分类： politics

Australia’s national Albanese government has sealed a historic infrastructure agreement with Queensland’s state government that will pave the way for more than 51,000 new residential properties across the Sunshine State, a quarter of which are reserved exclusively for first-time homebuyers with no competition from private investors.

This deal marks the third major housing supply agreement struck between the federal government and state authorities in 2024, following earlier pacts that will enable 4,000 new homes in Tasmania and more than 34,000 in Western Australia. All agreements center on funding core enabling infrastructure—from arterial roads and water networks to sewage systems and power connections— that removes barriers to developers breaking ground on new residential projects.

Under the Queensland agreement, the commonwealth will contribute a total of AU$2 billion to infrastructure, split between AU$399 million in direct grants and AU$1.6 billion in zero-interest concessional loans. The Queensland state government, led by Premier David Crisafulli’s Liberal-National administration, will match the federal government’s grant contribution with an additional AU$399 million, bringing the total infrastructure investment to AU$4 billion. Funds will be directed first to three priority development zones: Mount Peter near Cairns, Southern Thornlands, and Waraba, with the first completed homes expected to hit the market by mid-2028.

Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil emphasized that the investment in often-overlooked core infrastructure is the critical first step to expanding housing supply and driving down costs for Queensland residents. “We’re investing in the boring but essential infrastructure like roads and sewerage that help us unlock more homes for Queenslanders, because the more homes we build, the more affordable housing becomes,” O’Neil said. “This deal opens up tens of thousands of new homes to residents with no competition from investors.”

Queensland Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie echoed that urgency, noting that rapid population growth has created an immediate need for additional housing across the state. “More and more people are wanting to become Queenslanders every day, and we’re working to ensure they have a place to call home,” Bleijie said. “Availability equals affordability, and by providing funding to get the vital infrastructure like roads, water, sewerage and power in place, the builders can get building.”

The Queensland agreement forms part of the federal government’s broader AU$6.3 billion national housing agenda, which includes a new AU$2 billion Local Infrastructure Fund announced in the 2026–27 federal budget. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers explained that the government is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to the national housing crisis, combining infrastructure investment with targeted tax reforms to adjust negative gearing and capital gains tax rules. The reforms are designed to level the playing field for domestic buyers, prioritizing first-time Australian homeowners over foreign investors.

“We’re coming at this housing challenge from every responsible angle, and this budget builds on our ambitious housing agenda,” Chalmers said.

Queensland has its own long-term target to address its housing shortage: the state government has committed to delivering 1 million new homes by 2044, including 53,500 new social and community housing units. It has already allocated a separate AU$2.4 billion to housing-enabling infrastructure through initiatives such as the Residential Activation Fund.

The agreement comes as Australia’s ongoing housing affordability and supply crisis returns to the top of the national political agenda. After rolling out earlier measures to boost supply and expand access to home loans for first-time buyers, the Albanese government has now turned its attention to tax reform. The opposition Coalition, by contrast, has pledged to roll back many of the current government’s housing policies, instead focusing on cutting planning red tape and linking net overseas migration— which many conservative politicians identify as a core driver of housing unaffordability— to annual housing completion targets.

Australia’s political landscape has shifted dramatically in the wake of the federal Labor government’s high-profile backflip on a pre-election housing tax pledge, with right-wing populist party One Nation catapulting into an unexpected leading position in the first national polls conducted after the 2026-27 budget announcement.

New polling data collected by independent research firm Resolve Political Monitor tracks a two-percentage-point jump in One Nation’s primary support, pushing the party to 24% of the intended vote. Beyond party popularity, the poll confirms One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has claimed the title of Australia’s most likeable active politician, with a net performance rating of +12 percentage points – a narrow one-point lead over opposition leader Angus Taylor, who sits at +11 points.

The political gains for One Nation come at a steep cost to incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the ruling Labor Party. Albanese’s net likability rating has dropped one point from last month to a weak -13 percentage points. Worse for the Prime Minister, he has lost his long-held lead as the public’s preferred candidate for the top job: Taylor now holds a narrow advantage, with 33% of voters naming him their preferred Prime Minister against Albanese’s 30%.

