Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese face much tougher questions about their economic agenda than the confusion about negative gearing and capital gains taxes.
Already a subscriber?Jim Chalmers’ meetings with China’s senior economic ministers and officials in Beijing will at least provide the treasurer an object lesson in opaque political rhetoric disconnected from economic reality.
As the first Australian treasurer to visit Beijing in seven years, Chalmers will certainly want to assess how successful Beijing’sHow this works out will be far more important to the strength of the Australian economy over the next few years than any prospective tweaks to negative gearing or capital gains tax breaks.
Yet whether and when the treasurer asked his department to take a look apparently remains a mystery to the prime minister. Albanese doesn’t know, he says. Any changes, he belatedly insisted, are not part of the government’s housing plans, which are all aboutWhether all this furore over tax concessions turns into a big ball of nothing or an actual policy shift to come will come out eventually.
This makes Labor’s clumsy attempt to back away from the story another example of its struggle to define and sell a more comprehensive economic agenda. Nor does Labor’s promotion of its government spending as the reason Australia has narrowly avoided a recession suggest much faith in Canberra in market economics or the private sector to do a better job.
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