Albanese flags major changes to maintain public support and viability, property tax breaks
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese explained in an interview that the government needed to overhaul the NDIS to maintain its viability and ensure public support for the programme, and also signaled that removing property tax breaks for investors could be an antidote to One Nation’s economic populism.
In some of his strongest comments yet about the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced in 2013, Albanese opened the door to a wholesale change to the initiative in the May budget.
“The NDIS is there to help people who have a persistent inability to participate fully in society, which is something we should value and cherish,” he said. “Having four in 10 children in a class on the NDIS is weakening.
“That’s not why it had public support, and we need to make sure we maintain public support by making sure it’s sustainable.”
In an interview with this masthead during his flight back from a fuel diplomacy trip to Singapore, Albanese confirmed he would meet the Sultan of Brunei on Tuesday and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Wednesday, extending his tour to Asia next week in a bid to bolster supplies of fertilizer and fuel respectively.
Albanese has torn up his pre-budget schedule to prioritize travel to Asia as his cabinet faces pressure to deliver long-awaited tax and productivity reforms while also cutting spending to near record levels to rein in inflation.
This imprint revealed last month that Labor would include a lower 5 per cent growth target for the NDIS in the budget. The government has since welcomed a debate on structural changes, such as testing the bubble-inflation scheme or changing the way it funds services and registers providers. Government MPs say means testing has been rejected.
Late last year, 16 per cent of six-year-old boys in Australia were on the NDIS, many of whom were diagnosed with developmental delay or autism.
The pre-budget debate is taking place against the backdrop of the global inflation shock caused by the war in the Middle East and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s promise to tackle tax rises.
“We are making every effort to guarantee supply, but also to deal with prices linked to supply,” Albanese said, attributing the success or failure of his trip to the stabilization of fuel prices.
Australia’s inadequate fuel stocks revealed the country was not self-sufficient during the oil shock. Public concern about supply chain resilience over lack of action in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak has prompted Labor to create a new “resilience” plan in the May budget. The opposition has warned Labor that any new reforms should not be cover for subsidies for unsustainable blue-collar industries.
Albanese flagged the need for greater investment in fuel security but, more importantly, linked Chalmers’ intergenerational equality agenda to a wider resilience programme.
Another area of reform targeted by the government is tax reductions for real estate investors. This imprint reported two weeks ago that Albanese had almost decided to go ahead with tax reforms, which could include an overhaul of negative gearing and capital gains allowances, after worrying colleagues would use the war as an excuse to slow down.
He also raised the possibility of Labor increasing stimulus spending on state governments to meet its 1.2 million house building target.
“Resilience is also about economic resilience and social cohesion and making sure young Australians understand they have a stake in the economy,” Albanese said. “And obviously housing is one of the focal points of that.”
Answering a question about the removal of tax breaks that tipped the balance against first-home buyers, Albanese confirmed his government was considering policy changes beyond housing supply as he opened a new political battleground to battle the One Nation party, which is rising in the polls due to economic and cultural disillusionment.
“The system needs to work for the people. You can’t change that with rhetoric and dividing people, which is part of populist rhetoric,” he said. “You do that by giving people a share of the economy.”
Chalmers expressed similar sentiments at a bar event in his working-class hometown of Logan in Brisbane, warning of the “dangerous” economic situation and its ability to make politics more caustic.
“This makes this a defining moment for Australia, a pivotal moment where we must decide together whether we will continue down the path we have seen in other countries: more polarizing policies, more divided societies and hollowed-out economies,” he said.
“Take One Nation. At every opportunity and nearly every vote, when they have to choose between voting the way communities like ours need them or voting the way Gina Reinhart tells them, they’re making the wrong choice.”
Speaking on the ABC on Sunday, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King hinted that households could receive additional support from the federal budget due to persistently high fuel prices, and generous tax breaks for electric vehicle leasing could be retained to encourage electric vehicle purchases.
In Australia, electric vehicle sales increased after the US-Israeli war against Iran triggered the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a huge increase in petrol and diesel prices at service stations.
“Tax cuts are certain to come on July 1, but you know whether additional measures are needed for households and businesses, these are all things we’re considering as part of the budget process,” he told the ABC. insider program.
King has repeatedly dodged questions about leasing tax regulations that waive fringe benefits taxes and cost the budget more than $500 million a year.
“It’s worked. Electric vehicles have been seen to become more common. We of course want to make cheaper electric vehicles more available to people, and that’s what the fuel efficiency standard does,” he said.
“I will leave the announcements regarding the fuel tax advantage for electric vehicles to the discussions in the budget.”
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Paul Sakkal is the Chief Political Correspondent. He has previously covered Victorian politics and won the Walkley award as well as the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year award. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect with: X or email.
James Massola is the chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and Southeast Asia correspondent. He won the Quill and Kennedy awards and was a Walkley finalist. Connect securely to Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect with: X or email.