The controversy at the center of this polling shift is Labor’s decision to roll back key housing investor tax concessions, a policy that directly breaks a clear pre-election promise. When parliament returns later this month, the government will move to cut the capital gains tax discount and end negative gearing for all properties except new builds and those already enrolled in the scheme. The change, announced as a core part of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ May budget, has sparked widespread public backlash, with additional commentary labeling this 2026 budget the most unpopular federal budget released since 1993 – surpassing even the widespread public anger directed at Joe Hockey’s 2014 austerity budget.

Analysts point to multiple overlapping factors that have fueled One Nation’s sudden rise beyond the broken tax promise. Long-running cost of living pressures, amplified by economic spillover from the ongoing Middle East conflict, and months of internal instability within the centre-right Coalition opposition have created a political opening that One Nation has successfully capitalized on. Resolve’s data shows Labor’s own primary vote has fallen three full percentage points to just 29%, with only 14% of voters saying their view of the government has improved since the budget announcement. Thirty-three percent of respondents now hold a worse view of Labor than they did before the policy change, while 31% report no change in opinion and 18% remain undecided.

The Coalition has seen its own primary support hold steady at 23% – a result that leaves the traditional major opposition party trailing One Nation in the latest Resolve poll. The outcome aligns with separate polling released earlier this week by Roy Morgan, which also recorded One Nation pulling ahead of Labor on primary vote for the first time in any post-election survey. Roy Morgan’s poll, conducted May 13–14, put One Nation’s primary support at 32%, compared to Labor’s 28.5%. On a two-party preferred basis, Labor only narrowly holds a lead over One Nation, 51% to 49%, marking one of the closest electoral readings in recent Australian political history. Albanese’s personal disapproval rating has now climbed to 59%, underscoring the depth of the government’s current political slump.

In a significant political shakeup that boosts right-wing populist leader Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, two senior former members of Australia’s centre-right Liberal Party have announced their departure to join the minor party, with one ex-federal senator declining to close the door on a future parliamentary run.

Hanson revealed the defections of former Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes and ex-Liberal Party Vice President Teena McQueen during a public gathering at a regional pub in Rydal, located in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, on Saturday. The arrivals mark the latest high-profile gains for One Nation, which has already welcomed former Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce and ex-South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi in recent months.

Hughes, who lost her Senate seat in the 2025 federal election, spoke to media on Sunday, confirming she had stepped down from the Liberal Party back in November. In her explanation for the switch, she said she could no longer recognize the party she once belonged to, claiming it has lost clear ideological direction. “I don’t think they know what they stand for anymore,” Hughes stated.

By contrast, she praised One Nation for retaining consistent core values over decades. “They stood by their convictions even when they were being dismissed and being quite frankly abused and treated incredibly poorly, and it’s been something I’ve been talking about with Pauline for quite some time,” she added.

When pressed repeatedly on whether she would contest a future state or federal parliamentary seat, just one year after exiting politics, Hughes refused to confirm or rule out a run. “I’m not ruling anything in and I’m not ruling anything out,” she said, adding “there has been absolutely no decision made about what that might look like in the future.”

She pushed back against suggestions she was hiding her plans, saying “I’m not trying to play possum. I haven’t made a decision at all. I really don’t know what I’m doing. So, when it comes to what I do moving forward, I may or may not run in the future and it may or may not be state or it may or may not not be federal.” Hughes noted that since news of her defection broke, her phone has been flooded with messages from supporters and commentators.

On policy issues, Hughes threw her support behind the federal Coalition’s proposal to cut welfare access for permanent residents, arguing most Australians are unaware of how much public benefit non-citizens currently receive. She also emphasized the need for Australia to prioritize quality migration over quantity, saying the country needs the “right sort of migrants … not people just making up the numbers and boosting GDP per capita so it doesn’t look like we’re in a recession.” She also drew attention to the ongoing issues surrounding the temporary closure of the Great Western Highway, a key transport route in regional NSW.

McQueen, the other defector, is known as an outspoken public supporter of former U.S. President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. For her part, Hughes has a history of internal Liberal Party tensions: she previously backed Sussan Ley in a leadership contest and has been openly critical of current Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, after she was removed from a winnable NSW Senate ticket ahead of the 2025 election.

