Six months ago, Jacqui Lambie says her vagina started to prolapse, and three months ago it took her “bladder with it”. She says this is directly connected to her military service. Yesterday in a fiery and emotional speech in the chamber, the Tasmanian independent senator detailed her story of battling with health access as a defence veteran, begging the government to scrap a controversial $5,000 cap on allied health services for veterans. She accused the government of a “callous disregard for veterans’ health and wellbeing”. On Tuesday night, Lambie had told the story of how it took female veteran Kate three years to get surgery for vaginal prolapse because “she couldn’t find a gynaecologist who was happy with the low prices [the Department of Veterans’ Affairs] pay”. On Wednesday, Lambie said she had travelled to the mainland and paid $7,000 to avoid the same fate as Kate. “That’s how much they care about our vaginas,” Lambie said. Vaginal prolapse is a condition suffered by one in 12 Australian women, but there is no accurate data, Lambie said. She quoted a survey of nearly 500 female veterans who had completed a minimum of six months’ active duty that found two-thirds reported pelvic health concerns, including 12% who reported pelvic organ collapse. I would like to ask the prime minister, minister [Richard] Marles and minister [Matt] Keogh what they would do if their penises were hanging by a thread, and what would they do if treatment for that injury directly connected to their military service was denied by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Would they say, ‘OK, no worries. I don’t really need my penis’? I don’t think so.

I’m begging you, prime minister. We are already suffering enough. Drop the bloody cap. Drop it, mate. It is so unfair. It is what we do not need. It is enough. Veterans have had enough. Leave us alone.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/08/18/rio-tinto-electricity-aluminium-tomago-smelter-2-5b-taxpayer-funds-albanese/

Economists back in One Nation’s tobacco tax slash

Economists have backed One Nation’s plan to slash the tobacco excise and freeze indexation for three years, saying it could help disrupt the booming black market cigarette trade and reclaim billions in lost tax revenue.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson pledged to cut the tobacco excise by 75 per cent – or an estimated $46 reduction for a pack of 30 cigarettes – and pause indexation of the excise for three years to combat the growing illegal tobacco trade, which has eaten into government revenue.

The government raised just $4.1 billion from the excise in the 2026 financial year, down 310 per cent from the record $16.3 billion haul in 2020.

“[Tobacco excise] policy is in such epic disaster territory that I don’t care where the ideas are coming from,” said independent economist Chris Richardson.

Earlier this year, Richardson called for a 40¢ per cigarette tax cut – which would be about a 26 per cent drop in the excise – but now says he would support an even larger reduction to stamp out the illicit operators becoming increasingly entrenched in the industry.

He has also called for greater enforcement against illegal importers.

“Organised crime is getting better every day at defending its patch,” said Richardson.

“It’s now got the economies of scale. It’s got the supply chains. It’s got the personnel, and it’s increasingly got a marvellous motive to fight any attempt to fight back.”

Richardson estimated the government could raise an extra $15 billion a year if illegal suppliers were reduced to the same share of the market they had in 2019-20.

“The longer it takes before we do something, the more dramatic what we do has to be, in order to have a chance,” he said.

One Nation’s pledge comes as the Senate prepares to hand down its report on the illegal tobacco market next week, and ahead of the November’s state election in Victoria, where the prevalence of organised crime in the state is already a hot-button issue.

Cutting the excise would reduce the cost of legal cigarettes to ostensibly make them more competitively priced against their illegal counterparts.

However, health experts warned against making legal cigarettes cheaper to buy.

“Illicit cigarettes can cost as little as US20¢ [28¢] a packet to manufacture. Price-matching criminals is not going to get us out of this crisis,” said Australian Council on Smoking and Health chief executive Laura Hunter.

“It will make it harder for people to quit and easier for young people to start.”

Advocates of the One Nation policy argue the excise cut could stem the bleeding in government tobacco excise receipts.

In May, the government forecast tobacco tax revenue to drop by $8 billion over five years from the 2026 financial year on the back of the booming illicit trade.

Rohan Pike, an illicit trade expert who created the Australian Border Force’s Tobacco Strike Team, said international modelling showed halving the excise would boost government revenue.

He said a 50 per cent cut was the bare minimum needed to deter organised crime while also discouraging smoking.

“At the moment, we’re arguing about a policy while Rome burns,” said Pike.

“We just need to do something – 20 per cent, 25 per cent, 30 per cent, it won’t be enough to change the needle. It needs to be over 50 per cent – 75 per cent is a bold number.”

The tobacco excise reached almost $1.53 per cigarette earlier this year, up from just 19¢ at the turn of the century. In inflation-adjusted terms, that is more than a 300 per cent increase.

