Portfolio — 24 June 2026

Treasurer Jim Chalmers released details of a tax reform package that pursues three objectives simultaneously: making home ownership more accessible for first-home buyers, cutting taxes for more than 13 million workers, and aligning the tax treatment of labour and asset income [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139]. The political map for passage is already clear. The Greens have confirmed support for the first tranche in the House, while the Coalition and two other right-wing parties voted against the cuts and have signalled they will maintain that position in the Senate — leaving the government dependent on Greens support to legislate [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139].

On the business side, amendments will extend generous Capital Gains Tax concessions to all 2.7 million active small businesses, bringing 98 percent of all active businesses within scope [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139]. That breadth of CGT eligibility is a notable expansion and will be the headline figure for small business advocates tracking this package.

The most structurally consequential element of the release concerns superannuation borrowing. The government confirmed it will support a Greens-proposed amendment banning future limited recourse borrowing arrangements for residential property by superannuation funds — citing concerns raised across multiple prior inquiries [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139]. Treasury's framing is designed to contain the political footprint of that concession: the changes affect less than one percent of total residential property borrowing and do not alter existing superannuation tax arrangements [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139].

The reference to prior inquiries — including the Murray Financial System Inquiry — gives the government a well-established evidentiary basis for accepting the amendment, reducing the risk that the concession reads as an ad hoc capitulation to a crossbench demand.

The reform is explicitly framed as a staged, multi-tranche program. Core tax settings will be locked in from 1 July 2027, with further tranches to follow through subsequent legislation [TA-260623-treasu-6ab1ba558139]. That sequencing is deliberate: it gives the government a legislative drumbeat through the remainder of the term and signals to business that the direction of travel on tax is settled even if not all components are yet enacted.

No parliamentary segment is present for this date, so there is no Hansard record to set alongside the media release. The comms record alone establishes Chalmers's positioning: a broad-based worker tax cut anchored to housing access, combined with a Greens-negotiated superannuation amendment that the Treasury has carefully bounded in scope.