When asked for comment on the defections, Taylor downplayed their significance, framing the move as a matter of personal choice in Australia’s democratic system. “Oh, that’s their choice,” he told Sky News. Pressed for further reaction, he added, “It’s their choice. I mean, I can, you know, I love the fact in this country we have democracy in choice. It’s a great thing.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to receive one of the international community’s most high-profile global leadership honors this September, when he accepts the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizens Award on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The award, an annual honor granted by the nonpartisan Washington D.C.-based global think tank, recognizes current and emerging leaders whose work advances solutions to pressing cross-border challenges. The awarding ceremony has long been framed by the Atlantic Council as a leading convening space that brings together sitting heads of state, senior diplomats, top corporate executives, philanthropic leaders, and figures from the entertainment and social impact sectors.

Albanese will join a long and diverse roster of past honorees that spans global politics, entertainment, sports governance and public service. Recent and past recipients include Argentine libertarian President Javier Milei, French President Emmanuel Macron, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Black Eyed Peas frontman and innovator will.i.am, former Israeli President Shimon Peres, Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who received the organization’s separate Distinguished International Leadership Award in 2010.

According to initial reporting from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which first broke news of Albanese’s selection, the think tank selected the Australian prime minister for the honor in recognition of three key areas of his leadership: his direction of Australia’s national government, his longstanding commitment to shoring up the AUKUS security partnership and expanding collective security cooperation across the Indo-Pacific, and his sustained efforts to deepen diplomatic and economic engagement with nations across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands region.

The award announcement comes as Albanese prepares to address world leaders at the annual UN General Assembly, a key global diplomatic gathering that draws heads of state from across the globe to address shared challenges from climate change to geopolitical instability.

Australia’s housing market is fundamentally broken and failing to deliver accessible homeownership for ordinary working people, according to the nation’s Housing Minister Clare O’Neil, as the center-left Albanese Labor government pushes forward with high-stakes tax reforms targeting the sector, despite early polling that suggests the move could cost it support to the benefit of right-wing populist party One Nation.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, O’Neil delivered a blunt assessment of Australia’s decades-long housing affordability crisis, stating plainly: “This market is cooked. It’s not serving the Australian people anymore … We want people on normal incomes around our nation to have a fair shot at getting into housing.”

The federal government’s planned reforms, set to be formally introduced following the release of the 2026-27 May federal budget, roll back the 50% capital gains tax discount for existing properties and restrict negative gearing — a tax break for property investors that allows rental losses to be offset against other income — to only newly constructed housing and properties already held by investors (grandfathered assets). O’Neil emphasized that the changes will not resolve the nation’s housing shortage overnight, but framed them as a critical, balanced step toward redressing systemic housing inequality, paired with a suite of additional policies designed to increase overall housing supply.

Treasury modelling cited by O’Neil projects the reforms will help roughly 75,000 current renter households transition into first home ownership, by gently cooling the rapid pace of national house price growth. While prices will continue to rise under the policy framework, modelling predicts growth will moderate enough to deliver an average $20,000 reduction in the final purchase price for first-time buyers, striking a balance between inaction on affordability and overly drastic intervention that would disrupt market stability. “We’ve got the balance right,” O’Neil said, noting that demand for reform extends far beyond young aspiring buyers: “I am just as likely to get stopped in the street by a grandparent or a parent who is desperately concerned about their kids and their ability for their kids to set down roots, grow wealth, and raise a family in this country.”

The government’s priority on expanding first home ownership comes as it faces early political headwinds from the changes. The first major public polling released since the policy was unveiled, conducted by Roy Morgan, shows One Nation has pulled ahead of Labor on primary votes in a key contested area, representing a significant threat to Labor’s electoral standing. Dismissing the poll result, Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC the government did not advance the reforms to earn short-term polling gains, but to deliver long-term progress for younger Australians locked out of homeownership by decades of policy failure.

Chalmers also defended the government’s decision to apply the capital gains tax changes to shares as well as property, noting that 90% of Australians under 25 hold no equities. He argued the current tax system is distorted, overfavoring investment in existing housing while underinvesting in new supply and other asset classes. The reforms will create a far fairer, more neutral capital gains tax regime, he said, correcting a broken status quo that has locked millions out of the market. “Some people will pretend that the current arrangements in the housing market and the tax system are working just fine. We don’t agree. We think the status quo is broken and that’s why we’re fixing it,” Chalmers said.

