You’d think that whether or not one has $3m in superannuation is exactly the question voters should ask when assessing how they will be affected by a revenue measure reducing tax concessions on balances of that size.
But not according to the opposition leader, Peter Dutton.
According to Dutton’s speech to the Australian Financial Review business conference this week, “whether you’ve got $30,000, $300,000 or $3m in your super fund is not the point”.
“The point is that the government’s super tax is an attack on aspirational Australians who have worked hard all their life.”
For Dutton it’s not good enough to win the votes of the 0.5% or 80,000 account holders who currently have more than $3m in super.
The political imperative is to use the government’s shift on “no intention” to increase tax on superannuation to construct a broader narrative about Labor and tax.
A week and a half after Anthony Albanese and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, announced the “modest” measure we have seen how the opposition intends to expand the playing field.
First came the “you’re next” rhetoric that when Labor runs out of money they come after yours (fact check: the budget was already in deficit so governments of both stripe had by that standard already run out of money).
The opposition also reheated scares about Labor’s changes to tax of franking credits for off-market share buybacks and capital raising, seeking to profit from a negative association with far broader changes Labor proposed before losing the 2019 election.
Eventually, the opposition scored a hit by homing in on a slightly wonkish detail of the super policy: because the $3m threshold is not indexed, the share of workers with big balances will grow over time.
When Chalmers was out selling the policy last week, he was prepared to own that this was a “key part of the design”, but he wouldn’t provide modelling or assurances about what proportion of account holders would be affected into the future.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, supplied those figures during a bout of transparency in Senate question time on Monday.
In 30 years the treasury predicts the top 10% of earners will retire with super balances of $3m or more, she said. Suddenly Chalmers found the numbers and reassured that by the end of this decade only “around 1%” of people would be affected.
In question time the Coalition queried whether the super tax change could increase tax on unrealised capital gains such as a family farm held in a self-managed super fund that hasn’t been sold.
It found what it believes is a weak spot in Labor’s defence: the assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones.
Facing a barrage of questions, Jones responded that super funds have to keep enough cash on hand and a diversity of assets, implying but not directly stating they need to be able to pay tax without selling the family farm.
The Coalition sought to embarrass him in Wednesday’s session by granting an extension of time for a cagey answer, and on Thursday howled with laughter when he sought to deflect a question by noting he is a “non-licensed financial adviser”.
Away from the theatre sports of question time, a decision that was far more consequential for many family budgets was made.
The Reserve Bank increased interest rates for the 10th consecutive time, although there was a hint of relief that “further tightening” could mean just one more rate hike and not additional “increases” as signposted previously.
With just the first of these rate hikes under the Morrison government, and now nine under Labor, the conversation has begun to shift to what more the Albanese government can do to take heat out of the economy.
In the upcoming budget that will mean a repeat of the October budget’s impulse to save as much of the revenue improvement as possible.
By the time the stage-three tax cuts, worth $254bn over 10 years, come into effect in July 2024, the government will be hoping the rate rises have worked their magic so it can deliver a benefit to millions of taxpayers earning more than $45,000 without adding to inflationary pressures.
At the AFR conference, Dutton framed delivering these cuts as the be-all and end-all for Labor because they were an unequivocal commitment. He warned modifying the package in any way would be “an absolute betrayal of Australians’ trust” and “tantamount to economic incompetence”.
Chalmers insisted this week the government wants to see what shape the economy is in because the cuts are “a couple of budgets away” and at some point the focus will “shift from inflation to growth”.
The size of budget improvement that could be banked from reforming the stage-three cuts dwarfs the super changes, but Labor believes that to withstand Dutton’s campaign on broken promises and “you’re next” they must isolate him to defending millionaires, not median income earners.
