Albanese now has the upper hand on tax. But Dutton will want to drag it out

This means the Labor policy costs $28.2 billion less than the Coalition policy. “We think there’s a massive black hole in what the government’s doing,” Dutton said last week. How? It is not a cost blowout. Nobody should be calling it a black hole without evidence of a fatal flaw in the Treasury assumptions.

Albanese made his move to speed things up by releasing the draft legislation for the revised package on Sunday and saying the government would introduce the bill to parliament on Tuesday in the hope it would be decided by Easter so that the tax cuts could begin on July 1.

He is trying to go on the offensive at a time when he is on the defensive regarding his personal standing. Whatever the argument about the tax cuts, Albanese still has to deal with the questions about whether he can be trusted after saying his word was his bond and then breaking his promise.

“Prime Minister, is your word still your bond?” Insiders host David Speers asked on Sunday morning.

“David, I’m an honest person,” Albanese replied. “I am up-front.”

But the questions about the broken promise are sure to continue.

Dutton will convene a shadow cabinet meeting on Monday to discuss the Coalition position before a party room meeting on Tuesday that is likely to debate the issue, while the Nationals will also gather on Monday to discuss their stance.

Dutton was asked on the Nine Network’s Today show on Friday morning about his position when host Sarah Abo made the point that many people in his electorate of Dickson would receive bigger tax cuts from Labor’s plan.

“You don’t want to take money away from them, do you?” Abo asked.

“And we’re not going to,” Dutton replied. That is the clear answer to anyone who claims a Liberal government would attempt to “roll back” the changes after the next election.

“So you’re not going to stand in the way of these changes, as a party?” Abo asked.

“I’ve been very clear that the Liberal Party is the party of lower taxes,” he said.

That suggests his alternative could offer more generous tax cuts than Labor over the decade ahead.

The public message from Dutton is logical: the Coalition will not try to block the revised tax plan in the final vote in parliament. This does not mean Coalition MPs have to be happy with the revised stage 3 package because many dislike the way it restores an entire tax bracket with a 37 per cent rate on earnings over $135,000 before a higher rate kicks in at $190,000.

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If some Liberals had their way, Dutton would have a policy to restore some of the structure of the original Coalition plan, which applied a 30 per cent tax rate on earnings from $45,001 to $200,000. The trouble is that it would be very, very expensive for the Coalition to take a highly ambitious plan to the next election.

Labor assumes the Greens will fight over amendments but will not prevent the tax changes going ahead in a vote by Easter, which means the Coalition does not have the numbers to block these tax cuts being applied from July 1.

Dutton, however, does not need to work to Albanese’s deadline. The opposition leader has a severe disadvantage because he does not have the resources of Treasury to help devise and cost his alternative policy.