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In the end it took only 24 hours for Anthony Albanese to signal a backdown on the mostpolitically damaging measure from last week’s budget – the “death tax” – and try to put Labor’s sales pitch back on track.

Of course, the Prime Minister is admitting a mistake and, once again, pulling the rug from under Jim Chalmers on a major Treasury tax initiative which humiliates and undermines the Treasurer.

On Thursday Albanese had 48 hours, maybe 72, to intervene into the post-budget nationwide sales campaign and make a significant concession to return to his message of helping younger people achieve the great Australian dream of home ownership.

There was a political and parliamentary deadline which threatened Albanese’s four-year Labor government with even greater political pain than it was suffering as tax changes to negative gearing, Capital Gains Tax and trusts fired a diverse and determined opposition.

Albanese had the choice of grasping the nettle, changing something and being able to claim he had “listened” to people or being “forced” into compromise. Albanese hates the idea he is “forced” to do anything for any reason.

But, really, there was no choice. Labor’s budget was off the rails, target audiences were angry and upset, there was confusion over what was happening and Albanese’s fourth anniversary as prime minister was mired with obtuse explanations.

It was all about selling a political message and credibility: Labor wanted to appeal to young people as it taxed older people and to bury its broken promises, lies or “changed position” on tax.

Albanese and Chalmers divided the media response – and outlets – into fair, friendly and downright hostile (peddling misinformation).

On the “fair and friendly” ABC Chalmers was asked about changes but declared he was “not anticipating any”.

Well, he may not have been “anticipating” any changes but if he had looked at the PM’s friendly appearances on FM radio and the ABC he should have expected some.
Albanese is a politician and has become far more pragmatic than ideological in his late years, especially since becoming prime minister.

Even on the softest of FM programs — where the FM PM can chat about footy, pop songs, crafted beer and his dog Toto — there were reluctant but unavoidable, apologetic queries about whether he had lied and was introducing a death tax.

Normally during these FM interviews there’s an audible appearance from Toto barking when the federal coppers arrive to take her boss away, but there seemed to be another sound during these interviews: it was the click of a light switch.

A light bulb had gone on in The Lodge.

As in the past, with the proposed tax on unrealised capital gains in superannuation and stage three tax cuts, Albanese overruled the Treasurer, and perhaps more pertinently the Treasury, to float in the “friendly media” the idea he “is open to changes on a proposal to tax trusts that the Coalition has described as a death tax”.
Not something Chalmers was “anticipating”.

While trying to hold firm on CGT changes, senior “government sources” were clearly signalling Labor was “open to a reversal or amendments on its contentious move to include discretionary testamentary trusts in its minimum 30 per cent tax on discretionary trusts”.

The politics were simple: the death tax scare had worked, with some justification. Labor needed to dump, or change, the death tax in order to do a deal in the Senate on the other changes.

How the politically lethal changes were allowed into the budget – changes opposed in the past by Paul Keating and Bill Shorten – remains a slow-burning question for Albanese in his fourth year as PM, and Chalmers after his fifth budget.

Albanese may hope his quick footwork has worked, but there’s more.

While the “senior government sources” and Chalmers insist there is no backtracking on CGT the cabinet secretary and prospective Treasurer – Andrew (The Boy) Charlton who is in for the long haul – has signalled ongoing trouble among the young “tech bros (and sisses)” over start-ups and CGT.

Albanese has moved to head off a major political problem with a signalled preparedness to at least change the death tax.

But after ten days of Labor’s budget train running off the tracks, the PM standing on the line waving a lamp and a white flag may not be enough to avert a wreck.

Albanese is doing what he can politically but, to turn around a Keating phrase, “bad policy is bad politics”.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has thrown a bomb into the Albanese government’s post-budget sales pitch by calling for “urgent action” to reduce the tax burden on workers including the 47 per cent rate paid by those earning more than $190,000.

