Almost 30 Labor seats could be lost if Coalition campaigned against the Labor’s super tax plan, a new report shows

New data outlines the hit Labor could take, testing Anthony Albanese’s confidence in introducing the legislation that on Sunday he refused to indicate the timing on.

Up to 29 Labor seats would be in jeopardy at the next election due to opposition to the proposed taxing of unrealised gains, according to new analysis.

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Voters with fresh concerns about Labor’s plan for an unrealised capital gains tax would place up to 29 seats in jeopardy at the next election, new data shows, testing Anthony Albanese’s confidence in introducing the legislation that on Sunday he refused to indicate the timing on.

Labor wants to impose an unrealised capital gains tax starting with superannuation accounts of $3m without indexation that Jim Chalmers expects will raise $43bn in new revenue over the next decade, crucial for budget repair.

While there is a growing push to reform overly generous concessions on superannuation contributions, earnings and capital gains, close to 20,000 people have signed a petition since the election pushing back on the introduction of taxing unrealised capital gains.

The chairman of Wilson Asset Management, Geoff Wilson, who campaigned against Labor’s 2019 franking credits policy, has issued a new report showing that for every one percentage point increase in opposition to the super tax plan over and above an electorate’s election support for Labor, the incumbent’s margin declines by 0.78 percentage points.

In some cases, the increase in opposition over and above the support for Labor since the election has grown by more than 10 percentage points, putting 29 Labor seats at risk and suggesting the Coalition may not have gone hard enough during the election campaign on explaining the tax.

Geoff Wilson. Picture: Britta Campion

Some of the most vulnerable electorates would include Menzies and Chisholm in Melbourne, Moore and Bullwinkel in the outskirts of Perth, and ex-Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s old seat of Dickson, all which fell to the government in the Prime Minister’s May election landslide.

“As more people understand the consequences of unrealised component of the tax, we have seen a growing opposition to the Labor policy,” Mr Wilson said.

“If Labor want to extend their period in government, the quicker they take this unrealised component off the table the better for them. This will eat away at them just as franking credits did in 2019,” Mr Wilson said.

“This is a sleeper issue with election-shaping potential.”

On Sunday, Mr Albanese was asked when he would introduce the super tax legislation, to which he responded; “It will come, in time.” He has said he will not be negotiating with the Greens, who hold the balance of power in the Senate and are asking for elements of the super tax plan to be changed, such as indexation.

Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman said on Sunday that while Labor was focused on other legislative priorities, the super tax plan would go ahead.

“I’m confident it’ll pass. But I think we’ve seen in this building time and time again that when it comes to getting things through parliament, you’ve got to also let the parliamentary processes do their piece,” Mr Gorman said.

The Coalition barely mentioned unrealised capital gains tax during the May election, but on the first day of question time in the new parliament last week it directed six out of eight questions towards Labor’s super tax.

Mr Albanese hit back, saying: “I’ll give a big tip to (opposition Treasury spokesman Ted O’Brien), the time to run a scare campaign is just before an election not after one.”

Labor strategist RedBridge’s Kos Samaras disputed the Wilson report, saying even if people had a gripe around a certain tax issue it would not necessarily affect the way they voted overall.

“People may have a concern about a certain policy but it’s not necessarily a concern that will change their vote,” he said.

He also noted his own research that showed few people thought they would ever have a super account worth $3m and therefore did not care too much about how such high-value accounts were treated.

The Financial Services Council’s conservative estimates show 500,000 people would be affected by the tax by the time they retire.

Mr Samaras said the issue might have helped Liberal politicians such as opposition workplace relations spokesman Tim Wilson win back his old Melbourne seat of Goldstein from the teals, but it would not help in the seats that mattered most.

Mr Wilson said campaigning against unrealised capital gains tax would still reap rewards at the next election in three years.

“In 2019, Labor’s arrogance blinded them to who they thought their retiree tax was targeting, and how voters saw it on the ground; and they seem mysteriously keen not to learn this lesson over their family savings tax on unrealised capital gains,” the Liberal frontbencher said.

“They’ve created a gateway on multiple fronts; it’s only up to us to exploit them.”

Miranda Stewart, who was a visiting advisor in the Australian Treasury last year, told independent MP Allegra Spender’s roundtable on Friday superannuants should “just relax and pay the tax”. “In my view, $3m unindexed is actually the right thing to do,” she said, suggesting also that “wacking withholding tax on trust distributions” and lowering the discount of capital gains should also be ­considered.

Treasury predicts that the cost of all the concessions given to superannuants such as those on earnings, contributions and capital gains will soon overtake the value of the age pension by around 2040.

Tax experts have been pushing for a less favourable tax treatment of capital over labour income. The e61 Institute chairman, Greg Kaplan, also said the inequitable taxation of different high-income earners was due to generous super tax concessions and the big CGT discount.

The NSW government’s borrowing authority, TCorp, issued a report on Sunday that showed Australia relied more on personal income tax revenue than most other OECD countries.

The Coalition may be tempted to rejig the generous tax concessions on earnings, contri­butions and capital gains on the proviso that unrealised gains are not introduced, but parts of the party will resist tweaking any parts of super.