Budget will ‘kneecap’ younger Australians, says Tim Wilson
Tim Wilson has doubled down on his stance that the Coalition would look to repeal the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax “if necessary”. It’s a little different to what Angus Taylor is saying this morning.
Wilson tells Sky News:
We [will] take every measure to make sure that we stop and fight them and defeat them. But of course, if necessary, we’ll look at repeal as well.
The shadow treasurer says the budget is “built on bad faith, [and] built on broken trust”, after the government promised it would not touch those tax incentives.
He says the changes will lead to fewer homes being built and increase rents.
A reminder – the budget says that rent will increase about $2 a week for the average renter household.
We’ve said we’ll support measures around hospital funding. We said we’ll support income tax offsets on earned income. But when it comes down to the measures of broken trust built on bad faith that this government is putting forward, which is going to kneecap young Australians, then let’s be very clear about just how bad it is.
Key events
Cait Kelly
Australian Neurodivergent Parents Association calls on the Senate to stop NDIS cuts
The group said disabled parents were already losing their children to child protection because they did not have enough support. 160,000 people are set to be cut from the NDIS, most will be children and people with psychosocial disabilities.
The group’s president, Sarah Langston, said:
Senators [David] Pocock, [Jacqui] Lambie and [Tammy] Tyrrell represent communities that will absorb this first and hardest. They have the votes to stop it.
We are organising those communities right now, and we are asking those senators to stand with the families they represent.
The Australian Neurodivergent Parents Association is coordinating direct contact with every crossbench senator by Friday.
State and territory leaders are being called on to publicly demand the federal government return to the table with evidence, independent modelling and a fully funded transition plan before one more support is cut.
Labor needs either the Coalition or the Greens to back its changes through the Senate.
Penry Buckley
NSW police say Sydney protest charges under struck down laws will be dropped
The NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, says any charges laid under struck-down laws following the Sydney protest against Israeli president Isaac Herzog in February will be dropped, pending a police review.
Speaking to ABC radio this morning, Lanyon said in addition to review of charges, flagged after the court of appeal struck down public assembly restriction declaration (Pard) laws last month, police were investigating if directions given by police under a separate “major events” declaration were lawful.
They were charged under various sections, so our prosecutors are reviewing the evidence, and also the lawful nature of the directions given. You’d be aware that there was a major events declaration in place at the time where that was used for giving the directions … the decision of the Pard does not invalidate that. So we’re working through each one of that but certainly, if it is reflective of a Pard decision which has since been overturned, those matters will be withdrawn. So we’ve got to work through each and every one, because there was a different basis for charging … people.
NSW police say 30 people have now been charged in relation to the protest, while investigations of actions of protesters under Strike Force Laine continue.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc) is investigating alleged police brutality at the protest. Several protesters have indicated they plan to bring civil cases against the police. Derek Jones, known informally as “white shirt guy”, became the first to launch legal action over an alleged unprovoked assault by police.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian treasurer welcomes changes to negative gearing and CGT
The Victorian treasurer, Jacyln Symes, has described the federal budget as a “great budget for Victoria”.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament this morning, she said:
It’s really focused on helping young people get a foothold in the property sector – really complementary of the Victorian government’s policy settings – [and I’m] also very appreciative of finally having a federal government that recognises the needs of the Victorian community, particularly in finally seeing some of that investment in our much needed infrastructure.
Asked about the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, she said she welcomed the changes.
What I like about the announcements from the federal government last night is it’s all about ensuring supply. It is encouraging investment into new builds and ensuring that the established homes, particularly for first home buyers, they’re going to options and they’re not competing with as many investors as they have previously been in the past.
She denied the changes would “pull the ladder” for young people interested in investing, saying that negative gearing was still an option on new builds:
The good balance here is enabling negative gearing for new investors. We want to increase supply. It is been a priority of this government to build more homes, particularly in places where young people want to live. So we think that anything that is done to increase supply, anything that is done to make it easier for young people to buy their first home, or indeed their first investment property … that’s a good thing.
Cait Kelly
Welfare groups criticise government for leaving jobseekers behind in budget
Welfare groups have called out the government for refusing to lift jobseeker in this budget, pointing to the fact one in seven Australians were living below the poverty line, with the poverty rate for children having climbed to one in six.
Economic Justice Australia said one of the new “top-up” payments to be made available to some people who receive Youth Allowance and Abstudy to address youth homelessness would not address the issue.
EJA chief executive, Kate Allingham, said:
The maximum rate for Youth Allowance equates to just $47 per day. This is not enough to cover food, utilities, medicine, internet and transport, let alone housing.
The recent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee reported highlighted that deprivation is much more prevalent among people receiving income support payments than among Australia’s population more generally. Without lifting payment rates to levels that actually allow people to survive, this gap will only continue to widen.
EJA welcomed the government’s announcement of extensive reform to the child support system, including $64.9m to provide greater protections for parents in private arrangements.
The Antipoverty Centre has also warned the budget comes at a time when the RBA has pushed for higher unemployment, while keeping people on Jobseeker in poverty.
