{"id":679783,"date":"2026-05-19T01:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/679783\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T01:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:40:09","slug":"australia-news-live-albanese-announces-jet-fuel-fertiliser-shipments-trump-says-planned-attacks-on-iran-called-off-who-sends-experts-to-the-congo-as-ebola-death-toll-reaches-110-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/679783\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia news LIVE: Albanese announces jet fuel, fertiliser shipments; Trump says planned attacks on Iran called off; WHO sends experts to the Congo as Ebola death toll reaches 110"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said he believes the government is selling their budget well as countless business owners take to social media sharing AI images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese showing him as a new \u201cbusiness partner\u201d after changes to the capital gains tax discount.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously when you\u2019re making difficult economic reforms, that can be politically contentious,\u201d Chalmers told a Sydney press conference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not surprising to us that some people would prefer that the existing arrangements stay exactly as they are, but those existing arrangements are locking too many Australians, particularly young Australians, out of housing, and so we\u2019ve taken some difficult decisions, some politically contentious decisions to fix the challenge that we\u2019ve got at the intersection of our housing market and the tax system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Treasurer Jim Chalmers.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/33a6a7026dbb17f65591fc09c53171c48b2d85ab.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ioInpc\"\/>Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n<p>Chalmers said the government\u2019s budget had made the tax system fairer, and that the idea circulated in the memes that the government was taking 47 per cent of profits once businesses were sold was not an accurate representation of the tax changes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not changing the 47 per cent marginal rate that\u2019s being referred to in those memes. What we are changing is the way that the capital gains tax discount is calculated. There\u2019ll still be a discount, but it will be calculated according to inflation rather than the nominal discount that has applied between 1999, and now we\u2019re going back to the system that existed before this distortion was introduced into the market at the end of the last century,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Albanese said of the memes: \u201cI think some of them are very flattering, and I thank them for picking the very nice photos of me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said he believes the government is selling their budget well as countless business owners&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-679783","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\/679783","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=679783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}