The rare intervention by the Labor Premier highlights the growing pressure Jim Chalmers faces over a budget that increases taxes by $80bn on investors while only returning part of the proceeds through a flat $5-a-week rebate for workers.

As former prime minister Paul Keating entered the debate with a strong defence of the Treasurer’s contentious changes to capital gains tax, some federal Labor MPs privately raised concerns over the budget sales pitch, with one labelling it a “shit show”.

In an extraordinary back-and-forth with Mr Minns, Dr Chalmers claimed he had already increased the threshold from $180,000 during Labor’s first term of government. This is despite the government breaking a 2022 election promise to retain Scott Morrison’s legislated stage three tax cuts to raise the top tax threshold to $200,000, lowering it to $190,000.

After Mr Minns said he was concerned those on the top marginal tax rate were working half the week for the government, Dr Chalmers suggested the NSW Premier did not understand the income tax system.

“That’s not how marginal tax rates work,” Dr Chalmers said, responding to Mr Minns. “This is a government which is cutting taxes for every Australian worker – 13.3 million Australian workers will get another tax cut from this government in the budget.”

The main concerns raised by Labor MPs were unveiling the CGT changes without special treatment for start-ups, an unconvincing pitch on why CGT reform was needed for asset classes outside of residential property, flat-footedness in responding to a grassroots campaign against the government from business founders and a reluctance to deliver more relief for workers under the package.

The government is expected to offer more income tax relief ahead of the next election by bolstering the $250-a-year working Australians tax offset, but this does not amount to reforming the income tax brackets.

While Dr Chalmers is claiming only one in 10 people under 35 has shares, recent polling for the Australian Securities & Investments Commission found that 18 per cent of 18 to 28-year-olds owned shares and 23 per cent owned crypto.

Mr Keating, the architect of the CGT in the 1980s, backed the government’s push to revert to a model closer to the one he implemented. He said implementing the CGT allowed the Hawke government to lower the then 60 per cent top marginal tax rate, while arguing wages continued to be taxed too high. He also rejected the need to provide exemptions for start-ups, as had been flagged by the government.

Mr Keating took aim at “wealthy people” arguing against the government’s change to revert to an inflation-indexation CGT model with a 30 per cent minimum rate, arguing that the Howard government’s 50 per cent discount caused house prices to increase from “nine times income to 16 times income over the 25 years”.

“And they want to split off start-up capital and shares as if the individuals commentating have not made a feast of it already,” Mr Keating said. “The simple fact is that income is taxed too heavily while capital is taxed too lightly. That is the fact of it and has been the fact of it. And that distortion has made housing unaffordable for a whole generation.”

Mr Minns said the Albanese government’s failure to act on bracket creep was undermining the pay rises the NSW government was funding for nurses, paramedics and teachers. “Whether it’s in this budget or it’s in the future, we do need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to hand more money back to working Australians,” he said.

“The top marginal rate of 47 per cent … you’re working Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wednesday for yourself, and then (the rest of) Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the government.”

Mr Minns’ intervention follows revelations by The Australian that state governments could be in a fight with the commonwealth over stamp duty paid by trusts selling their assets as they restructure in the wake of Labor’s new tax changes.

With the Coalition vowing to index the income tax thresholds if it wins the next election, opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson said people felt bracket creep “in their pocket” even if they didn’t know what the term meant.

“We will absolutely continue to sell this policy all the way through to the next election, because we see it as very important to also educate the public along the way of what the government is doing,” Mr Wilson said.

While a grassroots campaign against the CGT reforms has seen start-up founders claim Anthony Albanese is a 47 per cent owner in their companies, the Prime Minister said this was being pushed by “right-wing parties and their allies”. “We’re replacing the 50 per cent capital gains discount with a discount that’s based on inflation, but that’s only realised when a business is sold, when an asset is realised,” Mr Albanese told ABC radio Perth. “And most small businesses pay little or no capital gains tax when they sell. We’re making no changes – no changes – to the small business CGT capital gains tax exemptions which are currently available.”

