ANU economist Ben Phillips ran the government’s proposed stage 3 tweaks through his PolicyMod simulator to weigh up the winners and losers.
He finds about 6.2 million households will benefit from the Albanese government’s changes, while just 1.1 million households will lose out compared to the tax laws passed under the Coalition.
The government’s gamble is that nearly six-to-one winners to losers presents pretty good odds for the widespread financial benefits to outweigh the cost of a broken promise.
Or perhaps that the middle-suburban voters who abandoned the conservatives at the last election and whom Labor needs to stick with them don’t think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires who aren’t looking forward to paying more tax when they do get rich.
I thought it was wealthy voters that left and went to independents as they couldn’t stomach the social policies.
The Teals picking up LNP seats attracted a disproportionate share of media attention, but the bulk of Labor’s landslide was middle-suburban seats who stayed with the Tories since the Howard years largely out of inertia deciding that enough was enough.