Treasurer Jim Chalmers has appeared to confirm the Government asked for the modelling on potential changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax that have ignited a political storm for Labor.
Dr Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have never denied the controversial ideas were examined but have been vague when pushed on who exactly who sought it.
Mr Albanese on Thursday implied Treasury undertook the modelling on its own volition when he said the public servants were not “school children with teachers up the front of the class telling them what to do”.
“Treasury don’t need to be directed,” he said.
But speaking in Beijing on Friday, Dr Chalmers seemingly confirmed the Government requested the work, without explicitly saying so.
“When it comes to negative gearing changes, it is not unusual at all for governments or for treasurers to get advice on contentious issues which are in the public domain, including in the Parliament,” Dr Chalmers said.
“It is not unusual for treasurers to do that.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor seized on the comments, saying either Mr Albanese lied or Dr Chalmers kept it secret.
Dr Chalmers repeated his line earlier this week that the Government had an ambitious housing agenda and changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax “aren’t part of it”.
“We’ve made it clear our policy is to boost supply,” he said.
“Our policy is to invest $32 billion in that effort. And these changes (to negative gearing), which we get advice on from time to time, because they’re in the public domain or they’re in the parliament, they’re not part of that policy.”
The question of who requested the modelling is significant because it goes to how serious Labor is about resurrecting some of version of the policies Bill Shorten took to the failed 2016 and 2019 elections.
Treasury officials are constantly modelling policies as part of routine work overseeing the national economy.
But if it was specifically instructed by the Government to examine negative gearing changes as an option to tackle the housing crisis, that would suggest Labor is genuinely open to it.
The bombshell decision to re-jig stage three tax cuts sprung from Treasury advice which Dr Chalmers ordered late last year as the Government searched for answers to the cost-of-living crisis.
After days of dancing around questions of whether or not he was planning to take changes to the tax concessions to the next election, the Prime Minister on Friday remained vague.
“Just to clarify, what we are doing is what we have before the Parliament. I talk about what we’re doing, not what we’re not doing,” he said.
Asked again if it was “still not ruled out”, Mr Albanese was no clearer.
“I have said what we’re doing, and I have said what we’re not doing,” he said.