The percentage of consumed tobacco coming from illicit sources ballooned from just 12 per cent in 2017 to 80 per cent by 2025, according to research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

University of New South Wales economics professor Richard Holden said that was because the excise had risen high enough by the end of the 2010s to make illicit importation sufficiently profitable.

Holden said that policymakers should go even further by temporarily doing away with the excise altogether before rebuilding the tax rate over time to stamp out the blackmarket once and for all.

“You want to make this like a knockout punch,” he said. “The much bigger game here is getting them out of the market and rebuilding the revenue to some degree over the medium term.”

CGT change will increase business investment costs: RBA analysis

The Reserve Bank says the Albanese government’s changes to capital gains tax will modestly increase the cost of investment for business, which economists warn will exacerbate Australia’s productivity challenge.

Internal RBA documents analysing Labor’s tax changes said they could deter investment in high-growth companies, including start-ups, and encourage investment in lower-growth, higher dividend-paying firms.

The RBA documents said there would be a “modest increase” in the overall cost of capital for non-financial businesses across the economy of 0.11 of a percentage point to 0.26 of a percentage point – the equivalent of about one interest rate rise.

The increase in the cost of capital would be larger for start-ups, unlisted firms and high-growth sectors, including their underlying investors such as venture capital and private equity, the RBA noted in documents released in response to a freedom of information request.

A high-income individual investor could face an effective tax rate of 32.9 per cent on capital gains, up from the previous 22.5 per cent.

But the capital cost increase would be smaller for established and larger listed companies on the ASX, lower-growth sectors and businesses with more investment from foreign investors and superannuation funds who were exempted from the CGT changes, the RBA noted.

The CGT changes will tax high returns more and low returns potentially less, relative to inflation.

The government axed the 50 per cent capital gains discount for most assets in its contentious May budget, but retained carve-outs for new-build homes, small businesses turning over less than $10 million and some innovative start-ups. Treasury is consulting on the start-up exemptions.

The changes sparked a backlash from business and investors, leading to the government pledging concessions for SMEs, start-ups and inheritances hit by a so-called “death tax”.

A new inflation-indexed system will begin on July 1, 2027, and tax real gains at a minimum rate of 30 per cent.

A low-income investor could see their effective tax rate rise to 19.3 per cent on capital gains, up from 12.5 per cent, due to the 30 per cent minimum tax rate, the RBA said.

The government also eliminated negative gearing for future housing investors – except new-build homes – and is introducing a 30 per cent minimum tax on discretionary trust distributions.

Treasury projects that the combined changes will increase the government’s tax take by $88 billion over a decade.

The RBA’s analysis of the CGT changes, conducted about two weeks after the May 12 budget, said increasing the effective tax rate on capital gains for some investors would raise the pre-tax returns they demanded to make their investment worthwhile.

“By making investment less attractive for some investors, these changes have the potential to increase the cost of capital for Australian businesses,” RBA analysts noted.

“The aggregate allocation of capital may tilt more towards sectors with more mature assets that generate steady income (e.g. utilities), and away from firms where capital gains comprise a large share of expected returns (e.g. start-ups).”

Because superannuation funds would retain the low 10 per cent tax rate on capital gains, the RBA said retail investors may shift away from direct equity investments towards investing via their super funds.

University of NSW economics professor Richard Holden said that a higher cost of capital made some marginal investment opportunities not financially worthwhile to pursue.

“Conceptually, raising the cost of capital means less investment,” Holden said.

“In the midst of a productivity crisis where we’ve had more than a decade of extremely lacklustre business investment, this makes business investment more expensive.”

Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock said last week that historically weak productivity growth was constraining economic growth and contributing to inflation pressures.

Business investment in tools, machinery, equipment, and software has historically been a key driver of increased worker productivity.

Australia is experiencing a boom in investment in data centres, but investment by other businesses remains weak.

Treasury said in a May briefing note to the government that the average tax rate on capital gains will only increase from 19.3 per cent to 21.4 per cent over the next decade and is unlikely to affect overall investment in the economy.

Individuals hold less than 15 per cent of shares listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, and they will retain a strong incentive to invest in assets that are expected to deliver strong growth, Treasury said.

“Changes to the CGT arrangements for individuals is likely to have very little impact on the level of investment in Australian equities.

“Australian equities are mainly held by superannuation funds and foreign investors, and their tax settings are unchanged.”

Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson said in May that parts of the tax package would boost investment and productivity, including allowing small businesses to carry back losses against tax previously paid, expanding venture capital concessions and making the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanently higher and better targeting the research and development tax offset.