To pass the Senate, the government will need support from either the center-right opposition Coalition or the left-wing Greens, neither of which have signaled they will back the changes. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has already announced the Coalition would scrap most of Labor’s core housing policies if elected, and has proposed a new policy that would peg annual net overseas migration levels directly to the number of new housing completions each year. Taylor criticized Labor for setting migration targets without accounting for existing housing supply, public services, and infrastructure, telling Sky News: “This must change, and what we’re proposing here is each year the housing minister would say we’ve built this many houses and so the immigration number, the net overseas migration number, can be X.”

Australia’s federal opposition leader, Angus Taylor, has sparked fierce political debate by announcing a hardline new immigration policy that would bar permanent residents who do not pursue Australian citizenship from accessing the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and 17 other key social welfare programs. Under the plan, Taylor confirms, there is a tangible consequence for permanent residents who choose not to take up citizenship.

The proposal formed a core plank of Taylor’s budget reply speech delivered to Parliament Thursday, where the Liberal-National Coalition also outlined two other flagship policies: linking annual net overseas migration levels directly to national housing construction completion rates, and indexing Australia’s two lowest income tax brackets to inflation to offset bracket creep. If the Coalition wins the upcoming federal election, the citizenship-linked benefit restrictions will go into effect.

Appearing on SkyNews Sunday, Taylor pushed back against criticism that the policy would coerce long-term permanent residents – some of whom have lived in Australia for decades – into naturalizing. He framed the change as a matter of personal choice, not coercion. “It is their choice to become an Australian citizen,” Taylor said. “But if you don’t want to become a citizen, there is a price you pay for that. Australian citizenship has to matter. We live in one of the greatest countries in the world, and those who come here and decline citizenship still reap enormous benefits from being part of this nation.”

The policy has drawn particular concern from Chinese Australian and Indian Australian communities, whose home countries do not recognize dual citizenship. For permanent residents from these nations, taking up Australian citizenship would require them to renounce their original citizenship, a step many are unwilling to take. Taylor rejected claims the policy targets any specific national group, noting that Australia itself permits dual citizenship, and restrictions on dual nationality are choices made by other governments that Canberra cannot control.

“Other countries make choices about that, we don’t control that. That is up to them. But we must attach privileges to Australian citizenship. That’s what we’re proposing here,” Taylor said. He added that while Australia will continue to recognize dual citizenship for those who are eligible, some permanent residents from non-dual citizenship countries will ultimately have to decide whether they want to access full social benefits and commit to Australia.

Taylor also dismissed suggestions the policy shift was a response to surging support for the right-wing One Nation party, arguing the Coalition’s agenda is driven by anger at the incumbent Labor government’s policy failures, not a panic over competing right-wing parties. “We are upset and deeply, deeply concerned by the failures of this Labor government. That’s the real issue,” he said.

Beyond the citizenship policy, key details of the Coalition’s immigration and fiscal plans remain undisclosed. Taylor has yet to confirm a specific numerical target for net migration, nor has he released full costings for the proposed social benefit changes. He did confirm the policy changes would generate “many billions of dollars” in savings, and pledged to release full costings before the election in line with standard political convention, per Australia’s pre-election transparency norms.

On migration levels, which the Coalition will tie directly to how many new homes are completed each year, Taylor said the plan would cut net migration by at least 70 percent from the peak levels recorded under the Labor government, pushing annual numbers well below 200,000. Responding to concerns that lower overall migration would worsen existing skilled labor shortages in the trades sector, Taylor argued the Coalition’s policy would focus not just on cutting total numbers but also on raising quality standards to ensure migrants bring the skills Australia actually needs.

In a move that avoids immediate parliamentary conflict, Taylor confirmed the Coalition will not oppose Labor’s proposed $250 Working Australians Tax Offset in the Senate, guaranteeing the legislation will pass through both houses of parliament and become law.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the incumbent Labor government’s top finance minister, has lambasted Taylor’s budget reply as the “least responsible” he has ever witnessed in Australian politics. Chalmers argued that indexing the lower tax brackets to inflation, the Coalition’s signature fiscal proposal, would add a quarter of a trillion dollars in cumulative national debt over a 10-year period. He criticized the plan for injecting massive new stimulus into the Australian economy at a time when inflation remains elevated, warning it would drive up cost of living pressures further.

Chalmers countered that the Labor government is already committed to addressing bracket creep – the phenomenon where inflation pushes workers into higher tax brackets even as their real wage growth stalls – noting the recent federal budget created fiscal space to deliver relief in the future in a responsible and economically sustainable way.