{"id":677713,"date":"2026-05-18T01:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T01:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677713\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T01:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T01:41:09","slug":"australia-news-live-support-for-labor-albanese-slumps-after-budget-ebola-outbreak-in-drc-uganda-declared-public-health-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677713\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia news LIVE: Support for Labor, Albanese slumps after budget; Ebola outbreak in DRC, Uganda declared public health emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Environment Minister Murray Watt has brushed off poor polling of the government\u2019s budget, saying that Labor made unannounced changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to fix the housing crisis, not bolster the government\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t design these budget measures &#8230; so that we could get some sort of short-term hit in the polls. We didn\u2019t expect to get a bounce in the polls. What we\u2019re doing it to do, to achieve, is to boost the number of young Australians who can get a foothold in the housing market,\u201d Watt told ABC radio.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we change our position, we\u2019ve got an obligation to explain that, and again, if we think about the alternative &#8230; it\u2019s that we just leave things in place as they are: seeing more and more young Australians, in particular, shut out of the market, rents continuing to spiral, and greater inequality in our society, and that\u2019s not what a Labor government is about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Environment Minister Murray Watt.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/49e9ed6b547dfb67d8247064f42bd21bebe96842.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Environment Minister Murray Watt.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n<p>In this masthead\u2019s Resolve Political Monitor, published last night, Labor slumped 3 percentage points and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor took over Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister. More than a third of polled voters said their view of Labor had been damaged after the government broke an election promise not to touch negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s our job to get out there and explain these decisions, and you know, I\u2019m still finding there\u2019s a lot of people who haven\u2019t heard that, for example, negative gearing that\u2019s already occurred is grandfathered, so people can continue the arrangements they\u2019ve got in place already, and of course people will still be able to negatively gear new builds,\u201d Watt said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re not only building their own wealth, but they\u2019re adding to the country\u2019s wealth as well. So that\u2019s the job we\u2019ve got ahead of us over the next few weeks and months, is to explain these changes and demonstrate that they will allow more young Australians to get into the housing market when they\u2019ve been shut out for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Environment Minister Murray Watt has brushed off poor polling of the government\u2019s budget, saying that Labor made unannounced&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-677713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677713","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=677713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}