Labor will target Coalition seats to try and secure passage of tax revamp

Anthony Albanese will target Coalition seats to make the case for his tax package and pressure Peter Dutton to support them through parliament.

Anthony Albanese in Townsville on Tuesday. Picture: Evan Morgan

Labor will use its tax revamp to target Coalition seats, with Treasury analysis showing 3.4 million people – or about 85 per cent of taxpayers in Liberal and Nationals electorates – would be better off under the government’s overhaul when compared with the already legislated tax cuts.

In a bid to pressure Peter Dutton into waving the tax changes through the parliament, Labor will release analysis on Wednesday identifying the top Coalition electorates to benefit from its rewrite of the stage three tax cut package.

But the Coalition is also waging its own campaign against the revamp and Anthony Albanese’s broken promise to honour the stage three tax cuts, having conducted a separate analysis suggesting Labor’s changes would leave a total of four million Australians worse off over the decade to 2033-34.

The Prime Minister argued on Tuesday that, if the Coalition voted against the package in the parliament, the Liberals would be “voting against their own communities”.

Speaking in the safe Coalition-held seat of Herbert in northern Queensland on Tuesday, Mr ­Albanese began spruiking the government’s electorate-by-electorate breakdown of who will ­benefit from Labor’s package, declaring 68,000 people across Townsville and its surrounds – or 87 per cent of the population – would be better off.

While the Opposition Leader’s own electorate of Dickson in outer Brisbane is not one of the top 10 Coalition seats to benefit, the government’s Treasury analysis still showed that 67,000 taxpayers (85 per cent of those in the seat) would receive a bigger tax cut under the revamp.

It also revealed there were five Coalition seats where 89 per cent of taxpayers would be better off – Forde and Longman in Queensland, Page and Cowper in NSW and Braddon in Tasmania.

Another five Coalition seats would see 88 per cent of taxpayers benefiting overall from the revamp including the Queensland seats of Wright and Hinkler, the Victorian seat of La Trobe and the NSW seats of Lindsay and Lyne.

Speaking in Tasmania, Jim Chalmers said people in Coalition electorates were “some of the biggest beneficiaries of Labor’s bigger tax cuts for Middle Australia”.

“By opposing our tax cuts, Peter Dutton and the Coalition are supporting higher taxes for middle income earners in their own electorates,” the federal Treasurer said.

Mr Dutton said on Tuesday the Coalition would make an “announcement in due course” about whether it would wave Labor’s revamped tax cuts through the parliament, but argued they were a “massive broken promise” which would leave 510,000 West Australians worse off.

“I think Australians have been staggered by the fact that their Prime Minister looked them in the eye and bluntly lied to them,” the Opposition Leader said.

A Coalition analysis of the Labor tax revamp obtained by The Australian shows that, by 2033-34, the changes would leave 510,000 West Australian taxpayers worse-off when compared to the currently legislated tax plan.

Over the same period, the ­Coalition’s numbers suggest 1.3 million taxpayers would be worse-off in NSW; one million in Victoria; 740,000 in Queensland; 220,000 in South Australia; 120,000 in the ACT; 60,000 in Tasmania; and 40,000 in the Northern Territory.

Mr Dutton said the broken promise on stage three now created uncertainty about whether Labor would make further tax changes, including those that could affect the family home or ­investment properties.

Parliamentary Budget Office analysis for the Greens, to be released on Wednesday, showed the bottom 20 per cent of taxpayers would receive $100m in tax cuts in the first year under Labor’s plan, or 0.4 per cent of the $23.3bn tax breaks, compared to $11.7bn or 50 per cent for the top 20 per cent.

Men would receive 58 per cent of the benefit and women 42 per cent, after Mr Albanese last week spruiked a “better deal” for 5.8 million working women.

“These Liberal-lite tax cuts still benefit the wealthy and leave everyday people behind,” Greens leader Adam Bandt said.