Albanese claims ‘scare campaigns’ over Labor’s Budget policies will end after bill passes parliament

Anthony Albanese claims people running “scare campaigns” over Labor’s controversial Budget policies will be silenced after the concessions passed the parliament on Thursday night.

The changes from Budget night included expanding capital gains exemptions for businesses, delaying a new trust tax, and adding a Greens-backed ban on self-managed super funds borrowing money to buy property.

It also closed a “widow’s tax” loophole which would have imposed a tax on property owners whose partner had died or divorced.

In a post-victory media blitz on Friday, the Prime Minister celebrated the passing of the bill and asserted that the Labor-Greens deal should iron out prior criticisms of the government.

Labor had faced widespread backlash over the Budget changes with furious business owners launching a social media campaign against their new AI-generated Albanese “co-owner”.

Speaking on Sunrise, Mr Albanese warned people who had been spreading “a lot of misinformation” could now have to “debate the reality”.

“This is important reform. Now that it’s been passed as well, what you’ll see is some of the scare campaigns - about things that are not true and are not happening - that will be more difficult,” he later told ABC on Friday.

“Anyone who has a negatively geared property will not have that negative gearing change, for example.

“So, they’ll actually see that. A whole lot of people think at the moment that they are impacted, they’re not.”

However, as Mr Albanese was out talking up the ratified bill on Friday morning, former ­Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe was quoted expressing concerns.

Mr Lowe had warned the changes will not increase the supply of new houses and could stop Australia from being a great place to invest, expand, and hire people.

“We don’t have a growth agenda; we now have a redistribution agenda,” he said.

“We’re arguing over how we redistribute rather than make a bigger pie.”

When asked if the package was “mission accomplished” for the government, Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned there was more to come.

“It’s the most important part of the most ambitious tax reforms in more than a quarter of a century,” he told ABC’s Radio National.

“We’re making the tax system fairer by better aligning the tax treatment of labour and asset income.

“There’s more work to do on the other significant elements of the tax reform package.”

He added that the changes shouldn’t come as a surprise, as his May Budget had made clear there would be ongoing “consultation” and “there would be multiple pieces of legislation” to follow.

“But this first one, this first piece of legislation, contains the core elements,” he said.

“There will be subsequent pieces of legislation to implement other parts of the tax reform package and also when it comes to the implementation details – that’s not unusual.”

Dr Chalmers also took aim at the three right-wing parties, accusing them of abandoning the field on economic reform, forcing the government to negotiate elsewhere to secure the bill’s passage.

“The three right-wing parties give us no choice but to negotiate with other parties in the Senate,” he said.

“When the Coalition vacates the field on economic reform we need to do what we can to get it through the Senate.

“We’re pragmatic about that and there’s no one party that controls all of the numbers in the Senate, so some of the implementation details we announced this week just reflect the reality of getting something through our Parliament.”

Opposition leader Angus Taylor and his deputy Senator Jane Hume have vowed the Coalition would repeal the changes if elected.

“We will repeal it in government and replace it with lower taxes, lower and simpler and fair taxes,” Senator Hume told Sunrise.

“I’m not interested in the polling. I’m interested in the outcome for Australians, and this has been a balls up from go to whoa.

“When the backlash came from business ... the number of backflips and changes and carve outs that needed to be made went on and on and on.”

WA Liberal Dean Smithon Friday added that the former RBA governor’s remarks just added to a “chorus of other criticisms” over the Budget.

“Last night, the Senate passed the Budget but that cemented the Prime Minister’s position as incompetent, as a fraud and as a liar,” Senator Smith said.

The Shadow Assistant Minister for the Cost of Living described the Budget as “poorly delivered” and “poorly executed”.

“And by the Treasurer’s own admission, the government has lost paint as a result of its poor budget prosecution.

“It’s interesting today that the Treasurer has had to concede that negotiations around some of those budget decisions are ongoing.”