Labor won’t make changes to stage 3 tax cuts amid pressure for more cost of living relief

The Federal Government is not looking to make changes to stage-three tax cuts, despite a growing push in a cost of living crisis.

Labor backbenchers are due to meet with Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher later this week, where they are expected to air concerns that the Government’s cost of living relief package should be widened.

Assistant Minister Stephen Jones reaffirmed the Government was always “trying to find” savings in the Budget to do more to help Australians, but was not looking at the Morrison governments stage-three tax cuts, due to come into effect July 1.

“There’s been no consideration of the stage three tax cuts, no discussion of that,” Mr Jones said.

“We are always looking at ways to find savings in the Budget but we’re not looking at, there’s been no consideration of the stage three tax cuts.”

Stage three tax cuts are forecast to cost $313 billion over a decade. In comparison, the Albanese Government’s cost of living package costs the budget about $23b.

Parliament ‘will’ pass laws before summer break

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned the Parliament they won’t be “going home” until tough preventive detention legislation is passed, as constitutional law experts warn against broad.

The High Court handed down its reasons for the NZYQ ruling on Tuesday, which found that a stateless Rohingya man from Myanmar who raped a boy was being held unlawfully in continued detention.

The decision has meant 141 people being held in indefinite detention have been released into the community.

During the last sitting week, the parliament rushed through a suite of measures that required those detainees to wear electronic monitoring devices and abide by the curfew. At the time the government said it would look to strengthen measures once they received the reasons.

Ms O’Neil said now that the government had the reasons, it would now “move quickly to establish the toughest possible preventive detention regime”, pleading for the Coalition to “work with us”.

“We are not going home until a preventive detention regime has been adopted by this parliament,” she told ABC News.

“I say to Peter Dutton today, stop slowing us down and work with us to make sure that we can pass these laws and keep the community safe.”