National Press Club: Malcolm Turnbull’s coronavirus advice to Scott Morrison

Malcolm Turnbull has urged the PM to consider clamping down on property and super tax concessions amid the virus pandemic.

Malcolm Turnbull has urged Scott Morrison to consider clamping down on property and superannuation tax concessions as part of wide-ranging economic reform to aid the recovery of the coronavirus pandemic.

The former prime minister said “extraordinary” tax reform measures should be pursued when he was asked whether the government should revisit tackling concessions in negative gearing, superannuation and dividend imputation.

“This is a crisis, right. It was Rahm Emanuel the (former) mayor of Chicago, former Obama chief of staff, who said, ‘You should never waste a crisis’. Well, this is a crisis of unprecedented scale,” Mr Turnbull said in a broadcast organised by the National Press Club to coincide the release of his memoir A Bigger Picture.

“Governments everywhere are going to have to look at it and take the opportunity to say to their public, their voters, ‘We have to do some extraordinary things here in order to meet the economic consequences of this pandemic’.

“And that will involve, no doubt, tax reforms.

“You’ve got to make sure that your tax reforms do not stifle economic activity and investment, because otherwise … it becomes counter-productive.”

In a shot at the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull warned against floating any potential proposals in the media.

In his book, Mr Turnbull accused the treasurer in the Turnbull government, Mr Morrison, of leaking potential tax proposals to the media, which ultimately killed them.

“What I’d advise (the government) to do is to look at options very carefully and do so without frontrunning them in the media,” Mr Turnbull said.

“If you start thought bubbling these things in the media, they’ll get picked off one by one.”

Mr Turnbull endorsed Mr Morrison’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, although he declared the cruise ship industry should have been shut down in early February.

“Scott Morrison as prime minister, and working with the premiers and chief ministers, has done very well in managing the COVID-19 pandemic,” Mr Turnbull said.

“People were concerned about mixed messaging earlier, but this is an unprecedented event. It is uncharted waters.

“The only sort of glaring mistake that was made, and it was not made exclusively by Australian governments it was made around the world, was I think there should have been a shut down of the cruise ship industry from early February when the Diamond Princess contagion was detected off Tokyo.

“I’m not aware of any country in the world that moved on that. So that’s not a specific criticism of the Australian governments.

“Those cruise ships were in a league of their own because they combined an ideal environment for contagion, plus a very vulnerable demographic in terms of the typical age of their passengers.”

Conversely, Mr Turnbull said US President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic was “inconsistent ”.

“He is a very unorthodox president. And you have to expect the unexpected from him,” he said.

He declared Australia’s relationship with China could be impacted if there was evidence Beijing was not transparent about the spread in the virus’s country of origin.

“There are obviously very big concerns about that. It is hardly in the nature of an authoritarian regime to be open and transparent,” Mr Turnbull said.

“All of us human beings on this planet, we have a vested interest in this area of viruses in a globalised world. We have a vested interest in all countries being rigorously transparent about information.

“You may want to keep your missiles secret, but as far as viruses are concerned and pandemics … the more open and more accountable and transparent you are, the better for all of our sakes.”