The stage-three tax cuts are politics over policy – and no way to save our struggling economy

‘Albanese and Chalmers are saddled with stage-three tax cuts that represent both ideological anathema and a huge fiscal burden.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The third stage of the Turnbull government’s income tax cuts were always bad economic policy, even in those distant pre-Covid days when they were designed by the then treasurer, Scott Morrison.

While they may have been “affordable” according to the doomed economic forecasts of the time, they were never fair. Nor did they have any discernible purpose beyond effectively destroying the very concept of progressive taxation – a point I made on the night they were announced in May 2018.