Shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien has said the opposition would work with the government on superannuation reforms, but would not back the proposed Division 296 tax and called for the removal of the taxation of unrealised capital gains.
Speaking during a television interview, O’Brien said “Labor’s super tax is super big and super bad” and there was not one part of it that was supported by the opposition, but he was open to discussions with the government about superannuation reforms.
“If Labor does want to speak to the coalition, then they’ll have to walk away from a lot of those aspects of what they’ve put forward,” he said.
“If [Treasurer] Jim Chalmers wants to come and have a discussion with the coalition about his super tax, he would have to firstly walk away from the unrealised capital gains component.
“At least he should be compromising on indexation. If he caves in on all of those things and wants to talk about super reform, let’s have a chat about super reform.”
He added the opposition would not change its stance on the proposed impost despite some reports he was open to supporting the bill with specific changes.
“There’s no doubt in opposition we will be constructive where we can, but critical where we must, and when it comes to this super tax at the moment, I see no choice but to be absolutely critical,” he said.
“This is such a bad policy that there is no possibility of any arrangement between the coalition and Labor, but if Labor sees the light and walks away from a whole bunch of issues here, especially those I mentioned, then certainly we can have a discussion.”
His comments follow those of opposition finance spokesman James Paterson, who also stated the government had to step away from the taxation of unrealised gains and the absence of indexation of the $3 million threshold.
“We’re going to fight this every step of the way because we think it’s wrong in principle,” Paterson said in a TV interview.
“Unless the government was willing to walk away from the two key principles in this bill, which is taxing unrealised gains and failing to index the threshold, then there’s no conceivable world in which we could support it.”
“We’re very proud to oppose it because we think it is bad tax law.”
