Albanese gives strongest indication yet stage-three tax cuts are here to stay
Anthony Albanese has given his strongest indication yet that the controversial stage-three tax cuts are here to stay, saying voters want to see more integrity in politics and he is keeping his election promises.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, has also put his department on notice that it would not be immune to the search for savings even as the government’s first budget is expected to confirm an overall increase in military spending.
After a robust internal and public debate over the past week about whether the government would amend the stage-three tax cuts in the 25 October budget, the prime minister has repeatedly hosed down expectations that the package could be tweaked this year, regardless of growing pressures on the budget.
On Monday, he went further, suggesting that the tax package was here to stay as he was “making sure that we implement the policies that we took to the election”.
“We’ve been doing that. Peter Dutton’s been opposing it,” he told ABC Radio.
“They [the opposition] need to, I think, get the message, which is that Australians want a new form of politics. They want politics to operate differently. They want more integrity.”
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When asked if he would “concede” that his position “could change next year”, Albanese said: “Well, no. There’s been no change in our position.
“What we have done is that in framing the budget … [we] point towards the challenges which we’ve inherited. We’ve inherited a trillion dollars of debt in the budget, we know that central banks around the world are having the fastest-ever tightening of monetary policy in decades, and … that’s placing pressure on family budgets as their mortgage repayments
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