Super funds are not a piggy bank for Labor's pet projects

The Australian Financial Review has been a consistent critic of the Albanese government's predilection to use the nation's $4.2 trillion compulsory retirement savings system as a vehicle to deliver on its policy ambitions.
In his first term, Treasurer Jim Chalmers conscripted both the superannuation industry and Australia's A$307 billion Future Fund to prioritise national interest investments in residential housing, renewable energy and infrastructure projects. It marked the first time a federal government had prescribed specific asset classes for superannuation funds to consider.

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AU Financial Review

29 minutes ago

• AU Financial Review

AWU says Chalmers must put big conditions on $36b Santos takeover

The Australian Workers Union is demanding Labor force Santos' Abu Dhabi suitor to supply more gas to the domestic market and sell four processing plants before it is allowed to buy the country's second-largest oil and gas company in a transaction worth more than $36 billion. The influential union is a key supporter of Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who will decide whether a consortium led by the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, known as ADNOC, can acquire the ASX-listed company.

Sky News AU

30 minutes ago

• Sky News AU

Media Watch Dog laments loss of comedy gold after Q+A axing, while Nine praises Niki Savva despite foreshadowing Albanese election defeat

It was 6.29 pm on 19 June that Matt Kean put out this post on X under the byline 'The Hon. Matt Kean @Matt_KeanMP'. Odd, don't you think? After all, the former NSW Liberal Party treasurer is no longer an MP – so how to explain his X username? Rather, his part-time job is chair of the Climate Change Authority, to which he was appointed by the Albanese Government in June 2024. And his full-time position is with Wollemi Capital, a specialist climate investor which advocates that 'the need to advance decarbonisation is most critical and the prospective returns are greatest'. The purpose of your man Kean's post was to draw attention to his article in The Canberra Times on 19 June titled 'National hazards are becoming unnatural risks. Climate is not static, nor should we be'. Now your man Kean has a degree in business – not in science or engineering. His article was that of an eco-catastrophist warning about cyclones, bushfires, floods, rising sea levels and so on. The Climate Change Authority/Wollemi Capital guy eventually got around to saying this: The Australian government can lead on a national adaptation agenda which coordinates and amplifies necessary efforts by all levels of government, businesses and communities. And there are real benefits to taking adaptation seriously. Every dollar invested in reducing climate risks pays for itself 10 times over in reduced recovery costs, according to the CSIRO. It makes sense – and always has – for Australia to adapt to changing weather. But what was missing from Mr Kean's article is a recognition that Australia produces just over one per cent of global emissions and cannot change the world's climate. CAN YOU BEAR IT? As avid Media Watch Dog readers will recall, when former BBC journalist Nick Bryant presented his inaugural ABC Radio National Saturday Extra program on Saturday 25 January 2025 he had this to say: We're committing to bringing you a diversity of voices, some of whom you'll agree with, some of whom you won't, but hopefully all of them will be insightful and make more sense of our world. And we will try to abide by one of the first rules in journalism, never be boring. I hope you'll enjoy the new Saturday Extra . Alas, it hasn't worked out this way. After a promising start, Saturday Extra has become a bit like RN's Late Night Live aka 'Late Night Left'. With occasional exceptions, the left-of-centre Nick Bryant interviews left-of-centre talent. In short, there is an evident lack of viewpoint diversity. Moreover, judging by listener feedback on text and so on – Saturday Extra's audience consists primarily of inner-city leftist luvvies who only want to hear individuals with whom they agree. On Saturday 14 June, this is how the ABC referred to the segment titled 'Trump's militarisation of America' which topped the program. A military parade in Washington this week will mark the 250th anniversary of the US army, and it will coincide with President Trump's 79th birthday. The fanfare follows a week of civil unrest, with President Trump deploying US Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles, against the wishes of California's Governor Newsom. Are President Trump's moves to send the National Guard into Los Angeles an act of authoritarian overreach or a political winner? Guest: Professor Jason Stanley, Yale University, and author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future . Credits: Siobhan Moylan, Producer. Now, MWD believes that Professor Jason