Optimal Economics chief economist Stephen Walters said moving to indexation shouldn’t be seen as such a radical idea. “Of the 38 OECD countries 20 do automatic indexation of the tax thresholds so suggesting we do this is not radical,” he said.

Westpac chief economist Luci Ellis has proposed that instead of the polar choices of no indexation or indexation to inflation, a third option was automatic indexation at a fixed rate of 2.5 per cent – the midpoint of the RBA’s inflation target. “This design would … deliver the same amount of indexation over long periods as a CPI-indexed system,” Dr Ellis said. “The average tax take would still increase when inflation is high. The real value of the bracket thresholds would rise when inflation is below 2.5 per cent, reducing the average tax take.”

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said indexing the tax thresholds was a “no-brainer”, also backing Dr Ellis’ model of limiting the yearly income threshold increase to 2.5 per cent.

“Not indexing them leaves people with tax hikes by stealth. It also puts more pressure, more transparency, on the government around its spending decisions,” Dr Oliver said.

Antipodean Macro economist Justin Fabo and Rich Insights Chris Richardson also backed indexing thresholds to 2.5 per cent a year, rather than the Coalition’s policy for the indexation to be as high as inflation.

Mr Fabo said lifting tax brackets by 2.5 per cent a year “assumes that the RBA does its job by hitting its target over the medium-term and that the inflation targeting framework persists”.

Mr Richardson said 2.5 per cent indexation would “ “help give us discipline”.

“Shortfalls in money collected from the failing parts of our tax system get made up over time by bracket creep – by higher taxes on workers. That means our existing bias against the young is on a ‘set and forget’ course to worsen over time,” Mr Richardson said.

Barrenjoey chief economist Jo Masters said indexation would need to be funded by a broader tax package, including raising the GST.

KPMG economist Brendan Rynne said moving to indexation was needed and would not be inflationary if the government did not spend so much.

Australian billionaires have blasted Labor for not means ­testing its working Australians tax offset, saying the handout which does not stipulate age or wealth, does little to help so called “intergenerational equity” and that they will all donate it to charity.

More than 13 million Australian workers will benefit from the WATO for income earned from July 1, 2027, which attempts to give back part of what is lost through bracket creep – where inflation pushes people into higher average tax rates.

But some of Australia’s wealthiest, who would receive the WATO, say that unless the handout is means tested or the tax thresholds fully indexed then it’s bad policy.

The billionaire founder of logistics company Linfox, Lindsay Fox, said he paid tax and would likely be eligible even at the age of 89 for the $250 WATO when the permanent annual tax offset was applied in the 2028 financial year. “I pay tax and if I am eligible that year I would rather give the $250 to a cause that helps the community rather than let the government keep it,” Mr Fox, a philanthropist, told The Australian. “I don’t think the government handles money as well as the community. I don’t think a lot of politicians understand that.”

Billionaire entrepreneur Shaun Bonett, the founder of Precision Group, said while he supported indexation of tax thresholds, a handout such as WATO, which was not means tested, was rushed policy. “The government has taken this approach for expediency rather than taking an approach which is balanced,” Mr Bonett said.

“A handout like that should without question be means ­tested. Australia has sophisticated enough systems where means testing such a payment shouldn’t present any complexity. I think full indexation of ­personal income tax thresholds would be a far more economically coherent reform than simply introducing a universal, non-means tested WATO-style measure.”

Mr Bonett said he would donate the $250 payment.

Under tax rules charitable donations can be claimed against income tax.

Queensland billionaire Clive Berghofer, 91, said he paid tax, gave $6m to $7m a year in charitable donations, and would give the $250 handout straight to charity. “Its ridiculous, an absolute bloody joke,” he said. “If I qualify for it I will give it straight to charity.”

Billionaire mining magnate and one-time politician Clive Palmer said the WATO clearly undermined the argument that Dr Chalmers’ budget centrally focused on helping younger people rather than older people. “They say this (budget) helps intergenerational equity, yea it helps my generation,” the 72-year-old said.

