the art of political spin – defending a broken promise as ‘building trust’

In his first term, Anthony Albanese was highly reluctant to break promises. He resisted for a long time recalibrating the Coalition’s tax cuts, because he had undertaken to deliver them intact.

This term, it seems to be a different story. In last year’s election campaign, Albanese promised there would be no change to negative gearing. Asked in one of the debates to confirm that “negative gearing is off the table”, the prime minister was unequivocal, “Yeah, it’s off the table […] the key is supply, and that measure will not boost supply”.

Nor did Albanese indicate he would reform the capital gains tax.

Now, next week’s budget is expected to see changes to both.

On Monday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked about the government likely breaking promises (one directly, the other more contestable), in the name of intergenerational equity (an issue, it was pointed out to him, that was obvious before the election).

Chalmers was asked: “Is it your thought that if something’s popular […] you don’t have to promise it before an election, that that outweighs going to an election saying what you are and what you’re not going to do?”

In his defence, Chalmers turned the notion of “trust” on its head. “The best way to build trust is to make the right decisions for the right reasons,” he said.

“There are genuine intergenerational concerns and pressures in our budget, in our tax system, in our housing market and in our economy more broadly.

"I thought the prime minister put this well in some of those interviews that we saw over the weekend. A government like ours, a responsible government, cannot ignore the very real pressures and concerns that people have in our communities.

"As these pressures have been building, obviously we calibrate our budgets to the conditions that we confront.

"I think the intergenerational pressures are really serious.”

Pressed further on breaking promises, Chalmers said: “You build trust by taking the right decisions for the right reasons and explaining, if you’ve come to a different view over time, being upfront and explaining why that has been the case.

"I refer you, for example, to the necessary and I think warranted steps that we took when it came to the stage three tax cuts. When we came to a different view, we explained why, and we made the right decision for the right reason. We explained why that was necessary. I think that’s how you build trust.”

Chalmers is putting a particular slant on what happened with the tax cuts. Before the 2022 elections Labor agreed to deliver them to make itself a small target. Quite soon after the election, Chalmers tried to get Albanese to go back on that decision. Albanese held out because he worried about the consequences of breaking trust.

On these various issues, it is not so much a question of the government coming to a different view on the matters – it’s more that the political circumstances have made it possible and advantageous for it to implement its original views.

The changes the government does make to property taxes in next week’s budget may well be desirable.

The point is not to criticise whatever those changes turn out to be. The point is that we will have learned again not to take too much notice of what politicians say before elections. Once Albanese was persuaded to break his promise on the tax cuts – however justified that decision might have been – he gave notice that he’d probably be willing to break his word again.