Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers have defended an ambitious budget aimed at “levelling the playing field” for younger Australians despite breaking a key election promise.
Both Albanese and Chalmers appeared on Sunrise on Wednesday after announcing a federal budget that has drawn criticism for gutting negative gearing, which Labor promised it wouldn’t touch during last year’s election campaign.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Albanese defends housing policy backflip
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Negative gearing will be limited to new resident property builds, and the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount will be replaced by inflation-adjusted indexation.
Albanese said the government was not attempting to “spin” the policy backflip and would own up to the sudden change of heart.
“We have changed our position. I’m upfront about that and we’ll own that,” he said.
“We’ve been throwing everything at housing supply and addressing what is the biggest issue, I think, facing younger generations: the issue of housing.
“What has changed is that increasingly it became obvious that everything that we were doing was not enough.”
Chalmers echoed the PM’s stance, saying he’s “not pretending … the policies that we announced last night are consistent with the views that we’d held in the past”.
“We’ve come to this different view, I think, for the best possible reasons,” he said. “That is, too many people, particularly young people, are being locked out of the housing market.”
The treasurer also confirmed changes to negative gearing had only been “decided in the usual way late in the budget process”.
The changes to negative gearing affect already-built homes that are sold after July 1, 2027, meaning newly built properties and those that are already being negatively geared aren’t affected.
The government projects the change will help 75,000 Australians become homeowners in the next decade.