Ranked fifth in Australia with $20bn in wealth, Mr Palmer said he paid tax, would likely qualify and promised to give the $250 to charity. “Anyone in my position who gets the WATO should give it straight to Foodbank,” he said. “I’ll give it straight to Foodbank to feed hungry Australians.”

WATO will be available automatically after workers lodge their tax return.

The Treasurer has repeatedly said his budget is about addressing intergenerational inequity and labour income versus capital. “Intergenerational fairness is a really important way that we address some of the substantial and understandable issues in our budget, in our tax system and in our economy more broadly,” he has said.
Dr Chalmers also wants to “rebalance this issue we’ve got between very generous treatment of assets and less generous treatment of labour income of workers”.

The Parliamentary Budget Office has pointed out that younger people derive more of their income from labour than assets.

“The majority of personal income, particularly for younger workers, comes from wages and salaries, which are taxed relatively highly compared to capital income, including superannuation fund earnings,” the PBO has said.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will target migrant-heavy seats where new Australians do not want the country to turn into “the place they just left” after its Farrer win, as Liberals face the likelihood of making more deals with the populist party to beat Labor.

After her party won its first House of Representatives seat on Saturday night with a more than 30 per cent swing, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson singled out the ALP stronghold of western Sydney as her next target.

The populist party believes its success in migrant-heavy parts of Farrer is a sign that One Nation is appealing to migrants and that its main opposition is coming from “established white areas”.

The beleaguered federal opposition on Sunday was left reeling after losing former leader Sussan Ley’s seat on Saturday, which they had held for more than 70 years, ending up with a humiliating primary vote of 12 per cent.

Liberal MPs said they would continue fighting One Nation but understood that preference deals and contemplation of future coalitions were a contemporary reality.
The Victorian state election will be the first test for Liberal campaigners on how they work with One Nation and whether they consider forming government with Senator Hanson’s party to oust a Labor state government led by Jacinta Allen.

“Even the moderates are going to have to shift on this resistance to preference deals with One Nation. On future coalitions with One ­Nation, it is always better for political parties and leaders to be upfront with voters rather than doing deals after the fact behind closed doors,” a Liberal MP said.

As she flew off on the plane gifted to her by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, Senator Hanson in a private hangar in Albury said Labor was underestimating the support she had outside of Coalition electorates.

“I’ve been out to Fairfield and other areas in Sydney, and support has grown there over the years, and people do want change there,” Senator Hanson said. “A lot of ­migrants are very supportive of One Nation. There’s huge support there, because they say to me, Pauline, we came here, we are Australians, and we don’t want this place to become like the place we left.”

One Nation star recruit Barnaby Joyce said western Sydney was the “next step” moments after the party won the Farrer by-election on Saturday night.

Senator Hanson said she would put her trust in the New England MP to decide which seats to contest, while adding that her sights were set on ousting Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke from their Sydney electorates. “That would be a good start to get this country on track,” she said.

The Australian understands that internal polling for the Liberals at the start of the by-election campaign showed the party was sitting at 11 per cent. Senior party figures on Saturday night were concerned the final primary vote result could “end up in single digits” rather than the 13 per cent result expected once postal votes are counted.

Given the dire expectations, resources were held back for the by-election campaign run by outgoing Liberal federal director Andrew Hirst. Coalition figures said the most damning optics during the night were the competing post-election parties held by the Liberals and One Nation.

“The One Nation party was pumping. There were hardly any people at the Liberal Party. That actually pointed out a big problem for the Liberals; the party is losing members and campaign volunteers,” a Liberal source said.

