Greens Senator Nick McKim is currently asking Jenny Wilkinson about inequities in the tax system and ask her if she is aware of the most unequal tax concessions. She is not. He helpfully points out it is the capital gains tax discount, 82% of which goes to the richest 10%

We have been banging this drum for a while, and as David Richardson reported, those on high incomes are more and more taking advantage of the 50% tax break by shifting more of their income to capital gains rather than wages.

And of course it all is distorting the housing market and sending houses prices up.

Senate Estimates has probed the Government’s position on increasing the number of politicians and extending parliamentary terms to run for four years instead of three, with Senator Don Farrell saying the topics warrant discussion but not exactly giving full throated support for increasing the size of Parliament:

“But the Australian people might say we don’t want a bar of this, we’re happy with the existing numbers of MPs, and that could be the end of it.”

A multi-party parliamentary committee (called JSCEM or the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters) has been tasked with considering both of these reforms, but it does frustrate me a bit to see them conflated.

An increase in the number of politicians is long over-due (we were writing about it back in 2018). It would make politicians more accessible and accountable, and more sensitive to community concerns. With each local MP expected to represent around 170,000 people, they are spread too thinly.

The ABC reports that the Liberal-National Coalition “has already dashed any hope of bipartisanship on the matter”, because Liberal shadow minister Senator James McGrath has criticised even looking into the topic.

There’s two problems with this. 

Firstly, the Albanese Government doesn’t need the Coalition to pass legislation. Yes, the Labor Party seems to ignore this — but we shouldn’t. 

Secondly, the Coalition is made up of Nationals as well as Liberals. With Australia’s population increasingly urbanising, regional and rural seats are getting geographically larger and larger. As Shane Wright points out, this leaves National MPs in particular serving very large electorates that are time-consuming and draining to cross.

As for four-year terms? They’d need a referendum, which has already been ruled out by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. To re-litigate four-year terms when there is so much unfinished business (truth in political advertising laws, whistleblower protections, etc) seems like a waste of time at best and a distraction at worst.  

Back to Treasury estimates and Senator Bragg has turned to housing itself and wants to know how many houses have been built by the HAFF, why not more have been built etc etc.

It’s worth remembering that Senator Bragg is the one who thinks the big solution for housing is to allow people to use their super to pay for the deposit (Bragg hates Industry Super funds)

The big problem with housing in Australia for those on low-median incomes is that for 25 years the public sector has exited the field. That’s a lot of time to make up for, and to be honest, the HAFF is a weird way to do it. Rather than establish a fund which them uses the proceeds to invest in the private sector to build low-cost housing, why doesn’t the government just borrow at its 10 year bond rate (at the moment that’s 4.3% – rather lower than the 5.5% average home loan rate) and build homes.

The court of appeal (NSW’s highest court) has issued a prohibition order over a planned march and rally at the Opera House this weekend, after NSW police applied to have the event shut down.

The court ruled that the size of the crowd was likely to cause a public safety risk.

This doesn’t mean the march is stopped – but it does mean that attendees will not have the legal protections that apply to sanctioned events.

We’ll bring you more in a moment.

Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg wants to talk about housing and Housing Australia and the reports about alleged issues with its board particularly its chair Carol Austin that led to a “Treasury review” and a report in the SMH that that Housing Australia’s former general counsel and board secretary Rod Saville wrote in an email to the review of the HA that “It became apparent very quickly to me and other senior executives in the organisation that Ms Austin had very little, if any, experience or understanding of housing issues in Australia, let alone social and affordable housing,” “

Treasury head Jenny Wilkinson is telling Bragg that he can ask questions to the Treasury corporate sector later in the day as they were the ones in charge, but of course he keeps on going in a roundabout way.  

The ABC is reporting that Murray Watt is very close to making a deal with the Coalition to pass it’s environmental protection legislation. Jake Evans, a very good up and coming reporter, says that Watt and the Coalition’s Angie Bell are having their third meeting to nut out an agreement.