Stanley is entitled to be heard on Radio National – and elsewhere. But Comrade Stanley is on record as saying that the United States may become a 'fascist dictatorship'. This is an extremist view – especially for someone who is on record as saying that his grandparents fled Berlin with his father in 1939 – see The Guardian 26 March 2025. With a couple of exceptions, Comrade Bryant essentially fed Comrade Stanley with soft questions – as the transcript demonstrates: Nick Bryant: Now presidents can federalise State National Guard units although it does normally happen with the cooperation of the state governor. The last time it happened without that was 1965, when Lyndon Johnson federalised the National Guard in Alabama to protect civil rights protesters there – in Selma. Presidents can also deploy troops to quell civil unrest in extremis if they invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act . Donald Trump has not invoked that act yet – so has anything he's done so far breached the law or violated the Constitution? Jason Stanley: He has – so you're absolutely right. The facts you've laid out are exactly right. He has not invoked the Insurrection Act, so I'm not clear what legal authority he has to send Marines into Los Angeles. He is always threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act. If he does threaten – invoke the Insurrection Act. Then we have a kind of, Hitler, Nazi Enabling Act, kind of, moment – where – after the Reichstag fire, that's what we authoritarianism scholars have always been looking for that, you know, declared emergency that will allow sort of military power – the president to take military powers. Nick Bryant: Yeah…. What a load of absolute tosh – which Nick Bryant did not challenge. Can you believe that the learned professor saw fit to compare Donald J. Trump using federal power to send the National Guard to protect federal property and federal employees in Los Angeles with Adolf Hitler and the 1933 Reichstag Fire? This was followed by the Enabling Act which, in time, led to the murder of six million Jews. Apart from asking whether you believe this rant – the more relevant question is: Can You Bear It? [No. Not at all. And thanks for asking. I note that in his rant against (alleged) authoritarianism Comrade Stanley described President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln as 'great American presidents'. Stanley did not mention that in his 12 years in office, FDR issued some 3,721 executive orders – that is about 310 per year. Which makes President Trump's tendency to issue executive orders as, well, wimpish. Nor did the learned professor mention that over 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned in the United States following an executive order issued by President Roosevelt in February 1942. Their only 'crime' was that they were of Japanese heritage. Sounds somewhat authoritarian, don't you think? – MWD Editor.] At Hangover Time from Mondays to Fridays, Ellie's (male) co-owner invariably glances at Nine Newspapers' CBD section. Not that it focuses on anything of much importance in the Central Business District of Melbourne or Sydney of interest to, respectively, readers of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald . It's just that he just loves to find out just what is going on in high fee Sydney private schools – which seems something of an obsession with the Sydney end of CBD. This is invariably written by Kishor Napier-Raman (he of what Paul Keating used to call the Hyphenated-Name-Set). Moreover, Stephen Brook (at the Melbourne end of CBD) is a MWD fave from his days at The Australian. But MWD digresses – not for the first time. On Monday 16 June, CBD led with this: The events of May 3 hit Australia like an earthquake and the Coalition is still picking through the rubble of its election disaster for a glimmer of hope. But another earthquake is set to hit the political establishment later this year. We're talking about the publication of a tell-all book on the 2025 poll penned by formidable political commentator Niki Savva, rather appropriately titled Earthquake: Signposts to the election that shook Australia . CBD can reveal Savva has been beavering away on the book, which will be on shelves in late November – just in time to line the Christmas stockings of politicos, hacks, flacks and Insiders tragics across the country. Well, at least the title for Comrade Savva's latest tome is locked in. Unlike 2019 where the book's draft titled 'Highway to Hell: The Coup that Destroyed Malcolm Turnbull and Left the Liberals in Ruins' had to have a new cover. It was retitled Plots and Prayers: Malcolm Turnbull's Demise and Scott Morrison's Ascension . It was drafted, you see, on the assumption that the Coalition would lose the May 2019 election since it had dumped Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull for Scott Morrison. Ms Savva is one of those Canberra media types who believes it is okay for the Liberal Party to govern