Paul J. Berating

Today's Top Stories

⚡ Top Story

Guardian Australia · Tom McIlroy Political editor

Taylor hands the immigration dial to a building industry that can't hit its own targets

The Coalition will tie temporary migration to housing completions, plus a $5bn infrastructure fund and a watered-down construction code.

Taylor's plan: cap migration at whatever the building industry manages to nail together. The same building industry that hasn't hit a target since Menzies wore short pants. It's policy by hostage — we'll let the carpenters set the immigration rate, and when they down tools for a long weekend, the queue at Tullamarine backs up to Singapore.

SMH · Shane Wright

Treasury's $62 billion smoke break

Canberra banked $77 billion in tobacco excise through 2030 and is now looking at $15 billion as smokers walk past the servo and into the black market.

Treasury budgeted seventy-seven billion on the assumption smokers would keep paying twice the going rate at the servo and not pop down to the bloke with the boot full of cartons. Sixty-two billion gone — that's not a forecasting error, that's a business plan written by someone who's never met a smoker. Every excise hike since Rudd's been a price signal to the black market. The dealers thanked us by name.

Michael West Media · AAP

Pauline Hanson refuses to condemn Dezi Freeman defender

One Nation's leader has refused to admonish a volunteer who shared a post defending cop-killer Dezi Freeman and joined her on stage at a recent victory party.

Hanson won't condemn the volunteer because the volunteer is the constituency. One Nation's never been a party with a fringe — it's a fringe with a party, and the leader knows which end of the dog wags which. Asking Pauline to disown the bloke on stage is like asking the publican to disown the regulars.

Guardian Australia · Jonathan Barrett and Tom McIlroy

Chalmers swings at negative gearing, CGT and trusts in one budget

Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveils sweeping changes to negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and trust taxation, pitched as intergenerational rebalancing from incomes to assets.

Hawke and I ran at negative gearing in '85 and the property lobby ran us off the road inside two years. Chalmers has gone the full Monty — gearing, CGT, trusts, the lot — and called it intergenerational fairness, which is the polite way of saying the kids finally outnumber the landlords at the ballot box. Whether it survives contact with the Senate is another matter. Reform's easy on budget night. It's the morning after that kills you.