We spoke about this on Tuesday. There is another pathway in the Senate – through the Greens – so if the government is negotiating with the Coalition to pass environmental protection laws, it means THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT TO GO FURTHER THAN IT HAS TO ON THESE LAWS.

The mining industry want the Coalition to negotiate on these laws, which will set out go and no go zones for development and fossil fuel projects, because the alternative is the government negotiates with the Greens and that would mean some actual protections would be put in place.

And we can’t have that.

So basically, Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce will be on the same side as the Labor government on environmental protections. What does that say about the legislation?

(And a reminder that Tanya Plibersek had a deal with the Greens in the last parliament, where the Coalition refused to negotiate on the laws, which was scraped after the PM intervened, because Labor didn’t want a deal done that way. Because it is committed to doing the very least it can do.)

Talk has turned to what is driving the economy and the ALP senators want to highlight the private sector is now driving economic growth. And yes, that’s great but the private sector SHOULD be the main driver of the economy, and it still remains pretty small

The Secretary of the Treasury Jenny Wilkinson, opens her first appearance as Sec of the Treasury  with a statement that points out that Trump’s tariffs are expected to weigh on global growth, mostly in the US, but it’s all a bit of a mess a swell because even the legality of the tariffs is still yet to be resolved. She talks a bit about bond yields – which is mostly around disruptions and volatility – code for “there be uncertainty out there because of Trump”

She then notes that gold prices are reaching record highs because gold is safe and Trump is not, which means the US dollar is no longer as safe as it used to be.

She points out that here, household spending has increased recently – due to lower interest rates and that has been the main driver of the economy. Dwelling investment hasn’t been great, but is hoped to pick due to those lower interest rates.

She then turns to investment and notes there been a stack of investment for renewables while mining investment has fallen a touch.

Inflation is now down, due to good falls by drops in rents, insurance and new housing build price growth [but alas, rents seem to be going back up].

She points out that as inflation has fallen unemployment has not risen as much as it has in the past when we’re had interest rates go up to kill inflation, [so that’s good. And hopefully the RBA doesn’t do anything that causes unemployment to keep rising]

She has a bit of a plug for the economic roundtable and how a big outcome has been looking at regulations. [This is the whole “Abundance” palaver where apparently reducing regulations will unleash everything… and yeah… maybe]

Then she ends with a boast of the small budget deficit in 2024-25 budget of $10bn, mostly due to around $4bn lower spending and $12bn more revenue than expected.

And she ends with a talk about the climate change risk report and its modelling [this is something the LNP senators will bang on about because climate change is a bit of a myth in their view so they think all the risks are exaggerated, which mostly just reveals they don’t understand climate change, economic modelling or a risk assessment].

If you need more evidence that the Coalition’s attack against Australian citizens who returned to Australia from Syria (a legal move, as Australians have the right to return to Australia, no matter why you left the country in the first place) is completely bereft of any sort of rational reasoning, here is Sussan Ley arguing on the Nine network that she has a problem with the government not trying to stop something they have no legal right to stop.

Ley is speaking about two women and four children who are being monitored by security agencies, and who were monitored as they managed to leave Syria and start making their own way back to Australia. Which they are legally entitled to do.

Well I can’t see any evidence, Karl, that the government has tried to do that and that’s what the problem is here. Accompanying that is a failure to reassure Australians of community safety. This is not some romance that went wrong. This is a group of individuals who willingly left this country, in itself breaking the law, to go and join ISIL, a death cult that has at its heart the destruction of our way of life and our society. If we cast our minds back to Islamic State at its height and the security threat that was talked about here in this country, do we really want these individuals just let back in and why can’t the government answer questions about how much it’s costing, whether they’re being monitored, whether they are being rearrested, what is going on, why all the cover up?

Meanwhile, in estimates last night, it was revealed that the NACC is still a mess.

WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS (the answer is everyone paying attention):