While the tabloids have described it as a “madhouse budget”, and the opposition has walked straight into the trap of joining them, Chalmers is being more pragmatic than woke.
The wave of voters that swung to the right at the Farrer byelection looking for someone who would simply do something, may well feel their protest vote got an instant result in the budget, from a centre-left (ish) government.
Meanwhile, parts of the media are leaning into the broken-promises narrative. During the election campaign in 2025, the prime minister snapped at a reporter who asked him whether he could rule out changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing, saying: “Yes. How hard is it? For the 50th time.”
The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, attempted to play the same card on budget night, but was called out by ABC 7:30 host Sarah Ferguson for preaching honesty while looking at his talking points.
“When you talk about honesty do you need to read that off your notes?” she asked.
She did try to pin Chalmers though, positing that breaking an election promise reflects a lack of integrity.
It’s a valid point.
However, arguably, making hard decisions based on what’s right rather than what’s politically advantageous runs deeper than sticking to bad promises just to get re-elected.
But this is not really what this budget is about either.
With 94 seats in the parliament, the Liberals on their knees and One Nation ascendant due largely to the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, now is the time to tackle intergenerational equity.
And it’s how Labor is hoping to secure its long-term future in a shifting landscape.
Criticised for timidity by me and others, Labor is pulling a John Howard. Love him or not, Howard broke promises, made hard decisions on tax and guns and presided over four terms of stable government.
As columnist Shaun Carney points out, the prime minister, treasurer and foreign affairs minister all occupied their posts throughout that period. With Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Penny Wong, Labor has that opportunity, but it must provide both hope and action to land it.
And sorry baby boomers, you’re no longer the main game when it comes to voting blocs.
There will be 700,000 additional gen Z voters on the roll at the next federal election, according to RedBridge’s Kos Samaras, meaning half the roll will be made up of millennials and gen Z.
What the government has done won’t be enough for them unless it’s the start of something bigger, and more long-term.
For now, it’s a bit of a Labor halfway house with negative gearing grandfathered, a paltry tax cut to wages somewhere down the track and no mention of the popular and much-needed tax on gas exports.
There’s also the issue of disincentivising investment, in shares generally and particularly in start-ups.
But Labor has politically wedged the Coalition, which is defending older, wealthier voters who have done very well out of the economic settings to date, versus younger people who are working their guts out and paying more tax on wages than investors on passive income.
This budget isabout fairness. And it’s a start. The ultimate takeout may well be: thank God someone finally at least tried to do something.
The data shows that those leaning to One Nation skew older, lower income and less likely to be university educated. The Coalition is unlikely to get them back, and others like them in the regions and outer suburbs, by pushing back on the budget over family trusts and investment properties.
In March, a national YouGov poll of 1,502 people showed that half of the respondents agreed that the government should reduce tax concessions for property investors, with only 28% disagreeing.
Our surveys during the last parliamentary term showed very strong support for the government to change its stance on stage-three tax cuts for similar reasons – while self-interest certainly exists, so does the motivation to leave our children with a prosperous future.
A legacy of fairness is a great aspiration for a government, especially if you also grow the pie by reducing red tape, supporting small business and improving productivity, to help sustain it.
The other important legacy at this time is trust, and that means good-faith decision-making that you believe in.
Chalmers was able to prosecute his budget confidently, as if he really understood it and believed in it with all of its upsides, downsides and in between. It’s as if Albanese has finally let his treasurer off the leash.
The Coalition, meanwhile, toys with aligning itself with One Nation to survive one day and then gaslights us all the next by pretending it isn’t.
Let’s see if that “never, ever, ever” promise lasts.
Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein
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