It was standing room only in the ballroom of the Sheraton in Sydney on Thursday as Treasurer Jim Chalmers took the stage to address an audience largely hostile to him.
Just a month on from his federal budget Chalmers has become a lightning rod for ferocious criticism from the business community over his plans for sweeping tax reform in a country long overdue for it. While limiting negative gearing to new builds seems to have support, his plans to abolish the 50% capital gains tax discount and replace it with an indexation model have attracted widespread scorn.
On Thursday, Chalmers’ messaging was careful, reframing Australia as a low taxation, low government spending jurisdiction facing two complex but urgent challenges: lifting productivity and growth amid high inflation, and tackling intergenerational inequity.
“There is a generational crisis in this country in housing and the major problem lies at the intersection of the housing market and the tax system,” he told the Morgan Stanley Australia Conference.