Antipoverty Centre spokesperson, Jay Coonan said:
The Albanese government has again ignored the popular and necessary demand to increase the rate of social security payments. As inflation and unemployment continues to rise, at the same time housing and bills are hurting people on higher incomes, the poorest drowned long ago … It is evident that there is nothing but contempt for no and low income people from the Albanese government.
Sowing division v social cohesion
One of the key frames of the political messaging around this budget is that the government is arguing that rebalancing the tax scales will be good for social cohesion and stop young people being pitted against older people.
The PM told Adelaide radio station 5AA this morning:
We don’t want for the future generation and the current generation of young people to be locked out of the market, and for there to be the development in Australia of a two-tiered society.
But in contrast, the opposition is framing the budget as one that sows division, and is still pitting generations against each other, as well as people with aspiration.
The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson told ABC radio Melbourne this morning:
At the moment, this budget is just about sowing division and decline.
I find it just absurd that the government is pitching this budget as being in favour of young people. They’re going to increase rent, they’re then going to tax their invested deposits – first-home deposits – further and then they’re going to build fewer homes. They are literally going to kneecap young Australians on the journey.
The Treasury estimates rents will increase by about $2 per week for the average household, while house prices are expected to still increase, but by approximately 2%, or $19,000 for a couple of years.
Negative gearing and CGT gains should be returned in income tax cuts
Allegra Spender says the government should give the money raised from tax changes back as an income tax cut down the road.
The independent MP last night said the changes were sensible – though had concerns over the impact of CGT changes on startups.
She tells Sky News the government’s $250 permanent tax offset is good, and should go further.
I think it’s not a bad mechanism, but I do think it needs to be broader. And with any of these tax changes there, there’s some transitional arrangements, which means that most of the tax raises is in five to 10 years. I think that’s where the government should commit now. It’s $77bn they should commit now to giving that back as lower tax cut, particularly reducing bracket creep.
Jim Chalmers suggested this morning that the tax offset was a mechanism that could be used in the future to return some bracket creep.
Cait Kelly
Anglicare says government’s tax reforms will help tackle inequality
Anglicare Australia has welcomed the federal government’s reforms to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing in the budget, describing them as some of the most significant steps to tackle inequality in decades.
Anglicare Australia Executive Director Kasy Chambers:
For years, governments have avoided touching unfair tax concessions that deepen inequality and drive up housing costs. Tonight’s Budget changes that. Reforming the Capital Gains Tax discount is a significant and overdue step toward a fairer tax system.
These reforms recognise that Australia cannot keep subsidising wealth accumulation while millions of people struggle to afford the basics. This principle matters: governments should not be using the tax system to fuel speculative investment at the expense of everyone else.
Chambers said the reforms would help slow the growth in housing inequality over time, but warned they were not enough on their own to solve the housing crisis.
The biggest gap in tonight’s Budget is the lack of new investment in public and community housing. Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved without building many more homes people on low incomes can actually afford. We still need to see a major expansion of public and community housing if we want to tackle this crisis.
Plans for Trump Tower on the Gold Coast scrapped
Joe Hinchliffe
The much-hyped vision of a Trump Tower on the Gold Coast has evaporated, less than three months after a deal was announced – and without a development application ever lodged.
The tower was promised to become Australia’s tallest and “best resort” when it was unveiled on social media in February, with the image of a twice bankrupt Australian property developer shaking hands with the US president’s son, Eric Trump, in Mar-a-Lago.
Billed at A$1.5bn, Altus Property Group’s David Young claimed the project would break ground by the end of the year and be realised by 2030.
At the time of the deal, Young was effusive about the Trump brand, declaring it synonymous with quality.
But in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday night, Young said the US war on Iran had made that brand “toxic to Australians”.
There is no acrimony between the Trump family and myself, why would there be after knowing them for 19 years when no one here then even knew who Donald Trump was.
It is pure business. My team and I look forward to completing the project and as an old expression goes, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian minister for Suburban Rail Loop defends Indigenous artwork on tunnel boring machines
The Victorian minister responsible for the Suburban Rail Loop, Nick Staikos, says critics of the commissioning of Indigenous artwork on the project’s tunnel boring machines were engaging in “petty politics”.
The Herald Sun reported on Wednesday that artist Hayden Roberts was commissioned to paint the cutter heads of two tunnel machines before their launch later this year, in a move the opposition’s transport spokesperson, Matthew Guy, labelled “stupid” during a cost-of-living crisis and “not value for money”.
But Staikos told reporters at parliament the artwork didn’t cost the project any additional money – though he would not provide a figure. He said:
I’m not going to engage in any petty politics on what is the largest transport project in our nation’s history – one that is going to change this great global city of Melbourne.
Asked if he’d been asked to approve it the artwork, he said: “I wasn’t asked to approve this piece of artwork, and it is a hypothetical to ask me if it was put in front of me if I’d approve it.”
Last night’s federal budget included another $3.8bn for the first stage of the project – known as SRL East – a 26km stretch of tunnels between Cheltenham and Box Hill. The project is billed as a 90km line between Cheltenham in the south-east and Werribee in the south-west, stopping at Melbourne airport.
