DEAR News Of The Area,
JIM Chalmers’ address to the National Press Club yesterday was filled with meaningless platitudes and uncomfortable contradictions that saw him continue his self-appointed role as a sideline commentator rather than the nation’s Treasurer.
That may have passed during the first year of his first term, but as we look down the barrel of another three years under Labor, it’s surely time to get off the bench and into the economy’s captaincy jersey which was bestowed upon him by the Australian people.
While he stopped short of blatantly admitting that the budget presented only three months ago was not fit for purpose, the message was loud and clear.
Labor’s 2025/26 budget was an unsustainable election sweetener only, designed purely to provide enough of a sugar hit to attract votes while ignoring the real needs and challenges in our economy and its workforce.
Why else would this Government decide to hold Round Tables now, rather than before presenting the most recent budget?
Surely, after three years of successive declines in growth and productivity, to the point that we now have a GDP growth rate so low that it rivals the early-90s, the writing was already on the wall, looming large in bold and red.
Perhaps if these Round Tables had occurred in year one rather than year four, we wouldn’t be dangling so close to the recession precipice.
The fact is, Jim’s budget can’t be padded by commodities pricing this time, or ‘those things we sell overseas’ as he put it in his first budget speech, rather than saying ‘our mining and agricultural industries’, as though those were dirty words.
So now, to pay for those election promises and sugar hits, the Treasurer is looking to raid the Self-Managed Super Funds of primary producers and small businesses.
The proposed Super Tax is not the ‘tax the rich’ strategy that it purports to be.
It’s the death of generational farming and a punishment for those small businesses that were working within the rules to safeguard their assets and income in retirement.
Taxing unrealised capital gains is simply not realistic and shows a complete lack of understanding for regional people in particular.
But why would we be surprised by that from a Government focussed only on inner city vote grabs.
Chalmers address yesterday served only to state that Labor ‘is planning to make a plan’.
How many more businesses need to shut their doors before this Government stops naval gazing and starts getting real on policy that will shift the dial.
Continuing the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ tactics that we have seen over the past three years is a cruel joke.
I urge the Treasurer to stop focussing on ‘Big Government’ and start focussing on the needs of everyday Australians.
Stop the ideology and face the reality that we are drowning in a sea of deficits with no lifeboat on the horizon.
Regards,
Pat CONAGHAN,
Member for Cowper.
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I was disappointed to see Pat Conaghan MP fuelling further scaremongering about the proposed superannuation tax reforms, in his NOTA Letter to the Editor, dated June 26, 2025. Conaghan says in his letter that he wants Treasurer Chalmers to ‘[s]top the ideology’ and ‘start focussing on the needs of everyday Australians’. But Conaghan is not clear about which ‘everyday Australians’ he wants Treasurer Chalmers to focus on.
Does he mean the ‘everyday Australian’ living in our Cowper electorate who, according to the 2021 Census data, earns a median weekly income of $629?
Or does he mean the ‘everyday Australian’ – aged between 60-64 – who, according to the Australian Tax Office, has a median super balance of $211,996 for men, and $158,806 for women?
Only in their wildest dreams will these ‘everyday Australians’ meet the $3 million threshold whereby Treasurer Chalmers’ proposed superannuation tax reforms would impact on them.
In fact, as the Superannuation and Wealth Management Consultant, Harry Chemay explains, modelling conducted in 2019 by Treasury, demonstrated how today’s median, young Australian male would accrue a super balance somewhere around $500,000 (in 2019 dollars) by 2060, with females accruing around 10% less. So, which ‘everyday Australians’ is Conaghan really concerned about?
What is clear is that if we are genuinely concerned about ‘everyday Australians’ and intergenerational inequality in Australia, we must drop the ideology, consider the facts about tax reform, and stop scaremongering.
For instance, it is now well recognised that Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSFs) have become highly tax-efficient vehicles for wealth creation. But not for ‘everyday Australians’. Only the one million Australians who, since the mid-2000s, have been using SMSFs to shelter their concessionally taxed wealth. As Chemay tells us, superannuation was never meant to be an inexhaustible magic pudding for the ultra-wealthy. And we will soon see which ‘everyday Australian’ Conaghan is truly concerned about when Federal Parliament resumes, and he casts his vote on this important piece of tax reform.
Dr Catherine Settle
Concerned Cowper voter