Chalmers mocks Taylor for ‘failing upwards’ in most impassioned defence of budget yet

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has mocked Opposition Leader Angus Taylor while defending his government’s contentious tax changes on the basis that “not everybody is born already at the top of the ladder”.

Chalmers made his most full-throated defence of the May budget on Thursday while rounding on the Liberal Party and One Nation for wanting no change to a “generational crisis” in the housing market.

Addressing Labor’s national policy forum in Sydney, the treasurer said the beneficiaries of his planned changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax were being drowned out by those benefiting from current tax arrangements.

Chalmers said the position of the Coalition and One Nation was absurd as they claimed the government was pulling up the “ladder of aspiration”.

“Not everybody is born already at the top of the ladder like Angus Taylor was, not everybody fails upwards like he has,” he said.

“And unlike One Nation, we vote the way workers need us to, not the way Gina Rinehart tells us to. The irony of their position is they want to change the government in order to leave everything as it is – a truly absurd proposition.”

Chalmers then took aim at those whom he accused of defending their financial self-interest at the expense of young and future Australians.

“Too often the story of this budget is told by the biggest beneficiaries of these current arrangements, not the biggest victims of the broken status quo,” he said.

“Of course there are always those who want everything to stay exactly the same. We’re not among them.

“Our job is to make the right decisions for the right reasons, to represent those voices who aren’t already amplified by the usual suspects with political or commercial skin in the game.”

The May budget overhauled negative gearing and the capital gains tax rules in what the government has described as the biggest tax shake-up in a generation. However, the Coalition has attacked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for breaking election promises and described the budget as an attack on aspiration.

This masthead revealed on Wednesday that innovative businesses could keep using the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount under a proposal being reviewed by Chalmers as he moves to address concerns that Labor’s budget would hurt high-growth firms and productivity.

While Labor had anticipated resistance to the budget changes from property investors, they were surprised by the outcry about the CGT tax changes on social media, fanned by young businesspeople.

Several sources familiar with the government’s thinking said it might retain the Howard-era 50 per cent discount to firms that fit the criteria of a start-up.

Cabinet ministers are working out how to legally define an innovative start-up. Determining the criteria is proving difficult, but the government could apply the criteria already used to identify businesses that qualify for existing start-up programs, as well as those that offer employee share schemes.

The carve-out is expected to be accompanied by an expansion of existing CGT exemptions for businesses with turnovers of up to $2 million, which Labor will probably extend to higher-turnover firms, and an expected backdown on testamentary discretionary trusts, which the Coalition has weaponised into a “death tax” scare campaign.

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