‘As the facts change, you’re allowed to change your mind’: Shorten backs tax changes
Bill Shorten, who this morning said he felt vindicated over last night’s budget proposing significant changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax and discretionary trusts, says that times change, and the housing crisis doesn’t wait three years for an election, in response to questions on why Anthony Albanese didn’t take this policy to the polls.
He says he regrets that the policy took 10 years to do, but that 40% of people in Sydney and Melbourne are now renters, which means that how the population feels about the issue has changed.
He tells Sky News it will give younger people a “fighting chance”.
I think the population’s changing. And as the facts change, you’re allowed to change your mind … things have got tougher.
It was a good idea 10 years ago and it’s an even better idea now.
Shorten says he currently uses negative gearing – having moved states from Melbourne to Canberra to take on the vice-chancellor position at the University of Canberra. He criticises the Coalition’s argument that the changes will now “kneecap” young people and aspirational Australians.
I think the Libs are sort of clutching at straws a little bit here, as they’re sort of looking for their identity when I get their logic. And good people can disagree with what happened last night. I respect that, but I think grandfathering is the sensible way. If you retrospectively change tax laws, that would be a bad law.
High court considers its first case on climate grounds
Lisa Cox
Australia’s highest court will consider climate change for the first time today as it hears a mining company’s challenge to a NSW court of appeal decision to overturn a coalmine expansion in the state’s Hunter region.
The outcome could have ramifications for the consideration of new fossil fuel projects if the court decides that the burning of exported coal from an individual mine is legally connected to climate harm in local Australian communities.
The case has been brought by coal company Mach Energy, which is appealing a decision by the NSW court of appeal last year. That decision overturned a massive expansion of the company’s Mount Pleasant mine in Muswellbrook.
The court of appeal found in favour of the Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group which challenged the project, ruling the NSW Independent Planning Commission was required and failed to consider the impacts of all emissions associated with the project on the local environment, including from the exported emissions – known as scope 3 emissions – when the coal is sold and burnt overseas.
The proposed expansion would double the mine’s coal output to 21m tonnes per annum until 2048 and 98% of the projected emissions are scope 3 emissions.
In the initial proceedings brought by the community group in the land and environment court, that court ruled in favour of Mach Energy.
Wendy Wales from the Healthy Environment Group said the outcome of the case could “determine whether the law catches up with the reality that the rest of us are already living”:
The court case has never been about us. It’s about whether the true costs, in this case, climate costs have been factored into the planning approvals.
‘No wonder people don’t trust politicians’, Hume says
Jane Hume says it’s no surprise that people don’t trust pollies when the government can do a U-turn on their commitments and break election promises.
The opposition is going hard on this “broken promises” line against last night’s budget, accusing the government of a lack of honesty and integrity.
Speaking to Sky News, the deputy opposition leader accuses the government of “lies”.
No wonder people don’t trust politicians when they can look you in the eye and tell lies, whether it’s about $275 off your energy bill, whether it’s about fiscal responsibility, whether it’s about no changes to superannuation, no changes to taxation, this government lies.
Labor has built 660,000 homes in government, Albanese says
The government is past halfway on its target to build 1.2m homes, according to the PM – although it’s quickly running out of time with the deadline of 2029 fast approaching.
Anthony Albanese tells Nova Perth radio that Labor has built 660,000 homes since coming into office in 2022.
But it’s still far behind its target, agreed in late 2023, to build 1.2m homes by 2029.
Albanese is on the budget hard sell, and has been forced to justify breaking his promise to not touch negative gearing or capital gains tax, while also trying to increase supply. The PM has said (many many times this morning) that the government’s thinking has changed, and so have the times.
The number of homes that have been built since we’ve been elected is 660,000 now, the 5% deposit that we said at the last election was a big measure, more than 240,00 Australians have invested in that as a result …
So many stories you would have heard it, and you know people you’ve gone to options, they get outbid by investors. That takes away that and provides an opportunity for people, if it’s existing homes, whilst at the same time allowing investors to invest in that new supply as well. They’re helping not just themselves, but helping the nation as well, and helping boost that supply
Luca Ittimani
CBA profits slip as it sets aside $200m for recession risk
The Commonwealth Bank has seen its profits slip slightly to $2.7bn for the first three months of 2026, down 1% from the previous six months’ average, on an unaudited cash basis.
Australia’s biggest bank said it had attracted more deposits and issued more loans but faced growing operating expenses as cloud computing, software licensing and AI investment grew.
Like other banks, CBA has begun preparing for the economy to slow as the Iran war hits, today lifting its provisioning for potential borrower collapses by $200m.
The share of CBA personal loan customers who are 90 days behind on repayments picked up markedly in the March quarter, to 1.71%, its highest since 2019, which the bank said was in part due to deliberate business settings.
Home loans and credit card arrears have also picked up but only slightly, to 0.69% and 0.68%, returning to where they were a year ago.
CBA’s chief executive officer, Matt Comyn, said:
The Australian economy continues to demonstrate resilience, but supply chain disruptions, higher prices and interest rates are expected to weigh on household spending and business activity.