for a while – provided it is led by someone like Malcolm Turnbull. But not anyone like Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton. This despite the fact that Turnbull lost 14 seats in the 2016 election – his first, and only, election as prime minister. From which the Liberal Party has never recovered. These days Comrade Savva writes an occasional column for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald . This is what CBD had to say about this: Savva's regular columns for this masthead have a touch of the seismic about them, sending aftershocks reverberating through the Canberra bubble. Her upcoming book on the election, published by Scribe, which combines those highly prescient columns with a series of new reported chapters, will doubtless be hotly anticipated…. 'I'm doing my best to try and explain why Labor did so well, how they came to do so well, and why the Liberal Party was taken to the brink of extinction,' she said, adding that it was a question many Liberals were also seeking answers to. Well, fancy that. Which leads Ellie's (male) co-owner to wonder whether Comrade Savva will acknowledge that 'why Labor did so well' might turn on the fact that Labor MPs did not take much notice of her 'prescient columns'. MWD has in mind Comrade Savva's oh-so-prescient column of 5 December 2024 where the following comment about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was made: If Anthony Albanese wins the next election to govern either in majority or minority, he should, after a decent interval, retire so Labor can regenerate. Albanese succeeded brilliantly, certainly beyond his wildest imaginings and that of his friends, to become leader then prime minister. He should count his blessings, then gracefully relinquish the job. This is a benign view. The more drastic, which has been bubbling away inside the wider Labor family, is that he has lost his mojo, his judgment has deserted him and if he can't summon the discipline to shape up, he should ship out before the election to allow someone else to take on a rampant Peter Dutton. How prescient was this advice? On 4 December 2024 Comrade Savva was foreshadowing Prime Minister Albanese's political demise. However, on 3 May 2025 Anthony Albanese led the Labor Party to one of its greatest election victories. And Comrade Savva is presenting herself to CBD readers as a mastermind of the Canberra (Media) Bubble. Can You Bear It? While on the topic of the Sydney Morning Herald, this is how it reported the decision of the Liberal Party's federal executive meeting on 17 June. The executive revamped the membership of its inquiry into the party's NSW branch. It extended the committee's membership from 3 to 7 and dropped two members of the committee. On 18 June Alexandra Smith and Natassia Chrysanthos wrote a story about the meeting which commenced as follows: Federal Liberal Leader Sussan Ley and her NSW counterpart Mark Speakman have secured a major win in determining who will run the beleaguered state party, appointing a new committee headed by former premier Nick Greiner and ending the term of two octogenarian men from Victoria. That was the first paragraph. The 'two octogenarian men from Victoria' were not named until the sixth (Alan Stockdale) and ninth paragraphs (Richard Alston). So, it was in with the youth (Greiner) and out with the 'very old men' (Stockdale and Alston). The only problem here, which the comrades at the SMH failed to pick up, is the respective birth dates. Alston was born in 1941, Stockdale in 1945 and Greiner – wait for it – in 1947. And there is another point here. Do the SMH's editors believe it is clever to run a discourteous 'very old men' heading – in view of the fact that some 'very old men' – and 'very old women' – pay $4.80 each day to purchase a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in print form? Can You Bear It? The SMH's 'Very old men ousted from NSW' headline over its story about 'two octogenarian men from Victoria' – May not appeal to readers of a certain age (as the saying goes) On 19 June CNN's Christiane Amanpour was interviewed by Sally Sara on RN Breakfast . Amanpour declared in her The Ex Files podcast on 4 June that she recently travelled to the US 'as if I was going to North Korea'. Ms Sara did not raise this with Ms Amanpour when they spoke on RN Breakfast. Let's go to the transcript: Sally Sara: It's been a deadly 12 months for journalists. Scores of journalists have been killed in Gaza. And we also saw that Iranian state television came under attack. How do you reflect on this time for your profession, and how do you see that attack in Iran?.... Christiane Amanpour: Well, that's correct. Generally, these are civilian targets, whether it's state or not. Many, you know, authoritarian regimes have increasingly tried to kill the messenger. The fact is that the Iranian media is dominated by the Iranian theocracy. It's only a 'messenger' for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. What's