{"id":526080,"date":"2026-03-08T05:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T05:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526080\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T05:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T05:05:16","slug":"coalition-open-to-radical-tax-change-as-shadow-finance-minister-claire-chandler-skirts-tough-questions-on-future-liberal-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526080\/","title":{"rendered":"Coalition open to radical tax change, as shadow finance minister Claire Chandler skirts tough questions on future Liberal budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The shadow finance minister has refused to rule out crafting an \u201cincome splitting\u201d tax policy, as she dodged questions surrounding the Liberals\u2019 economic vision for the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler on Sunday told Sky News the Coalition was open to considering income tax splitting, after her colleague Melissa McIntosh penned a piece in the Australian supporting families looking to raise young children at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo households earning the same combined income can pay very different amounts of tax simply because one parent works part time to care for children. That doesn\u2019t recognise the value of raising the next generation,\u201d Ms McIntosh wrote on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tax income splitting allows couples or families to divide their total household income between partners to\u00a0minimise\u00a0taxes paid under a progressive tax system.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler said she had not read\u00a0Ms\u00a0McIntosh\u2019s piece but would not rule out the idea.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think we should be closed off to any\u00a0particular ideas\u00a0at this point,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s an idea that Melissa [McIntosh] thinks is worthy of consideration, then I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll all have a conversation about that if a policy is brought forward in the usual (manner).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Senator\u00a0Pauline Hanson previously raised income tax<\/a>\u00a0splitting between partners with Sky News.\u00a0She had not\u00a0costed\u00a0the policy at the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Parliamentary Budget Office\u00a0estimated allowing income splitting for\u00a0couple\u00a0with at least one dependent child would cost the tax office\u00a0$68.9billion\u00a0over ten years, in an analysis released last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A decade ago, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan said a capped form of income splitting would present a more “family friendly” taxation model before raising the idea again with Sky News in 2025.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Australian Taxpayers Alliance has also called for a “joint family tax treatment” allowing couples with children to file taxes together with a combined tax-free threshold of up to $50,000. It estimated such a change could save famillies up to $6,424 each year in 2025.<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler took over James Patterson\u2019s former portfolio\u00a0in\u00a0Angus Taylor\u2019s reshuffle in February.<\/p>\n

The Senator said her \u201cfocus\u201d was currently with watching the Labor government\u2019s budget, and would not outline a longer-term plan for Coalition policy on Sky News on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Sunday Agenda\u2019s Andrew Clennell pressed Ms Chandler on what the finance and treasury ministries\u2019 priority policies would be in the lead up to the next election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clennell asked whether James Patterson\u2019s calls to lift defence spending and Angus Taylor\u2019s suggestions of tax cuts to-come would see Liberals offering bigger budget deficits in the future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler\u00a0repeated\u00a0she was focused on watching how the government was spending.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy focus is going to be how can we get that side of the budget into balance by\u00a0identifying\u00a0waste saying where expenditure\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0be occurring so that we can be\u00a0in a position\u00a0to fund the things that we would like to fund,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again, Clennell pressed: \u201cSo bigger deficits than Labor, the same or less is your ambition?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler said her party would look at \u201cbalancing\u201d the budget.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fundamental principle is that the Liberal Party should always be the party of strong budget\u00a0management,\u00a0and there is no doubt in my mind that the Labor Party does not have the budget under control,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI got\u00a0in\u00a0politics to balance budgets, not to keep racking government debt up on the credit cards.\u00a0So\u00a0my focus will be doing everything within my power and working with my colleagues to make sure that into the future, a Coalition government can achieve balanced budgets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She would not be drawn on whether a Coalition government would cut the public service, NDIS when asked\u00a0point blank.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Opposition is not considering pushing cuts to the fuel excise as war jolts the energy supply chain in the Middle East, she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hope is that fuel prices don’t go completely crazy in the longer term out of what’s happening in the Middle East so we won’t have to consider questions around the excise. But ultimately that’s going to be a question for government when… it comes time for the budget to be handed down in May,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Pathetic<\/p>\n

Asked whether CGT or negative gearing was in her sights, Senator Chandler said: \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think the way to create more of anything, Andrew, is to tax it\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0proposals\u00a0that the government\u00a0seems to be\u00a0skirting around\u00a0at the moment\u00a0all look to me like taxes on housing… I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0want to be focused on doing anything that is going to\u00a0disincentivise\u00a0the release of more housing into the system,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clennell then raised speculation the government may consider reviewing family trust tax breaks which benefit the \u201crich or at the very least… the upper middle class\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler said she had not seen the full details but considered the proposal a \u201ccash grab\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis government has a spending problem, and when they have a spending problem… they are searching around grabbing at anything that they can potentially tax to prop up their budget bottom\u00a0line,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clennell asked, given the Coalition’s lack of concrete answers, if it too would have a \u201cspending problem\u201d the next time it is elected to power.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms\u00a0Chandler said she would not \u201crule in or out\u201d the specifics of Coalition policies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a long time until the next election and I’m very confident by then that our Coalition team will have a full package of properly costed policies developed in the usual way… to take to the Australian people to clearly demonstrate how we will be the party of responsible budget management,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The shadow finance minister has refused to rule out crafting an \u201cincome splitting\u201d tax policy, as she dodged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[261728,64,63,97099,27305,3786,44,25027,5939],"class_list":["post-526080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-andrew-clennell","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-claire-chandler","tag-coalition","tag-government","tag-news","tag-opposition","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}