Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gets his way over stage 3 tax cuts. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
The Federal Government has begun the parliamentary year buoyed by the public’s reaction to its changes to stage 3 tax cuts and has ridiculed the Opposition over how it fumbled its response.
On the first day of parliament for 2024, Labor MPs were upbeat following polling that shows a vast majority of Australians are pleased with the changes Anthony Albanese has made to Scott Morrison’s final phase of tax cuts legislated under the former Coalition government.
With Opposition MPs and rightwing commentators decrying the move as a broken promise and a betrayal by the Prime Minister, Labor keeps repeating that the changes were necessary and that all Australians will now get a tax break – not just the higher income earners.
That has resonated in the polls, causing the Opposition to agree to pass the changes.
It all played out well for Labor on the floor of the parliament.
The first question Opposition Leader Peter Dutton kickstarted the House of Representatives Question Time with was asking the Prime Minister if he would rule out any changes to how the family home is taxed.
A bemused PM said the Opposition had two weeks since the changes to the tax cuts were announced and that was the best Mr Dutton could do.
“It has nothing to do with what we’re doing and nothing anyone is going to do,” Mr Albanese laughed at the dispatch box.
The Opposition Leader tried again and got the same short shrift.
Labor backbenchers asked Dorothy Dixers about the tax cuts, allowing ministers to keep repeating that all Australians were getting relief because changing cost-of-living pressures required the move.
The government was also able to make fun of the Opposition for not asking specific questions about the stage 3 tax cuts because the Coalition had agreed to support the changes in their party room meeting held earlier in the day.
“The position that they have taken on the tax cuts which are before the parliament is so incoherent and so unintelligible, and so incomprehensible that they can’t ask about the tax cuts which are before the parliament as of noon today,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers gloated.
Mr Dutton had earlier tried to explain the Opposition’s decision.
“The Coalition is not going to stand in the way of providing support to Australians who are doing it tough,” he said.
“We are supporting this change not to support the Prime Minister’s lie but to support families who need help now.”
The mood was such during parliament’s opening session that the PM delighted in ridiculing the Opposition over how it is being portrayed in the new ABC documentary series Nemesis, which is all about Coalition infighting during the prime ministerships of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.
“An hour and a half [each episode] that explains in three parts why they were such a hopeless, divided government full of hate of each other,” he said.
“And I was reminded that the Leader of the Opposition, his big commitment to be made was that he’d smile more and was going to be like Little Miss Sunshine.
“Instead, he gave us Jack Nicholson in The Shining, smashing through the walls.”
In episode two of Nemesis, which first aired the night before parliament opened, Mr Turnbull describes Mr Dutton as a “thug”.
The Opposition Leader shrugged off the criticism and labelled the man he tried to depose as a “liar”.
“In this job, it would be very difficult to go on the program, as I was asked to do, and give a true account of the actions of some individuals,” Mr Dutton said during a media conference.
“But maybe at some stage, I’ll give an account of the true character of some individuals.”
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