more, Amanpour made no reference to civilian victims of Iran's missile attacks on Israel. Can You Bear It? A BRAND NEW CAMPAIGN MWD CALLS FOR THE RETURN OF Q+A WHICH ALWAYS PROVIDED GREAT MATERIAL It is Media Watch Dog's melancholy duty to acknowledge that our various campaigns initiated by the canine Nancy and followed by the canine Jackie have been failures. Total failures. However, as G.K. Chesterton is alleged to have said, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. So MWD is initiating a new campaign this time fronted by canine Ellie. Ellie's (male) co-owner was devastated to read The Diary section in The Australian's 'Media' segment last Monday. Steve Jackson had this to say concerning ABC's decision to junk the Q+A program, effective immediately: Diary hears the show was scrapped because the new double-act running things in at Aunty, chair Kim Williams and managing director 'Hollywood' Hugh Marks, want to put the 'broad' back in broadcasting and ensure the ABC's content appeals to all Australians, not just the inner-city set. Finally! Somebody gets it! Gerard Henderson met former ABC managing director and editor-in-chief David Anderson only once. In 2019. Hendo wished Ando all the very best in reforming the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. But asked him not to do too much reform too soon – since the ABC provided lotsa copy for Media Watch Dog . For instance, how could MWD bang on about the ABC as a Conservative Free Zone if it employed some conservatives? Likewise, how could MWD condemn the ABC as lacking viewpoint diversity if it started to hear the views of other than inner-city leftist types? Hence this campaign – fronted by Ellie. Avid MWD readers are urged to 'Occupy Ultimo! (circa the ABC Headquarters) Restore Q+A !'. The aim of the demonstration is to ensure the return of Q+A – which over the years has provided lotsa material for MWD. What will MWD do without Q+A's left-of-centre presenters, panels stacked with leftists and the occasional appearance of Malcolm Turnbull in a leather jacket? Q+A always welcomed Liberals like Turnbull. That is, current and former Liberal Party members who are into criticising the current Liberal Party. The likes of the late Malcolm Fraser, Malcolm Turnbull and Matt Kean come immediately to mind. And then there were the stacked panels. As MWD reported ad nauseam – an easy way to be part of a Q+A audience at Ultimo was to discard your Che Guevara tee-shirt along with roman sandals in exchange for a shirt and sensible shoes. Then enter the ABC studio posing as a conservative and throw a shoe at panellist John Howard. Bad for the ABC – but great for MWD. So MWD says: 'Occupy Ultimo!. Give the Inner-City Left a (Second) Chance!' and so on. Avid readers are asked to assemble outside the ABC's Ultimo H.Q. at Gin & Tonic Time on the feast day of St Cyril of Alexandria. See you there. [Here's hoping this campaign works. I note that in a previous campaign you failed to get Amy Remeikis a pay increase when she was one of The Guardian Australia's wage slaves. I see that Comrade Remeikis has moved to the avowedly leftist The Australia Institute. It would be great for MWD is she continues as one of the panellists on ABC TV Insiders . – MWD Editor.] Ellie Waiting for Fellow MWD Readers to Join the 'Occupy Ultimo! Restore Q+A!' campaign on the (forthcoming) Feast Day of St Cyril of Alexandria circa Gin & Tonic Time. THE ABC/AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE ENTENTE As Media Watch Dog readers know, this blog has been monitoring the ABC/Guardian Axis and the ABC/Australia Institute Entente. That is, the ready access that journalists from the left-wing The Guardian Australia and political operatives from the avowedly leftist Australia Institute (which is based in the Canberra Bubble) get on the ABC. Meanwhile, political operatives from the conservative Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne and the Menzies Centre in Sydney have been de-platformed by the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. [Don't you mean censored? MWD Editor.] THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE'S DEPUTY DIRECTOR GETS A SOFT RUN ON ABC TV NEWS BREAKFAST Wasn't it great to see the entente between the taxpayer funded public broadcaster and the avowedly leftist The Australia Institute back in action on Thursday 19 June? It took the form of Ebony Bennett, The Australia Institute's deputy director doing the 'Newspapers' segment on ABC News Breakfast . First up, Comrade Bennett defended the Albanese government's decision to tax unrealised profits from superannuation funds. Let's go to the transcript: Ebony Bennett: And it [the Treasurer's talk] comes, of course, on the back of tax reforms that the Labor government is already trying to implement, including its plans to reduce the generosity of superannuation tax concessions for the very wealthy. For those with super balances over $3,000,000, earnings of $3,000,000. And of course, Australia