This year’s federal budget has been the most controversial since the Abbott government’s 2014 budget, with Labor struggling to sell its new capital gains tax changes and crackdown on trusts.
Its changes have produced howls of outage from those potentially affected, and criticism from some experts.
But there have been notable supporters of the changes. Those in favour find some echoes of past tax reform from the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello years.
We’re joined on today’s podcast by Graeme Samuel, the former head of the national competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. He’s a long-time participant in and observer of economic reform, including helping, as the head of a business group, usher in the goods and services tax (GST) back in the 1990s under the Howard Coalition government.
Samuel says the latest budget’s reforms “are actually quite mild” compared to how much Australia was transformed in the 1980s and 1990s.
What Treasurer [Jim] Chalmers has done here is to try and remove the distortions that have been built into the [tax] system through successive governments – I have to say primarily Coalition governments – which have feather-bedded, if you like, those that have got vested interests. For example, in investing in capital and taking capital gains at an extraordinarily generous 50% discount rate.
Samuel says the fierce criticism of the Labor changes shows why politicians have been scared of real reform for too long.
For decades now, we have asked, urged, exhorted, pleaded with our politicians to bring about tax reform. So Treasurer Chalmers does it in this budget – and look at the hue and cry and the cries of woe and doomsday that have flowed. The problem with tax reform is that it’s very complex. It’s very complex indeed.
And probably the best economist that’s been able to explain it in all this has been Saul Eslake. And he puts it […] very, very simply: why should wage earners pay more, bear a greater share of the burden, for the provision of our hospitals, our schools, our police force, and our defence, than those who have got the benefits of capital gains, tax concessions, and the use of trusts?
Samuel says some media outlets had given people with “vested interests” against the budget too much uncritical coverage.
They’re ably assisted, unfortunately, by sections of our traditional media. And we know who they are at present. As you read the traditional media, particularly the financial press and The Australian, you don’t actually have to read the articles. You look at the byline, you know immediately what’s going to be said. It is quite extraordinary.
It reminded him of the “end of the world” claims he heard back more than two decades ago, when he was the National Competition Council’s president and helping the Howard government introduce the GST.
When we did that, there were esteemed (or self-esteemed) economists who said that this was going to be the end of the world, that what it will do is to bring in rampant inflation. And small businesses will fail, like a tsunami had hit them. It didn’t happen. Didn’t happen. We’ve got the GST today.
On supermarket competition
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken legal action against supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles. Last month, the consumer watchdog had a win when a court found Coles had misled shoppers with its “Down Down” discounts.
Asked about the supermarkets’ public reputation, he agreed they’ve “copped a reputation battering” – but argued some of that has been unfair.
The real problem that Coles and Woolies have had to face has been the slagging of them by a combination of politicians and […] at least one of my predecessors [… Yet] there’s been the opinion expressed by Justice O’Bryan in the federal court that says there’s no price gouging here, there’s been no excessive pricing.
A 2025 ACCC report found “the supermarket industry is highly concentrated”, with two-thirds of supermarket grocery sales made at Woolworths and Coles, leaving only a small share for competitors such as Aldi and independent stores.
But Samuel said there’s now stronger competition than many people realise, including from online retailers.
Amazon is proving to be a very significant competitor in this area […] What we’ve got now is some very vigorous competition occurring, to the point that Aldi now is having to reduce prices to ward off the competition coming from Coles and Woolworths. Who would have thought that would occur?
On fuel prices
The ACCC was given another $67.7 million over four years in last month’s budget to strengthen competition and consumer law enforcement, with much of for monitoring petrol pricing.
Yet Samuel said there’s nothing the ACCC can do to significantly change petrol prices.
I’m sorry, I have to laugh every time I hear about petrol price monitoring. Because, you know, we used to do it back in when I was there as chair, and I had a full report on petrol prices and the like.
There is nothing the ACCC can do about petrol prices, other than to be sure that there is proper competition occurring, that there are no price fixing arrangements occurring between retailers and the like. But in the end, petrol prices are set by international factors.
