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Inside AusPol

Inside AusPol

著者： The Financial Register | Kangaroofern Media Lab Pty Ltd
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This podcast features enlightening discussions with professionals to explain pressing issues and provide partinent facts about unbiased journalism and counter misinformation and in-dept conversation with experts.

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  • The government says its new trust tax will raise $4.5bn. Industry says complying with it will cost up to $13.3bn

    The government says its new trust tax will raise $4.5bn. Industry says complying with it will cost up to $13.3bn
    2026/10/18
    Both figures are on the table this week as the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 3) Bill 2026 enters Parliament, and neither side has produced a number in between.Treasurer Jim Chalmers introduced the bill on Wednesday, calling it “the most ambitious tax reform package in a generation.” Underneath that framing sits a specific, checkable set of numbers, and this week two very different ones arrived on the same table.The government’s figure is $4.5 billion: what Treasury expects the measure to raise in its first year. Industry’s figure, reported this week via Wilson Asset Management and CPA Australia, is $8 billion to $13.3 billion — what the roughly 210,000 trusts expected to be affected could spend on advice and restructuring to comply.That second figure comes from firms whose business is trust and SMSF advice, so it’s their estimate, not one that has been independently modelled. It is, however, the only cost figure anyone has put forward, and nobody in government has offered a competing number to weigh against it.What the bill actually doesFrom 1 July 2028, discretionary trusts pay a 30 per cent minimum tax on their taxable income. Chalmers says that aligns the rate with what a worker earning $45,000 to $135,000 already pays. The government estimates about 350,000 active small businesses used a discretionary trust in 2022-23, roughly one in six, and that Treasury expects around 140,000 of those won’t pay a cent more under the change, leaving roughly 210,000 that will.Exemptions cover family farms, registered charities, deceased estates, special disability trusts and super funds; none of that is contested. The dispute is over a narrower carve-out: distributions to other tax-exempt entities, including sporting clubs and schools, are exempt up to a cap the government describes as “reasonable.” That cap has not been set. A draft circulated last month flagged that one would apply; as of this week, it still hasn’t.The bill also isn’t travelling alone. The same legislation carries separate changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for new housing, which Chalmers says target distortions that have “locked too many young Australians out of housing for too long.” If the trust provisions sink the bill in the Senate, the housing measures go down with them.Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.Two Greens, two different complaintsGreens economics spokesman Nick McKim wants the charity and school exemption removed outright. “The treasurer needs to knock this out of the legislation,” he said, adding “there is far too much leniency.” His specific concern: a family could keep paying private school fees out of a trust and still qualify for the concession, even though the bill leaves schools’ own tax treatment untouched.Chalmers’ response treats the exemption as minor. “There are good reasons” for it, he says, calling it “a very specific sliver of what’s being proposed here,” and separately estimating fewer than 10 per cent of small businesses will be touched by the measure overall. Neither side disputes what the bill says; they disagree about whether the carve-out is a loophole or a reasonable line.A second Greens senator, David Shoebridge, took a different line earlier in the week, arguing the government had already “managed to water down its own position” and warning that what he called Labor’s “political cowardice” risked making the reform “yet another missed opportunity.” It’s a broader complaint than McKim’s, less about this specific carve-out and more about whether the government has the appetite for the fight at all.As of this week, the Greens have said they will move for a Senate inquiry into the carve-outs. No inquiry had been established as this issue went to draft, only sought.The other side of the fightThe Coalition opposes the bill outright and won’t be won over by amendments, so the government needs the Greens’ votes regardless of how that inquiry question lands. Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash told Seven’s Sunrise the changes would “tax small businesses twice,” describing them as “slugging the backbone of the Australian community, our small and family businesses, with yet another tax.” Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson sought to refer the bill to the Senate economics committee; the request was rejected.Wilson separately disputes Chalmers’ claim that trusts restructuring to avoid the tax won’t trigger state stamp duty, saying businesses doing so will still face it — a direct factual disagreement neither side has resolved on the public record. Shadow Assistant Treasurer Kevin Hogan’s assessment was blunter still: he said tax accountants would be the “great winner” of the reform.Enforcement is the quieter half of the story. UNSW tax academic Dale Boccabella points out that a rule is ...
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    10 分
  • Deaths of older Australians on the home care waitlist jumped by a third. It took two Senate orders to get the number

