Anthony Albanese has given the strongest indication yet Labor could seek to scrap a major investor tax break, as One Nation sets its sights on housing inequality.
The Albanese government has long been rumoured to be mulling potentially scaling back some of Australia’s lucrative concessions to capital gains tax.
Capital gains tax is a levy applied to the profits after selling items, like shares or property and is part of a person’s annual income tax. A discount of 50 per cent is given if someone has held the asset for more than a year.
Speaking to the Nine papers, Mr Albanese on Monday confirmed the government was mulling policy changes beyond housing supply, as Labor faces down an resurgent One Nation, which has sought to capitalise on anger over rising inequality.
“The system needs to work for people,” he said.
“You don’t change that by rhetoric and by dividing people, which is, what is some of the populist rhetoric.
“You do that by giving people a stake in the economy.”
Labor has, until now, steadfastly focused on boosting housing supply to address inequality, including its ambitious National Housing Accord targets.
On Monday, Mr Albanese flagged the prospect of boosting spending on incentives for state and territory governments to achieve those housing targets.
“Resilience is also about economic resilience and social cohesion and making sure that young Australians understand they have a stake in the economy,” Mr Albanese said.
“And housing is obviously one of the focuses of that.”
A Liberal-chaired Senate inquiry is currently probing any changes to housing tax arrangements.
Financial journalist and author Alan Kohler told the committee earlier this year the tax system sent “a clear signal that capital income is preferred over labour income”.
“I think that is one of the foundations of inequality in Australia,” he said.
Currently, capital gains tax is “over adjusted for inflation”, while income tax is not, he said.
Mr Kohler told the committee the 50 per cent capital gains discount is “more than it needs to be to adjust for inflation” and had encouraged investing.
In doing so, it increased the demand for property “and probably more importantly, it increased what investors were prepared to pay for property”.
Last week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he would be “pretty happy” if the headline out of the 2026-27 budget was that it was a “tax reform budget”.
However, Mr Albanese admitted on Monday the budget was “likely to be settled later that usual”.
“The budget is now less than a month away … the government’s budget processes will continue today. They’ll continue next week,” he said.
Sweeping change to NDIS
Mr Albanese also hinted at a potential overhaul of the NDIS scheme.
“The NDIS was there to assist people who have a permanent incapacity to fully participate in society – that’s something we need to value and cherish,” he said.
“It’s undermined if four out of 10 kids in a class are on the NDIS.
“That wasn’t why it has that public support, and we need to make sure that we maintain public support by ensuring it’s sustainable.”
The Albanese government has sought to scale back some aspects of the scheme – namely support for children with mild autism, who would be co-assisted by state and territory government’s outside of the scheme under the Thriving Kids program.
That program, however, has faced pushback from state and territory leaders resistant to funding the initiative.
The Prime Minister has ruled out means testing to the NDIS.
“Eligibility should be about people’s disability and enabling them to fully participate in society,” he told the Australian Financial Review.