The Australian understands that despite the Farrer by-election result, Angus Taylor retains the full support of key conservative and moderate Liberal MPs and isn’t being blamed by colleagues for losing the seat vacated by Ms Ley. The Opposition Leader has unanimous support to press boldly ahead with an ambitious first ­budget-in-reply speech on Thursday night.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson – a leading moderate and the only Liberal to win a seat back from a teal so far – would not rule out a future Liberal-One Nation coalition, as he conceded that the Farrer win gave Senator Hanson’s party real credibility.

“Of course we traditionally form a coalition with the National Party, but it’s up to the Australian people to decide who they want to vote for,” Mr Wilson told the ABC.
Opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg said he would not entertain a Liberal-One ­Nation government. “Well, no. And the point is that we can be a majority government if we do the policy work that is needed to show the Australian people that we have a platform worth voting for,” Senator Bragg said in Sydney.

Liberal MPs and sources said the Farrer result would increase support for Tony Abbott, who is expected to replace John Olsen as Liberal Party federal president when the federal conference is hosted on May 29. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer, backed by Liberal moderates, is not viewed as a figure who could galvanise the party’s members, volunteers and donors.

“We are not a campaign mach­ine that is fit for purpose. A swing of more than 31 per cent against the Liberals in Farrer proves that we can’t move forward thinking that business as usual will be good enough,” a senior Liberal source said. “While some would view Abbott as a risk, he will be able to re-engage with Liberal supporters and the base. Downer can’t do that. The party’s organisation needs to be urgently rebuilt from the ground up.”

Both Senator Hanson and her just-elected MP David Farley stressed that the party had always appealed broadly and was not confined to its traditionally regional, working class roots.

Mr Joyce went a step further, telling The Australian that One Nation naturally appealed to Labor voters as he detailed his plan for an orange takeover of western Sydney.
He said areas in the Farrer electorate like Griffith, Leeton and Yanco, where Labor recorded some of its biggest primary votes in the 2025 election, were the blueprint for this change.

Four out of five polling booths in Griffith recorded a swing of more than 30 per cent to Mr Farley in the by-election. The Griffith region is urban, working class and one of the most multicultural areas in western NSW, with more than 20 per cent of locals born overseas, according to census data.

Mr Joyce said One Nation’s appeal to migrant, Labor-voting communities had been underestimated. “We’ve got one of the most multi-ethnic parts of Australia, and the more multi-ethnic it was, the stronger the vote was for us, like Griffith and places like it … if One Nation was racist, that would have been our worst booths,” he said. “Where were our worst booths? To be quite frank, established white areas.

“You generally find people who cast assertions (on One Nation) are quite affluent, suburban caucasians. They’re the ones who are more focused on, apparently, One Nation being racist than … first-­generation Australians.”

For this reason, Mr Joyce suggested One Nation would cast a wide net across Sydney to secure seats in the NSW state election in March, followed by the federal election in 2028, but would not contest teal, “multi-generational wealth” seats such as Wentworth.

Ran out of time yesterday to get a response from my solicitor but close to signing a contract to buy an apartment and the vendors solicitor has refused my solicitor’s requested amendment to the below special conditions in the (NSW) contract.

**Notwithstanding any other provisions in this contract, the parties agreed that if a contribution which is not a regular periodic contribution, (special levies), levied before the contract date, the purchaser is responsible to pay all installments of the special levies**

My solicitor requested that **due after the date of settlement** be inserted at the end of the clause. They have refused saying it’s the purchasers responsibility to investigate any special levies.

This has raised our suspicion as if there’s no special levies to be concerned about it shouldn’t be a problem removing this non-standard clause.

What are people’s thoughts and how does one investigate any special levies? The vendors and their solicitors have been reasonably accommodating throughout the process but this is now a sticking point and holding up exchange of contract.

How closely are lenders looking at living expenses these days? My credit card statements for the last few months look horrendous which is the combination of a holiday during April and also buying lots of new household items in anticipation of buying a new home. I’ve probably spent triple what I usually would for those two reasons.

I have still, somehow, managed to save some money during this period though.

Do some lenders look harder than others?

Thanks!

