Jim Chalmers

Since 1999, house prices have risen over 400%, more than twice as fast as average incomes.

Our tax changes will help about 75,000 Australians achieve the dream of home ownership.

I think people will be most focused on the positive change that we're making in the tax system and in the housing market.

It has obviously involved a level of political risk because we've come to a different view.

And I've said in recent days, and I really mean it, one of the reasons I'm here taking these characteristically difficult questions from you, Sarah, is because I do understand when you come to a different view, you have to front up and explain why, and that's why I'm doing it.

This offset is targeted to workers.

and it represents the most meaningful permanent increase to the effective tax-free threshold since Labor increased it more than a decade ago.

This is about better aligning the taxes paid on these types of income with the taxes paid on wages.

These changes will level the playing field for workers and first home buyers and support investment in productive assets, including new housing supply.

And they will fund our new round of tax relief for more than 13 million Australian workers.

In this budget, Treasury also presents a more severe scenario where the oil price peaks at $200 a barrel and takes three years to fall back down.

We'd still avoid a recession, but unemployment would spike to pre-pandemic levels and inflation would peak above 7%.

Huge emphasis in the budget on

intergenerational concerns.

I think that really one of the main motivations of what we're announcing tonight is to recognise that for too long, too many people, particularly young people, have been locked out of the housing markets.

that the interaction of the housing market and the tax system is effectively broken.

The status quo is not working because it provides tax breaks of a sufficient magnitude that it crowds out young people from getting a toehold in the housing market in particular.

So really some of our biggest motivations in this budget, particularly in the tax package, but more broadly is a sense of intergenerational fairness.

The tax reforms are driven really by trying to better align

tax on people who work for a living versus people who get their income from other sources.