    Deaths of older Australians on the home care waitlist jumped by a third. It took two Senate orders to get the number
    2026/10/12
    The data arrived months late and almost unannounced, after the Senate ordered it twice and the government missed both deadlines.Six thousand, four hundred and thirty-six people died in 2025-26 while approved for home care but were still waiting for the funding to arrive.The figure only became public after the government missed two separate Senate deadlines to produce it.The Department of Health published the number on 8 October, without a press conference or a dedicated government announcement. Independent Senator David Pocock said the data had been released “quietly, and in a way that’s difficult to find.”The sequence behind the release matters as much as the figure itself. On 20 August, the Senate ordered the government to produce 2025-26 death data for people on the waiting list for home care.The government did not comply, saying the figures still needed validating.A second order followed on 9 September, this time seeking the documents, briefings and emails behind the number. Minister Jenny McAllister, standing in for Aged Care Minister Sam Rae, told the Senate the required searches were “expansive” and could not be completed by the 14 September deadline.The figure surfaced almost a month after that deadline passed.Read against the past two years, the trend is consistent. In 2023-24, 3,383 people died waiting for their assessed level of home care, a figure disclosed at Budget Estimates.Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.In 2024-25, that rose to 4,812, a 42 per cent increase, as disclosed at Additional Estimates in February. The government did not volunteer either figure; both were extracted under parliamentary questioning.This year’s 6,436 continues the same climb, roughly a third higher again.The Department of Health has noted that the two most recent years are not directly comparable because the system changed partway through, from the former National Priority System to the new Support at Home programme.That caveat is real, but three consecutive years of rising deaths, spanning a system change meant to fix exactly this problem, is not something that caveat resolves.Shadow Aged Care Minister Anne Ruston said the figures showed the government had tried to conceal the scale of the problem.“Everybody on the wait list is a person; they’re not a statistic or a number,” she said. “The extent to which the government tried to hide this information from the public is appalling.”Minister Rae rejected the framing. He said the death rate among people on the waitlist was “significantly lower than the rate of death for older Australians in the broader population.”He pointed to 83,000 additional home care places delivered in 2025-26, with a further 32,000 rolling out this year. “Every single death of someone who is waiting for care is a tragedy,” he said.Council on the Ageing Australia chief executive Patricia Sparrow called the figures “an absolute tragedy” and said people should receive their package within about 30 days of assessment, not months or years later.A separate backlog figure sits underneath the death toll. The government’s own count put the home care waitlist at just over 106,000 people as of 30 June.A Four Corners investigation in August, using a different counting method, put the number waiting for full funding at almost 154,000, a gap of roughly 48,000 people who do not appear in the official figure.The department has not disputed that the counting method changed, and has not explained on the record why the new method counts fewer people as waiting than the old one did.The pattern of data emerging only once challenged is not new to this portfolio. In May, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the state of aged care as “not good enough,” after a report found patients were waiting an average of a year for services.Critics said that report was released quietly during the May budget lock-up, before the current figures emerged the same way.What the data does not establish is intent. There is no evidence that any individual decided to delay the release deliberately, and the government’s own account, that validating national mortality data took time, is a plausible explanation on its own.What is established is the incentive: an agency holding unfavourable figures in the lead-up to a mid-year budget update already framed around finding savings has every reason to let that number sit, regardless of whether anyone intended it that way.One case illustrates the stakes behind the aggregate figures. A Hobart man with Parkinson’s disease and cancer waited more than 12 months for his home care package. It was approved three days before he died.The release lands in a week when the government’s own financial position is already under scrutiny. Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC the mid-year budget update will be shaped by “the need to find more ...
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    12 分
  • Why Your Mortgage Is Rising Despite a Better Budget Result