Institute research shows that those reforms are proving quite popular, with almost twice as many Australians supporting those changes as opposed them. Clever, eh? The Australia Institute's deputy director got in a plug for The Australia Institute. And then Comrade Bennett had this to say about the Middle East, in response to a soft question: James Glenday: One of our top stories, Ebony, unsurprisingly, is of course, what's happening in the Middle East and what is happening in Washington as Donald Trump weighs whether or not he is going to get involved in that conflict and actually bomb Iran. It's a bit of an interesting one because he obviously ran as a president who was gonna get out of Middle East wars and there's a lot of people in his camp are horrified at this idea that he might wade in. Ebony Bennett: Yeah, that's right. So, Donald Trump has warned Iran that he wants an unconditional surrender. And a lot of news reports today and overnight about those tensions within his own administration between essentially MAGA Republicans – people who really support Donald Trump above the party or ideology, who really think it should be Donald Trump staying out of this conflict and not getting America into the middle of another war in the Middle East – who are in direct conflict with, I guess, the more traditional Republicans, the hawkish types who are really encouraging the president to get America engaged in this conflict that Israel began with a pre-emptive strike against Iran and to use some of its massive ordnance, its bunker busters deployed in Iran against its nuclear weapons program. So, who knows where this will end up. But it's a very perilous moment, obviously, for world security and prompting a lot of concerns about the safety of the civilians in Iran. Emma Rebellato: Ebony a question without notice before you go just quickly. We've been talking about how to beat the winter blues. I reckon wearing colour is one way of doing it. How do you do it in Canberra? What a load of absolute tosh. Before Israel attacked Iran on 12 June targeting Iran's nuclear program, the Iranian theocracy had sent hundreds of missiles into Israel aimed randomly at civilian targets. Newsbreak presenter Emma Rebellato did not challenge this assertion. But rather asked Comrade Bennett about whether she chose colourful clothing to cope with the Canberra winter. Really. A NORMAN SWAN MOMENT IN WHICH DOCTOR SWAN TALKS ABOUT PRACTISING MEDICINE IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS Avid Media Watch Dog readers have been asking this question of late – Where's Dr Swan these days? Good question – as the saying goes. Well, this is what the ABC says: Dr Norman Swan is a multi-award-winning producer and broadcaster who created Radio National's long-running Health Report and also co-hosts the popular podcast, What's That Rash? During the pandemic, he co-hosted Coronacast, a daily podcast which at its peak had millions of downloads each month. On ABC Television he is a reporter on 7.30 and a guest reporter on 4 Corners . And then there is more. As a glance at the back issues of Media Watch Dog will reveal, your man Swan made a number of false predictions about Covid during the pandemic of recent memory. Those were the days when, on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster, Swan was commonly referred to as 'Australia's most trusted doctor'. As avid readers will recall, MWD pointed out ad nauseam that he had not practised medicine for, er, decades. It so happened that Ellie's (male) co-owner turned on RN at around Hangover Time on Saturday 14 June – it was 9.06 am in fact – and happened to tune into RN's Health Report which the learned (medical) doctor co-presents with Preeya Alexander – and heard this exchange: Norman Swan: So, Preeya, you know, a long time since I've practised, there was no such thing as Telehealth in those ancient days. Preeya Alexander: Back in the day. Were there telephones? Just joking. This did not surprise MWD – which had been banging on about this since Moses was in short pants. During this time, MWD noticed that the description of your man Swan was undergoing changes. The cover of Swan's 2021 book What's Good for You referred to the author as 'Australia's most trusted doctor'. Likewise in his 2022 tome Live Younger Longer. However, by the publication of his 2024 work What's Good for your Kids , the description of the doctor in the ABC's house had been changed. He was now described as 'one of Australia's most trusted doctors'. And now Dr Norman Swan has told listeners of The Health Report (if listeners there are) that it is 'a long time' since he 'practised' medicine. Well, you learnt this first in MWD due to the (obsessive) reporting of Ellie's (male) co-owner. Verily, A Dr Swan Moment. THE ABC's DR NORMAN SWAN WHO TRANSITIONED FROM AUSTRALIA'S MOST TRUSTED DOCTOR TO ONE OF AUSTRALIA'S MOST TRUSTED DOCTORS – TOLD ABC RN LISTENERS THAT IT IS A LONG TIME SINCE HE'S PRACTISED Photo credit: ABC Online

