By Tyler Wright
The electorate of La Trobe is set to benefit the most from the Labor Government’s amendments to the stage 3 tax cuts in Victoria, according to independent think tank The Australian Institute.
According to the recent report, the electorate will benefit from an additional $46 million as a whole, with each taxpayer $369.16 better off compared to the original stage 3 tax cuts legislated by the Liberal Government in 2019.
The paper used taxation statistics by postcode from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and aggregated them into federal electorates, added up the number of taxpayers in each tax bracket for each electorate.
“The modified Stage 3 tax cuts give a larger tax cut to low-and middle-income earners, the biggest winners are those electorates that have a larger proportion of low-and middle-income taxpayers,” The Australian Institute’s report read.
The Prime Minister broke a promise that the party would not amend the cuts.
While the Coalition will attempt to amend the bill, it will not stand in the way of Labor’s changes, supporting the amendment in order to ‘help Australians’.
Liberal La Trobe MP Jason Wood said his office had received “two or three emails” from constituents calling for the Liberal Party to support the changes.
“They didn’t want to lose the money; when I’ve gone out there, other people have, like doctors, have made it very clear to me that they’re obviously not happy about the changes.
“Overall, people really hurt, and that’s the key message I’m hearing, the cost of living…everything’s going up, insurance is going up.
“I get more emails on potholes than tax cuts.”
Mr Wood said the scrapping of funding for the duplication of Wellington Road between the 2022-23 budget and slashing over $100 million of funding the Sealing the Hills program, which was set to seal 100 kilometres of roads in the Cardinia Shire in the 2022-23 budget, are other examples of broken promises from the Federal government.
“These were election commitments made by Labor back in 2019, and they’ve walked away,” he said.
“Reducing the tax rate from 19 to 16 [per cent], we will support that, we’re not gonna stop anyone from getting a tax cut, but the point is Labor, they never put any amendments on it in the last four years and all of a sudden they change it, and that was election commitments, and that’s our issue.
“There was stage one and stage two [cuts] more for low income earners and stage three was for people earning more, and that was the agreement through two elections.”
Speaking to the ABC, Casey MP Aaron Violi also criticised Prime Minister Anthony Abanese’s “broken promise” that the Labor Party would not amend the stage 3 tax cuts.
“Most Australians will gain $804 in that low and middle income bracket,” he said.
“That, for perspective for viewers, is $15 a week, starting on the 1st of July.
“Petrol in my community is $2.19 today, that’s about six litres of petrol in about five months that this government is promising people for cost of living.
“So he’s [Albanese’s] broken his promise, he’s broken his word, and he’s not delivering significant, tangible relief to Australians today, he’s making them wait five months.
“It’s $15 a week for most, and he could have acted last year when he slugged everyone an extra $1500 on their tax bill.”
The Federal Labor Government cited a global inflation spike, interest rate rises and ‘greater global uncertainty’ as its reasons for the changes.