    Why Your Mortgage Is Rising Despite a Better Budget Result
    2026/10/03
    Australia’s latest economic headlines do not fit neatly into one political story.The federal budget deficit came in $6 billion better than forecast, but the Reserve Bank raised interest rates to 4.6 per cent. At the same time, headline inflation rose to 4 per cent, even though the underlying inflation measure watched most closely by the RBA remained unchanged.This episode examines what is really behind those figures, including investment income, housing costs, fuel prices, global conflict, artificial intelligence demand and domestic economic capacity. It also looks at government support for Tasmania’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter, the rollout of a new support system for children with lower-level disability needs, and political claims surrounding donations to One Nation.Five important points* The federal budget deficit was $22.3 billion, compared with a May forecast of $28.3 billion.* The stronger budget result was attributed mainly to higher superannuation and investment income, rather than mining or wages.* The Reserve Bank raised the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.6 per cent, its highest level since November 2011.* Headline inflation rose from 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent, while trimmed-mean inflation remained at 3.6 per cent.* Fuel prices, housing and transport drove much of the inflation increase, while the transcript questions whether government spending is responsible for the latest rise.Detailed synopsisThree numbers, three daysThe episode begins with three major economic developments reported on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.The first was the federal budget outcome. The final deficit for the previous financial year was $22.3 billion, which was $6 billion lower than the May forecast of $28.3 billion. Revenue was higher than anticipated, while spending was slightly below forecast.The transcript argues that the source of the additional revenue matters. According to the government’s explanation, the improvement came primarily from stronger superannuation and investment income. It did not come mainly from mining profits or wage growth.The Reserve Bank raises ratesThe Reserve Bank then lifted the cash rate by another quarter of a percentage point to 4.6 per cent. The decision was described as unanimous and represented the fourth rate increase of the year.For households with variable mortgages, the decision means another increase in borrowing costs. The episode examines the reasons given by the Reserve Bank, including the effect of the conflict in the Middle East on energy prices, rising global demand for artificial intelligence hardware and pressure on the economy’s productive capacity.The discussion also highlights a tension in public policy. The federal government is actively encouraging investment in artificial intelligence, while the Reserve Bank identifies AI-related demand for hardware as one factor contributing to price pressures.Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.Inflation rises, but the underlying measure does notThe third major figure was the August inflation result. Headline inflation increased from 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent over the year.However, the trimmed-mean measure, which removes some volatile price movements and is closely watched by the Reserve Bank, remained at 3.6 per cent. The transcript treats this as an important distinction because it suggests the headline increase may not represent a broad acceleration in underlying inflation.Housing costs rose by 5.7 per cent over the year, while transport costs increased by 5.6 per cent. Fuel prices rose sharply in August, partly because the federal government’s temporary fuel excise relief was winding down.Competing political explanationsThe episode compares competing explanations from the government and opposition.Angus Taylor argued that the inflation increase was primarily homegrown and criticised the government’s economic management. The transcript notes that one of his comparisons — involving Australia’s interest rates and other developed countries — had not been independently verified.Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino pointed to the government’s budget position and savings measures. Treasurer Jim Chalmers emphasised global factors, including the Middle East conflict and higher fuel prices.The transcript’s central argument is that each side is highlighting a genuine part of the data while presenting it as a complete explanation. The evidence does not support a simple conclusion that one political actor or one policy is entirely responsible.Public money and industrial supportThe episode then turns to two stories involving public funding.The federal and Tasmanian governments committed a combined $200 million over five years to support Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter. The arrangement is expected to protect approximately 550 jobs, but important details — including the power price paid by...
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    12 分
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