ABC News

33 minutes ago

• ABC News

Jim Chalmers wants a fight on tax, just like his 'brawler' hero Paul Keating

For those hoping Labor might use its landslide victory to be more ambitious, Jim Chalmers came to the press club with a message: game on. His speech was overshadowed by dramatic developments on the other side of the world, and buried under the dull heading of productivity and tax reform. But there was no mistaking the impression that Chalmers is emboldened by the election result and wants to seize his moment. The speech was light on specifics but lofty in aspiration. The treasurer was explicit that he wanted to use August's reform roundtable to make a lasting change to the tax system — to pick a fight and win it, like his "brawler statesman" hero Paul Keating. Chalmers is several steps ahead of his more cautious prime minister, whose own press club speech about economic reform last week was more grounded in talk of "win-wins" and incremental progress. But creative tension between treasurer and prime minister is the hallmark of all consequential governments, as with Hawke and Keating, or Howard and Costello. And economic reform — especially tax — is what those governments are remembered for, just as the political graveyard is littered with infamous tax failures like Gillard's carbon tax, Hewson's "fightback" and Shorten's negative gearing and franking credits. Tax matters to people, even if its finer details can make the eyes glaze over. So it is no small matter that the treasurer is standing at an open windowsill of opportunity and declaring he wants to jump through it. As one Labor frontbencher in the room remarked, it was the kind of speech the Labor faithful had waited 15 years to hear. For now, reaction from commentators has ranged from ambivalence to outright scepticism — "Rome not yet built on day one", read the opinion pages. And it's true that ambition is often thwarted by the cold light of reality, because anything worth doing on tax is hard to do. But even the whisper of a chance is enough for economists to prick up their ears after years of relentless caution and "safe" incrementalism. And there is much that could be done. For all the rancour, economists, unions, business and welfare advocates agree a lot about what's wrong with the status quo. There are always quibbles, but the broad collected wisdom is as follows: First, Australia taxes working people too much. That picture gets even worse if you factor in transfers (welfare and subsidies), which are below the poverty line for those on the lowest incomes and effectively impose extra taxes on middle earners, because the payments are withdrawn as you earn more. The picture is worse again if you factor in bracket creep — the fact that tax settings are not adjusted for inflation, meaning people pay more tax over time. Second, our tax system is wildly inconsistent in how it treats different types of income. A couple with no assets, both on the minimum wage, could pay more tax than a couple with three homes, a share portfolio, and hundreds of thousands in annual income. In fact, without needing to bend reality too much, it's plausible that the second couple could pay no tax at all. As well as the obvious inequities, these inconsistencies are inefficient, encouraging people to park their money in certain places (especially super and property) over others. At the same time, there are many reasons to expect we will need to raise more tax over time, in part because as people live longer they will require more care. And while there is lively debate over whether some government spending can be cut, there is pressure to spend more in several areas, much of it with strong public support. So if we want to be less reliant on taxing wages, we would need to consider other ways to raise money. Increasing taxes on consumption (GST) or land are among the options that would be more efficient, though not necessarily more equitable. Finally, all of this creates an intergenerational problem, because in the coming years there will be more retirees for every