It’s not time: Albanese hastens slowly on ditching policies

Anthony Albanese is refusing to scrap a raft of Labor’s unpopular policies.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese in Brisbane. Picture: AAP

Anthony Albanese is refusing to scrap a raft of Labor’s unpopular policies, nearly two months after the party’s catastrophic election defeat.

Despite them being singled out as at least partly to blame for Bill Shorten’s crushing defeat at the May national poll, the new Opposition Leader is still refusing to ditch a range of controversial policies, including the plan to axe franking credits and negative gearing.

Mr Albanese will now not make any major decisions on the future of Labor’s policies until he receives the review of the ALP’s election campaign, due to be handed down in October. Opposition MPs have thrown their support behind the “go slow” approach on deciding the future of contentious tax policies — including Mr Shorten’s negative gearing and franking credits crackdowns — despite growing calls to jettison unpopular measures widely rejected by voters.

Ed Husic, Anne Aly, Warren Snowdon and Brian Mitchell were among the Labor MPs who backed the ongoing, lengthy review of the party’s policies yesterday, despite the short-term political heat of being saddled with higher tax policies that failed at the election.

Mr Husic said the review of Labor’s policies should not be rushed, despite Scott Morrison accusing Labor of having the same policies it took to the election.

“We are at the start of a notionally three-year term,” the Chifley MP said.

“We should take our time to listen to people, think through what people have said in relation to our policies and then determine what policies we take.

“There is no rush needed and I, frankly, don’t think we should be taking a tally on what policies will be kept and what ones won’t be kept. Just deal with it properly. We’ve got time.”

Dr Aly said she was not worried about a timeline for a final decision on the negative gearing and franking credits policies.

“We are not in government; we are in opposition,” said the MP for Cowan. “How about the government come up with a timeframe on policies that we can then talk about in parliament?”

She said the government would need to find savings in the divid­end imputation system because it was becoming unaffordable.

Mr Snowdon said he did not think winning the week-by-week policy debate this early in the polit­ical cycle would have an impact on the next election. “We have just got to consolid­ate and build around the new leadership,” the Northern Territory MP said.

Former Labor superannuation minister Nick Sherry, now a consultant­ on retirement income systems, told The Australian yesterday the $55.7 billion plan to scrap cash refunds for excess franking credits should be junked because it was “politically too hard”.

“It was one of those options that wasn’t broadly accepted by the electorate,” he said. “It’s off the agenda. Having said that, the Liberal government know that they are going to have to keep making changes to constrain the costs of the retirement income system. They know it. I know from my conversations with them. They’ll have to do it some other way.

“And they did it three years ago with the tightening of the (Age Pension) means test and other constraints they put on super.”

Labor has opened the door to campaigning at the next poll on a platform to repeal $137bn worth of income tax cuts, with the negative gearing and franking credit crackdowns slated to raise about $90bn over a decade.

One Labor MP said it was likely most of the tax agenda taken to the election would be scrapped, but suggested the process needed to be handled “delicately” because Mr Shorten’s policies were largely backed by party members and caucus­.

A spokeswoman for Mr Albanese said a decision about major policies would not pre-empt the campaign review, led by former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill and former cabinet minister Craig Emerson.

“The leader has said that we are hastening slowly," she said.

“We are going to get it right. This will be a very considered ­review of policy. We do not want to pre-empt the party review.”

New policies are to be decided in consultation with the campaign review team, caucus and the party’s national policy committee.

Most MPs contacted by The Australian wanted the franking credits policy to be dropped before the election, but there are some who believe Labor should ­instead cap the amount of cash refunds a retiree can receive.

One Labor Right MP said the policy would be “sensible” with a cap in place.

But another MP said: “There is no way we can tinker around (with negative gearing and franking credits). We lost the election precisely­ because people felt that what we were offering was not in their interests.”

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers said Labor would not take the same agenda to the next election, likely be held in 2022. “We will take our time to review­ all of our policies,” Dr Chalmers said.

“We’ll make the agenda and the policy proposals known to the Australian people well before the next election. They can stack that up against whatever the government is proposing at the time.”

Mr Mitchell said it would be a mistake to come to “hasty, rushed conclusions”. “It was a big agenda that we went to with the election,” the MP for Lyons said.

“So there is a lot to get through and we need to see what we are going to keep, what needs to go, what needs to change. The government will play politics. We know that. We won’t worry about what the government will or won’t do. We will run our own race.”