Reader question: Albanese, Dutton grilled over income tax brackets

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese have been grilled by a News Corp reader over their income tax bracket plans. WATCH THE RESPONSE

Will you consider indexing income tax brackets?

News Corp reader Geoff Perry at Carisbrook in Victoria has taken the chance to quiz the major party leaders during the 2025 federal election campaign.

As part of our daily reader survey inviting your questions, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton were taken to task over tax brackets.

See what they had to say and grill the leaders below >>>

Peter Dutton

Mr Dutton has left the door open to introducing indexing on income tax brackets, killing off bracket creep, but tempered it by saying the move would cost billions.

“What I’d say to Geoff and to others is that the desire is to cut taxes wherever we can, we’ve done that in relation to fuel tax,” he said.

“What I would say to Geoff, though, is that we need to do it responsibly, because it comes with a huge price tag, and we have a mess to clean up Labor has created.”

Pressed on whether indexing was a fiscally responsible move, he doubled down on costs.

“There are different ways in which you can you can provide support, but you need to be able to pay for it and there are some measures that are on the table, including indexing, which cost many billions of dollars a year,” Mr Dutton said.

The Coalition isn’t taking any tax cut proposals to the election, despite Mr Dutton previously supporting removing the 37 per cent income tax bracket. He didn’t budge on potentially removing that bracket when quizzed.

“I just want us to deal with the reality of today, the government in its budget package predicts $1.2 trillion in debt,” he said.

“So the difficulty is that every dollar the government’s spending at the moment is being added to the debt bill, and then there’s interest to be paid on that bill, which means that you’ve got less money to spend on roads and to provide support to families.”

Anthony Albanese

During a visit to an east Melbourne day care centre, the Prime Minister indicated that Labor is not considering indexing income tax brackets saying the government’s tax policies had already been announced.

The tax policy the Albanese government will be taking to the polls will be the cuts announced in last week’s budget, which will see families get a return of $5 per week.

“We have our changes. There’s two tax policies at this election on income tax – for Geoff, if he wants income tax to be lower, he should vote Labor,” he said.

“If he wants income tax to be higher, he has to vote coalition. Peter Dutton has been very clear, there are no income tax changes at this election apart from him saying that he wants them to be higher and Labor standing for lower taxes.”

Originally published as Reader question: Albanese, Dutton grilled over income tax brackets