The Prime Minister has preserved the core principles of Labor’s economic reforms by ensuring that nobody actually has to participate in them.
CANBERRA — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has successfully neutralized mounting opposition to his government’s contentious capital gains tax reforms by graciously offering to not apply them to anyone who complained.
The faint scent of stale flat white coffee and institutional panic drifted through the Parliament House briefing room on Tuesday as Albanese unveiled the revised policy. Under the new framework, all of Australia’s 2.7 million small businesses—now generously defined as any scrappy, grassroots enterprise turning over up to $10 million a year—will be carved out of the legislation entirely.
The tactical retreat was presented to the international press corps not as a surrender, but as an act of profound bureaucratic benevolence. By quadrupling the exemption threshold from $2 million to $10 million and hastily excluding startups and testamentary trusts, Labor has effectively quarantined its flagship tax reform to apply only to entities that either do not exist or simply forgot to hire a public relations firm this week.
In a particular victory for the tech sector, founders of "genuinely innovative" startups with zero cost bases will also receive special allowances. Government officials spent the morning attempting to outline what qualifies as genuinely innovative, eventually settling on any company whose board of directors can afford to run a full-page attack ad in the Australian Financial Review.
We have carefully weighed the feedback from industry stakeholders, and decided the best way to implement this crucial tax is to make absolutely sure no one pays it.
Despite the comprehensive legislative collapse, business syndicates remain entirely unappeased. Opposition leaders spent the afternoon demanding Labor scrap the hollowed-out reforms altogether, arguing that the mere memory of the initial proposal was actively damaging market confidence.
The Greens, meanwhile, addressed the gallery to state there was "still a way to go" before they would agree to vote for a revenue-raising measure that currently raises zero dollars.