The Albanese government is ruling out revisiting negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions in response to political concerns about the prime minister buying a $4.3m waterfront home, despite backbench murmurs that they should be reconsidered.
The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, confirmed on Thursday that public debate about Anthony Albanese’s purchase of the clifftop property at Copacabana, on the NSW Central Coast, had not influenced the government’s position.
“No doors have been opened here,” Marles told Sky News. “We’re not doing negative gearing. That’s been made manifestly clear and none of that has changed.”
Guardian Australia has been told that the government has also ruled out winding back the capital gains tax concessions available to property investors.
This is despite calls for a rethink from some Labor MPs who were dismayed at the timing of Albanese’s decision to buy the house, ahead of an election in which the cost and availability of housing is likely to be a central issue.
“How do you convince [voters] we’re not on the side of people with lots of homes when the boss is buying a very expensive one?” one MP asked, in comments to Guardian Australia on Wednesday. “Capital gains is where I would start.”
The Greens have also renewed their calls for the government to remove the concessions they argue are too generous and are contributing to the unavailability of affordable housing for many would-be homebuyers.
But the government is not budging in its refusal to return to the policy positions on the tax treatment of housing investments that it took to the 2019 election and which it considered rejected by the electorate.
Asked a second time on Thursday if he was ruling out changes to negative gearing in particular, Marles replied: “I just did.”
“And not only have I done that, the prime minister has made that clear,” Marles said. “Obviously none of this changes that.”
He defended Albanese’s decision to buy the property and said he and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, were entitled to have “their own private life”.
“Obviously the purchase of a property sits in that domain,” he said. “I think what Australians want to know is that when the prime minister goes to work each day, he’s focused on their challenges and their issues. And I can tell you, standing right next to him, that that is exactly what the prime minister is focused on.”
Answering questions about his house purchase on Wednesday, Albanese also said he was focused on improving the cost of and access to housing for buyers and renters and called on the Coalition and Greens in the Senate to back the government’s stalled housing bills.
The opposition has accused Albanese of being “out of touch” and “tone deaf” to public sentiment in his decision to buy the house at this time.
