Matt Canavan: Anthony Albanese lying about lying over stage three tax cuts

OPINION: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised before the last election he would support stage 3 tax cuts. He has broken his word, and he will pay a price, writes Matt Canavan.

Anthony Albanese must take us all for mugs. He thinks that he can lie to Australians and pay no price.

The PM promised Australians more than 30 times before the last election that he would support the stage 3 tax cuts.

Less than two years later he has brazenly broken his word. He is betting on the fact that the average Australian will be $15 per week better off next year (though not in the future) under his changes.

I don’t think Australians will sell out their integrity for a Big Mac super-size meal a week, especially when the cost of living has increased by more than $100 per week under Anthony Albanese’s watch.

Worse than the broken promise though is a new lie the PM is telling us all. The PM describes his changes as a “tax cut”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

According to his own Treasury Department’s analysis, the scrapping of the stage 3 tax cuts will rake in an extra $28 billion in tax for Canberra over the next decade.

The PM’s plan is not a tax cut it is a massive tax increase. The extra taxes flow because the PM is reintroducing the 37 per cent tax bracket which would have been scrapped by the stage 3 tax cuts.

Over time, as inflation pushes up income levels, but not living standards, more Australians will be pushed up into this 37 per cent tax bracket, and hence more of us (about four million more of us) will pay more tax.

The PM is trying to present himself as a Robin Hood type leader.

Yet, I can’t remember the bit where Robin Hood gave to the poor only to steal it back off them a few years later.

There is a lot of talk about what income level makes someone rich in Australia.

The truth is there is not a single income level whereby a dollar below that makes you poor and a dollar above makes you rich.

We can easily see what is unfair, however.

Under the PM’s model someone on $150,000, who works hard for a promotion, will lose more than a third of their extra income. That is not right. This system punishes effort and ambition just when we need it most.

It is also unfair that someone on $190,000 will face the same marginal tax rate (45 cents in the dollar) as someone on $1 million.

Australia’s top tax rate cuts in at the 10th lowest income level, out of the 38 countries in the developed world, another feature that punishes ambition.

If Australia set our top tax threshold at the same level as the United Kingdom, it would kick in at an income of $290,000, not $190,000, under the PM’s plan.

The PM’s plan to increase taxes comes at the wrong time for the Australian economy.

Many economists have been baffled by the strength of consumer spending even while interest rates have increased 11 times on the PM’s watch. But now people seem to have exhausted the savings they accumulated through Covid.

Retail sales fell by the greatest amount since the early days of Covid over Christmas.

The government has been out crowing this week that inflation is falling, though at 4 per cent a year it is still high. And, the government seems oblivious to the fact that a lower inflation rate does not reduce prices, it just means that prices are going up at a slower rate.

The shock you get at the checkout when you gape at how much a trolley of groceries cost is not going away anytime soon.

This is the wrong time to be increasing taxes on Australians.

If the PM wanted to put up taxes he should have said so before the election.

And, if he changed his mind after the election, he should have the guts to take it to a new election.

That is what John Howard did when he changed his view on the GST. Taking an unpopular tax to an election took some ticker, and Howard was rewarded for his courage.

I doubt the Australian people will treat this PM the same way when not only has he lied to them but then he is lying about lying too.

Matt Canavan is an LNP Senator for Queensland

Originally published as Matt Canavan: Anthony Albanese lying about lying over stage three tax cuts