Unrealised gains, unleashed fury: Behind the war over Labor's $3m super tax
A policy that hardly featured during the election campaign has dominated its aftermath. It follows a long battle for reform of the nation's retirement system.
When Jim Chalmers unveiled a plan in early 2023 to tweak tax concessions for superannuation funds with balances above $3 million, the political climate was markedly different to today.
The Voice referendum — which the government would go on to lose — was still more than six months away. The Reserve Bank of Australia was in the midst of sharply raising interest rates. Joe Biden was in the White House, and Donald Trump remained on the periphery of global politics.
At the press conference in the prime minister’s courtyard, where Chalmers and Anthony Albanese announced the changes, journalists raised plenty of concerns — including whether the wealthy would simply plan their way around the tax and whether the proposal was too modest to have real impact.
“One of the things that I often get in media conferences is: why do politicians always just focus on the short term? Where’s the long-term thinking?” Chalmers said at the time. “This is about long-term sustainability, and it’s about the structural problems that are there.”