Detectives who charged Annastacia Palaszczuk’s surgeon partner with the rape of a woman in her 30s at his luxury apartment will examine whether a stupefying drug was involved in the alleged attack.

Prominent Brisbane weight-loss surgeon Reza Adib, 65, handed himself into the Southport police station on Friday afternoon to be charged with three counts of rape, two counts of deprivation of liberty and one count of sexual assault.

Gold Coast Criminal Investigation Branch detectives allege Dr Adib assaulted the woman on March 30 at the Burleigh Heads beachfront apartment he shares with the three-term former Queensland premier.

The Australian understands detectives are investigating whether a stupefying drug was used in the alleged assault. Unidentified substances were seized from the unit on Thursday during a raid and officers declared a crime scene at the Norfolk building. Ms Palaszczuk has nothing to do with the allegations and is understood to have beenstunned by the police investigation.

The case has sent shockwaves through Queensland’s political circles just days after the former Labor leader and her partner returned to the public eye in a series of media interviews to promote her memoir, The Politics of Being Me, published on Tuesday.

Ms Palaszczuk and Dr Adib have been in a relationship since 2021, and the pair were a regular fixture at public events in her final term in office.
Lawyer Dan Rogers said Dr Adib was “shocked about the allegations made about him and is taking the matter very seriously”.

“Like all persons accused of a crime, he is presumed to be innocent and intends to vigorously defend the charges,” Robertson O’Gorman principal Mr Rogers said in a statement released on Friday evening. “Right now, Dr Adib is primarily concerned about the welfare of his family and his patients and will do whatever it takes to ensure that they are looked after in the coming weeks.”

The surgeon and father-of-two – who founded the Brisbane Obesity Clinic at the Wesley Hospital in Auchenflower in 2004 – was released on watchhouse bail and will appear in court on May 14.

A spokeswoman for the Wesley’s parent company, Uniting­Care, said: “Dr Adib is no longer an accredited surgeon at The Wesley Hospital and does not operate at the hospital.”

The clinic’s website said he had performed more than 20,000 operations and had extensive experience in laparoscopic surgery and obesity management, and had studied in Australia, England, Scotland, France and Austria.

Police raided their apartment just hours before Ms Palaszczuk flew back to the Gold Coast from Sydney, where she had been promoting her memoir with a series of television interviews.

She went straight to the Gold Coast’s Robina library for a free event on Thursday night launching the book.

A journalist in the audience asked whether she would still support Dr Adib in light of the police investigation, and Ms Palaszczuk said: “Well, I’m not aware of any of that, so I can’t comment.”

The memoir describes how happy she is in her relationship with Dr Adib – whom she met at a Stradbroke race day in June 2021 – after her two previous marriages and a devastating fertility struggle.

Ms Palaszczuk describes him in the book as a “beautiful, loving partner”. When she decided to retire from politics in late 2023, Ms Palaszczuk wrote that she confided in only two people: Dr Adib and her father, former Labor minister Henry Palaszczuk.

She said the surgeon quickly adapted to the media attention that came with accompanying her to events. They were photographed with director Baz Luhrmann at the premiere of his movie Elvis on the Gold Coast in June 2022, while Ms Palaszczuk was forced to apologise for Dr Adib’s attendance at an International Olympic Committee meeting in Sydney the month before.

“He supported me and regularly accompanied me to events, including getting up at 3am to join me at the Anzac Day dawn service, and numerous other community events,” Ms Palaszczuk wrote. “It was always such an honour to attend those events and it was even more enjoyable to have someone accompany me.” At a press conference on Tuesday, the former Labor leader was asked whether the couple would get married, and she responded: “We’re very happy. Why would we change it?”
Property records show Dr Adib bought the Gold Coast apartment for $4.1m through his private company in October 2020, before the unit block was built.

It’s a high-profile address, across the road from the famous Rick Shores beachfront restaurant, where Dr Adib and Ms Palaszczuk regularly have been spotted dining.