Economy

My mother, Carla Zampatti, arrived in Australia from war-torn Europe with no money, no English and little education … My mum was an exceptional woman, but if you work hard, the opportunity to build a comfortable and secure life is something all Australians expect. It’s a covenant we offer to each new generation. Unfortunately, it’s a covenant we are failing to keep.

Young people who are not on the generational train of transporting wealth are trying to survive within a cruel tax system. A system that is unfair for many working people, small businesses and young people. A system that taxes not just their incomes but also their dreams.

This week, the credentials of the Albanese government to manage the economy came under their most intense challenge since Labor was first elected almost four years ago.

Anthony Albanese’s official honeymoon ends this weekend, but his honeymoon with the electorate is continuing, according to the latest opinion polls, boosted by his opponents’ disarray and the government’s significant wins since the May election. Albanese has successfully kept the balance between China and the United States, Australia’s biggest trading partner and its most important strategic ally respectively. He has also succeeded in passing the biggest environmental reforms in three decades.

Soon after Labor’s thumping election win, Jim Chalmers was assuring doubters he would not be ‘changing policies we took to the election’. Within three months, however, that determination was undercut by Anthony Albanese quietly telling the treasurer to come up with a more saleable prescription on superannuation reforms.

If our super system were a country, it would be the eighth largest economy ... it has also contributed to more democratic control of capital and a more even spread of wealth than in most places on Earth.

The Home Guarantee Scheme was created by the previous Coalition government and was continued and this week dramatically expanded by the Albanese government. It has several cunning design features, none of which include relieving upward pressure on home prices. The guarantee helps first-home buyers by cutting the usual 20 per cent deposit of the sale price that banks require to consider a loan application to just 5 per cent, slashing the time needed to save the deposit.

The treasurer’s recent speech to the National Press Club seems to have caught many in the conservative media off guard. So much for the constant chant about a dangerous, mad, left-wing government. On the contrary, Jim Chalmers has outlined a reform agenda that may well be the envy of the Coalition. He has filled the vacuum that their policy inactivity has left.

The National Party seems uninterested in the merits of more effective delivery of government support. The recent history of the Coalition ... is a graveyard of proposals for various community or disaster-related schemes.

Now the election is finally over and the parties and candidates have settled down to their new realities, national priorities must be afforded their proper place.