Death, taxes and broken promises
If death and taxes are the only two certainties in life, then broken promises in politics surely runs a close third.
Anthony Albanese’s decision to overhaul the stage 3 tax cuts is primarily a political move that will do little to solve the economy’s biggest problems. And it leaves his government exposed to a backlash from voters on at least two fronts.
After weeks of carefully worded denials, the Prime Minister today confirmed the government would overhaul the stage 3 tax cuts, which were passed by the former Coalition government and in their original form would have primarily benefited higher income earners, at least in raw dollar terms.
Our economics correspondent Jennifer Duke and chief political correspondent Anthony Galloway have led the nation's media on this story, kicking the year off with a scoop on 9 January about the existence of two documents showing Treasurer Jim Chalmers had sought advice from his department on amending the tax cuts.
Their story was picked up by other media outlets and has led to repeated questioning of government ministers over the past fortnight about whether a change to the policy was afoot, to which the response was uniformly no, but with just enough wriggle room to get out of them.
