Tax cuts ‘fair’? What is fair about Albanese cheating his way to an election win?

Anthony Albanese has conned voters too often and his latest weaselly move overlooks two things that people can’t forgive.

Three strikes should mean out.

And this weaselly backflip on our tax cuts is Anthony Albanese’s third and most shameless broken promise yet.

This is becoming a deadly habit – a sign that any promise Albanese makes before an election is worthless. He’s conned voters too often.

The facts speak for themselves. For instance, Albanese has already broken the promise he made before the election not to make changes to superannuation.

Any promise Anthony Albanese makes before an election is worthless. Picture: Martin Ollman

“We have no intention of making any super changes,” he said, yet once he was voted Prime Minister he slapped an extra tax on super balances above $3 million.

Albanese is also already breaking his promise to cut your electricity bills.

How many times did he promise before the election that those bills would “fall from the current level by $275”, but after we voted him in they instead jumped more than 20 per cent.

Sure, he put a deadline of next year on that promise, but there’s no chance the bills will come down as Albanese recklessly claimed.

Not with his green schemes.

And now this. Once again, Albanese was happy to sell his snake oil – that of course he’d deliver the stage-three tax cuts that became law four years ago, and were due this year.

Voters shouldn’t worry their little heads about that.

“People are entitled to have the certainty of the tax cuts that have been legislated,” Albanese said before the election.

A journalist asked him: “There are no circumstances under which you would seek to roll back stage three?”

“No,’’ Albanese said.

To make absolutely sure voters swallowed that hook, Albanese issued a press release: “An Albanese Labor Government will deliver the same legislated tax relief to more than 9 million Australians as the Morrison Government.”

Except it won’t. Never wanted to.

Albanese is now about to announce that people on more than $190,000 a year will get just half their promised cut – more than $4000 less, or a fraction of the extra tax stolen over the years by bracket creep.

People on less will – on the other hand – get a little more.

The government will think this Robin Hood act will buy them forgiveness.

Voters who’ll get more won’t care that the “rich” are getting less, and there are more of them, too.

Labor’s maths might be right, but Albanese has overlooked two things.

One is a golden rule of politics: governments get more hate for what they take, than love for what they give.

The second is even more golden: in politics, trust is everything.

Voters can’t forgive politicians who seem out of their control. Politicians who do what they want, not what they promised.

Albanese already is leaking credibility. His first big promise on the night he was elected – the third sentence of his victory speech – was another promise he couldn’t deliver: “I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.”

Sure, Albanese did try to deliver the first bit of that promise – to divide Australians by race and create a Voice, a kind of Aboriginal-only advisory parliament in our constitution.

But Australians voted against this racist idea, and Albanese lost a huge amount of political credibility by wasting so much time during a cost-of-living crisis on an idea so stupid and remote from the worries of most voters.

Albanese tried to divide Australians by race by creating a Voice. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Now Albanese is finally saying he’s the man to cut your costs, a year and a half after he promised he already had a “plan” to do just that.

Look! These tax cuts! Not what he promised, sure.

But more money for some, even if there’s less for the people who actually pay most of the tax already.

But don’t forget, this also isn’t now the tax reform we needed to boost efficiency.

The 37 per cent tax bracket that silently raked in much of the bracket-creep billions will now be kept, not scrapped.

Albanese will argue he had to break his promise because things have changed.

In fact, the government is taking in more money than it expected, but it lacks the guts to cut its spending. So it slugs the “rich” on more than $190,000 instead.

Still, some voters will prefer Albanese’s changes. They’ll say they are “fair”.

Fair? The “rich” already had to wait years while poorer Australians got their stage one and two tax cuts and credits.

And what is fair about Albanese cheating his way to an election win? In making promises he doesn’t keep?

Yes, some Australians will gain from Albanese’s changes. But Albanese will lose.