax policy, but particularly bad for and particularly
damaging I am concerned to see potentially for the venture
and the startup and scale up sector.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A second concern for a Legra Spender, and also I
might say the Greens, is that the three million dollar
figure will not be indexed, so as inflation rises. At
this stage, there's no prospect that the threshold for paying
the extra tax for rise, which means that over time
more and more people will wind up paying it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So basically, Mike critics say that this breaks with established
principles and unfairly penalizes a small group of people who,
at least in their view, have I guess, played by
the existing rules of superannuation.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
What do you make of those arguments?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
The point I would make is that a lot of
people came out in opposition to this more recently, quite
a number of experts have come out and said, hang on,
these are you know, kind of weak arguments. So one
of the experts I spoke to, for example, was Professor
Miranda Stuart, who is a tax specialist at the University
of Melbourne Law School, and she says, this idea of
you know that it's a real novel idea to tax
(08:01):
unrealized gains is not really true. We tax unrealized gains
in land tax, We tax unrealized gains in council rates.
So you know, even if it's a bit novel in
the context of superannuation earnings, that doesn't necessarily make it
a bad way to go about reining in what have
become pretty gross inequalities in the current system. As for
(08:25):
the so called hit to innovation, Brendan Coates from the
Granton Institute, you know, he says, when it comes to
providing venture capital for startup companies, only five percent roughly
of that venture capital money comes from self managed super funds.
In fact, is all the tax experts that I spoke
to say, really, you shouldn't be running businesses or property
(08:45):
portfolios inside your super That's not what it's there for.
They say, it's purely and simply a tax dodge, and
that this new tax goes quite some way to fixing
that problem.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Coming up after the break, what does labours move on? Super?
Tell us about their bigger economic plans.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Mike, these changes to superannuation, they were actually introduced in
the last parliament, but the bill didn't pass, it was
killed off and he mentioned Alec Respender earlier as she
was opposed to these reforms.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Who else voted against it?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, this is kind of interesting because in the House
of Representatives, every Teal member voted against the government and
with the Dutton opposition. So that's Allegra Spender, Kate Cheney,
Zoe Daniel Manik, Ryan, Sophie Scomp's, Kylie Tink, Zarie Steggel.
But in the end it was blocked in the Senate
where David Pocock, who's sort of a Teal and Jackie
Lamby who's definitely not a Teal but is another independent
(09:47):
they opposed it, and Allegra Spender claims credit for persuading
them to vote against it. In a way that makes sense,
you know, as the political scientists will point out to you,
Allegra Spender's electorate went worth is the richest in the nation,
you know, point pipe of all clues those kind of suburbs,
you can bet there will be a lot of people
with three million dollar plus balances in their superannuation. So
(10:12):
you know, you might argue that the Teals, all of
whom are quite affluent seats. So you know, when Labor
targets a concession, even though it's enjoyed by only zero
point five percent of all Australian it affects many more
people in the Teal seats. And we see kind of
a clash I guess between the teals progressive branding and
the financial interests of their constituents. And you know, I
(10:33):
think that it might come as a bit of a
surprise to progressive voters, you know, who have tactically switched
their votes from Labor to the Greens and voted for
a Teal candidate with the intention of keeping out a liberal,
because you know, when it comes to this, effectively, the
Teals are liberals. And yet during this election campaign, even
during the previous one, we had Conservatives, we had Peter Dutton,
(10:56):
we had Advanced we had other members of the coalition
out there saying or the Teals are just Greens in disguise,
but when you look at how they vote on economic issues,
they're not. They align very frequently with the Conservative side
of parliament. They're smaller liberals.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So that was the last parliament, Mike, But this time around,
the Tills and the Coalition are essentially powerless. Labor can
just rely on the Greens in the Senate. So given
that this legislation it's likely to pass, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Well, yes, so you know the Coalition is up in arms,
you know, saying that they will fight these reforms. Tim Wilson,
the newly elected Liberal member for Goldstein, said that it
would be his first priority in Parliament was to actually
do something about this.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But what can he actually do.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
He can complain in the hope of stirring enough popular
opposition to convince the government to back off. Really, that's
all that's happening, and I think the chances of that
happening are just about zero frankly. But you know that
has not deterred these wealthy superannums and their supporters in
politics and in the conservative of financial media.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Now we've been speaking a lot about farmers and other
Australians may have to sell property or assets to pay
their tax bill as a result of Labour's new supertax.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I mean, the Australian and the finn Review have just
been full of stories about what a terrible thing this is, as.
Speaker 7 (12:13):
If life wasn't hard enough already for our farmers with
this cost of living crisis, with weather fluctuations, and now
they're worried about having to sell up to meet a
tax liability on increased land valuations. I mean, it's insane
and quite frankly unethical.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So there's been an almighty campaign run against the reforms,
but you know Labour went to an election on it,
so it can claim a mandate. The Greens certainly support
raising the tax on high balanced super accounts. In fact,
they would say that the threshold should be two million,
not three million. So a lot of complaining from the sidelines,
but there's really nothing that the Coalition and the Tals
(12:51):
can do about it.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
And are we likely to see this play out for
the next three years, Mike, You know, given the Labor
government's mandate, is this what opposition to any policy will
look back in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Well, not always. I mean there are many issues where
Labor is closer to the Libs and the Gnats than
it is to the Greens. You know, if development of
fossil fuel projects, for example, you know, the Greens say
there should be no more. Labor is every bit as
keen on opening up new gas developments and coal mines
as the coalition ever was. But when it comes to
tax and to economic policy, the government can probably do
(13:24):
most of what it was and the Greens will back it.
The question here is how much does the government actually
want to change. You know, two elections ago they went
with the plan of winding back capital gains and negative
gearing and they lost the election and since then that's
been put in the two hard basket. Well, a lot
of people would say, now that you've got all this
(13:45):
political capital, why not pull those things back out and
propose them again, you know, even if you propose them
as something to be done past the next election, so
that you know, you can claim amandate, you can claim
to have gone to an election with it, like John
how did with the GST. So you know, it depends really,
I think ultimately on how brave labor is when it
(14:06):
comes to reform. And you know, I would just make
the observation here that political capital is not like the
capital and you're a super account. You know, it doesn't
earn interest if you don't do something with it. You know,
if you've got political capital, spend it.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Mike, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Nowheres Thanks Rum.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Also in the news today, the national minimum wage will
be raised to twenty four dollars and ninety five cents
an hour, or nine hundred and forty eight dollars per week,
based on a full time, thirty eight hour work week.
The decision by the Fair Work Commission will translate to
a three point five percent pay increase from July one
for millions of Australian workers. The raise is above the
(14:56):
rate of inflation, which is currently at two point four percent.
And the last seat in doubt after the May three
federal election is likely to be called today. The Australian
Electoral Commission says it expects to finalize the count and
the seat of Bradfield by this afternoon. After a type contest,
Independent candidate Nicole Buller was leading Liberal candidate Giselle Capterian
by just thirty votes yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.
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