What we learned: Wednesday 13 May
We are going to wrap up the live blog here for the night. This is what made the news today:
In a fiery post-budget question time, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the opposition had been reduced to a farce.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, fronted the National Press Club and said the negative gearing, capital gains tax and trust changes, strike the right balance – the argument he’s made to those who say the policy goes too far and to those who say it doesn’t go far enough.
Chalmers, and later Albanese, said Labor is the only party in Australia occupying the “sensible centre”.
The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, says the government’s tax changes leave in place 95% of the “unfair property investor tax perks” that caused the housing crisis, but the Greens will see if it is in the direction they want before deciding whether to support the changes.
The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, labelled the changes “toxic”.
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said the Coalition would look to repeal the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax “if necessary”.
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson says Jim Chalmers’ budget is “communism taking over”.
The Commonwealth Bank’s share price has fallen 10% and the other three big banks are down over fears their profitable investor home loans will be hit by the budget’s tax reforms.
Wage rises have started to slow even as prices surge, slipping to 3.3% annually in the March quarter.
Australia’s home loan market has recorded its sharpest start-of-year slowdown since 2019 as interest rates and the US-Israel war on Iran shake confidence and stretch budgets.
The withdrawal of government funding for Invictus Australia’s national veteran sport and rehabilitation programs was confirmed in yesterday’s federal budget.
The much-hyped vision of a Trump Tower on the Gold Coast has evaporated, less than three months after a deal was announced – and without a development application ever lodged.
Until tomorrow, enjoy your evening.
Qld Labor refers embattled ministers to state corruption commission
Queensland Labor has referred embattled ministers Amanda Camm and Tim Mander to the crime and corruption commission.
The two ministers have been accused of failing to disclose an affair they conducted when they were appointed to cabinet in 2024, which the opposition claims created a conflict of interest. Labor has accused the pair of favouring each others’ electorates, which they have denied.
Opposition leader Steven Miles and deputy opposition leader Cameron Dick authored a 7-page letter requesting the body investigate the pair, and also the premier, David Crisafulli and a member of his staff.
“The Crisafulli LNP government is in the midst of a very serious integrity crisis, and you saw yesterday in the parliament, the premier and those ministers are unwilling to answer simple questions about what happened,” Miles said, on Wednesday.
“And so for that reason, we’ve written today to the crime and corruption commission to ask them to investigate every element of this integrity crisis”.
Mander and Camm say they maintained a relationship from June 2023 to May 2024, and then from June 2025. They were sworn in in October 2024.
The ministerial code of conduct obliges ministers to declare personal relationships within a month of being sworn in or whenever their circumstances changed “giving rise to a potential conflict of interest”.
The ministers and the Crisafulli government declined to comment.
