Paul Murray: Chalmers might have revived his favourite catchcry but nothing will salvage his credibility

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has a catch-cry when he is in spin mode — which is just about all the time — to describe passing political events as “a good thing”.

It appears to be a quirk that the Canberra press gallery finds charming, but one sceptical news organisation last week decided to analyse his use of the phrase after a journalist noticed it was being rolled out less often.

Back in the halcyon days of July, 2025 when Chalmers was spruiking his economic reform roundtable — another flop — he said “good thing” at a rate of more than 10 times for every 10,000 words in public utterances.

From visits to Australia by Taylor Swift to cuts in interest rates by the Reserve Bank to playing down increases in inflation by pointing to wages growth, Chalmers found good things sprouting like weeds.

But since his fifth Budget began unravelling as a stinker, the rate of use has dropped to a new low of 0.9 regurgitations per 10,000 words.

Faced with the disclosure his cloyingly banal phrase had gone off the boil, Chalmers used it again on Monday in response to revelations that the Budget’s capital gains tax and negative gearing changes had mugged last weekend’s real estate sales.

“If we are making it easier for first-homebuyers to get a fair crack at auctions, then that’s a good thing,” Chalmers said.

But it isn’t. How can homes not selling help anyone?

In Australia’s biggest property market, Sydney, where most homes are sold at auction, the rate of completed sales plummeted to a six-year low. While interest rates uncertainty caused by Chalmers’ inability to restrain inflation had already started to slow clearance rates, the Budget’s tax shocks really put the brakes on.

Which means supply — the crucial part of the housing market Chalmers managed to leave unstimulated in his Budget — is now lower. Because the market is spooked.

And property experts warned it was an early indicator that the value of everyone’s home — most families’ principal asset — would fall. Is that what he wants?

By Thursday, Chalmers was papering over horrendous new GDP and productivity statistics by cherry-picking an uptick in private investment as, you guessed it, a good thing.

Among the many bad things he’d rather ignore.

So Australians need to be increasingly wary of anything the Treasurer deems to be a good thing. Bad things are usually lurking somewhere nearby.

It’s a bit like another practice of most Albanese ministers when they are under pressure to describe their position on the matter at hand as “very clear”.

Because it almost always means the opposite.

Usually, the words they choose to outline their position are designed to provide enough wriggle room for backsliding, not clarity.

Like senior minister Jason Clare recently saying the government’s position on WA’s GST share was “very, very clear”.

Despite a government inquiry underway which will almost certainly recommend it be changed.

And nothing has been very clear since the Budget of broken promises was delivered. We’ve seen endless repeats of the Prime Minister dismissively proclaiming he had said 50 times that he wouldn’t end negative gearing.

That was very, very clear. Until it wasn’t.

But back to that good thing, Jim Chalmers. He also probably thought his appointment of Jenny Wilkinson last year as the head of Treasury was a good thing, too.

In fact, we know he must have because he is on record as describing her in 2022 as “the best of the best.” Good things don’t get better than that.

In a revealing speech to a group called Australian Business Economists, Wilkinson, apparently unwittingly, blew up a key part of the government’s defence of the Budget’s most obvious failing: that it would boost housing supply.

“The changes in the tax elements of the package that were announced in Budget are really a bit more about changing the distribution of housing ownership, rather than addressing in sort of an overarching sense, supply,” Ms Wilkinson said in a departure from the written text.

So not really about building more houses at all. The main problem in the crisis.

Since then, a series of property industry analyses have shown the Budget would cause significantly fewer houses to be built than under existing policies and that it was also likely to increase rents, making the situation worse for young people unable to build a home.

Wilkinson’s speech ploughed on with her Budget-boosting speech, amplifying her thesis about reforming the “distribution of housing ownership”, whatever that might mean.

“This reallocation of the housing stock, which improves opportunities for first-homebuyers, is a result of reduced investor demand in the existing housing market,” she said. “Reforms on this scale have understandably generated considerable interest.

By “considerable interest” she must have been referring to the outpourings of white-hot anger by investors who had been promised repeatedly the capital gains tax and negative gearing regimes wouldn’t change.

“In some instances, this may largely reflect the fact that individuals are sensitive about paying additional tax, which is totally understandable, but revenue needs to be raised from somewhere,” Wilkinson said.

That’s pretty much the problem with this government in a nutshell. Rather than fix its over-spending, it will keep raising more revenue from more and more taxation.

And the Treasury head, who was recruited from running the Finance Department, is fine with that.

Labor voters with long memories might remember the days of the late Peter Walsh, the WA-born finance minister who was the backbone of the Hawke government’s economic successes.

Walsh’s aversion to over-spending and waste became the benchmark for any government wanting to pursue financial rigour in its economic reforms.

It is fashionable these days for Albanese ministers to blame Canberra’s trillion dollars of debt on the previous coalition government and its $300 billion pandemic-era stimulus package.

However, they would not be so ready to admit that Wilkinson designed key elements of that strategy.

“As deputy secretary at Treasury and head of the department’s fiscal group, she was one of the designers of the $89 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy and other programs such as the $30 billion in cash-flow support for businesses, $2.6 billion HomeBuilder program, and billions more for unemployment benefits and healthcare,” the Australian Financial Review glowingly reported when Wilkinson became Treasury head.

It’s a pretty fair bet that Chalmers doesn’t think any of those programs was “a good thing”.

Having robustly defended the Budget in her speech, Wilkinson had to admit on Thursday under Coalition questioning that the Prime Minister was lying about two important capital gains tax changes being just a return to the pre-1999 system. Deeply embarrassing.

And Chalmers waded into deeper water over the unprecedented level of changes he plans to make to the Budget after it goes through the Parliament. He has claimed a record nine “ministerial discretions” which has alarmed the business community.

That level of discretion really means the Parliament is being asked to pass important taxation measures that could look completely different if Chalmers exercises his powers later. Simply undemocratic.

“I have never seen this many determinations in one Bill and that’s before we get to trusts, which shows that this has been rushed,” CPA Australia tax expert Jenny Wong said. “And given ministerial determinations don’t go through the same scrutiny, this leaves the door open for further changes and that means less certainty.”

Eight of the discretionary powers relate to areas of taxation on investments that are not merely procedural, but have the ability to change the way in which the legislation applies them.

“It shouldn’t be left to minister discretion to work out how it’s going to be applied,” tax expert, barrister John de Wijn KC, said.

“That’s just fundamentally unfair and the less certain the tax system is the less people will want to invest.”

The ninth provides an alternative method for calculating the maximum amount of the working Australians tax offset, which is also hardly a minor issue and will probably be used to create an election bribe later. So sneaky too.

Labor’s massive majority has waved the Budget through the House of Representatives, dismissing all Coalition amendments, but it is now being examined by a Senate committee due to report on June 22.

If the Senate has any value as a house of review, it will stop this rampant abuse of ministerial discretion in a Budget which contains the most consequential taxation changes in decades.

This should be a red line for all the non-government parties. And a particularly big test for the Greens. Will they let Labor steamroll the Budget through the Senate too?

When he was pushed on his reasons for wanting such an extraordinary ability to change the Budget after it has been legislated, Chalmers merely offered that it was “standard practice for tax legislation.”

It isn’t. And it’s certainly not a good thing.