person of working age, piling the tax burden onto the shoulders of the young, a problem which gets worse the longer we neglect it. To summarise: the wrong type of tax, designed badly, and not enough of it, to the detriment of working people and young people, and distorting the economy. And that's before even mentioning corporate tax, fuel tax or cigarette tax — all of which are the subject of their own lively debates. All of that is enough to be overwhelming. But a wealth of problems means a wealth of possible answers. All of the "big ticket" items that feature prominently in political debate — negative gearing, capital gains tax, super tax, raising the GST, ending bracket creep, taxing land — are efforts to address one or another of these agreed shortcomings of the tax system. While Chalmers insists he is happy for all of these to be on the table and is keen not to rule things out, his press club appearance — where journalists tried valiantly to tempt him to do just that — left the impression he wants to avoid ideas with too much baggage. If he chose negative gearing, he would be accused of reheating leftovers and presented with a highlight reel of all the times he or the PM has promised not to revisit it, with the Coalition likely opposed and the Greens likely taking credit. If he chose the GST, he would risk creating "sticker shock" and be the treasurer who delivers a temporary price rise on everything, an option unlikely to appeal so soon after a nasty bout of inflation, especially since the states would get to keep all the money. And if he chose to go further on super tax concessions, he would embolden the scare campaign already amassing against his current push to lift the tax on earnings, which visibly irritates him every time he is asked about it. None of these seems especially likely. But if the treasurer is searching for a defining reform, there are options on the shelf with more dust but fewer enemies. Perhaps the most popular among economists — and yet still fairly obscure to the general public — is a dual income tax. That tax, common in Scandinavia, treats wages and salaries ("active" or "labour" income) differently to investments and capital gains ("passive" or "savings" income). Australia currently treats some investment income the same way as wages but other types completely differently. A dual tax could close loopholes and treat investment more consistently on the one hand, and lower taxes on wage earners on the other hand, while still being revenue neutral or even raising money. It's an idea with a long lineage, discussed at length in the famous Henry tax review in the early days of the Rudd government. Ken Henry, the treasury secretary who gave that review its name and who helped Chalmers with a draft of his press club speech this week, has become something of a "godfather of tax reform", and his hefty report still carries authority. But there's little to show for that reputation — 15 years on, politicians have intoned their reverence for the Henry review while politely ignoring almost all its recommendations. The reason? Because there is no such thing as meaningful tax reform that does not create both winners and losers. And for some time now, governments skirting on the edges of electoral defeat have been nervous about losers, preferring instead to promise higher spending and lower taxes. The Morrison government made an artform of this "double carrot", carefully designing its tax cuts to ensure no taxpayer was ever made worse off by even a cent. For this it was rewarded, winning a 2019 election against a Labor opposition with a substantial and controversial tax reform agenda who told the losers that if they didn't like it, they could vote for someone else, which they did. That's the price tag of reform. But with its colossal majority, the Albanese government could decide it can afford it. Chalmers, at least, thinks so. Perhaps his most pointed comment this week was that he did not believe the media narrative that Labor was assured of a third term. Translation: time is of the essence.