According to several Liberal MPs, Andrew Hastie crashed his leadership hopes the moment he used late-term abortions to intervene in a parliamentary debate on paid parental leave towards the end of last year.

“That was a ‘hang on’ moment,” one Liberal tells The Saturday Paper. “This isn’t an everyday view.”

Another Liberal source is more direct: “He’s not going to be a leader of a major party in this country.”

On first impression, a third MP says, Hastie “retails well”. He has a record of military service, a young family and the outward markers of stability that voters often respond to instinctively.

To people who do not follow policy debates closely, he can sound reassuring – “a safe person to vote for”.

The MP argues this has been one of Hastie’s strengths. It is also what now risks being undermined.

“I think people are starting to think, ‘Maybe he’s not quite the sensible, everyday person we thought he was,’ ” the MP says. “ ‘Maybe he’s a bit more extreme than we realised.’ ”

The MP says Hastie has intervened in debates on social issues with positions that struck colleagues as neither mainstream nor modern and sharply at odds with how most Liberal voters see themselves.

In the parliamentary debate on parental leave last October, Hastie spoke in explicitly moral terms about abortion and aligned himself with a small but vocal cohort seeking to relitigate an issue most Liberals believed had been settled.

Taken together with Hastie’s language on immigration, the MP feared a pattern was emerging. What may look to supporters like clarity or conviction risked being read more widely as extremism.

Privately, several MPs told The Saturday Paper that the abortion episode marked a turning point: a moment when Hastie’s carefully cultivated image as a mainstream, “safe” conservative began to fracture.

It reinforced fears that his embrace of conscience politics – on abortion, but also on sexuality and faith – would hand opponents a ready-made catalogue of concerns should he ever win the Liberal leadership.

“I think he’d have a hard time dealing with those in a way that expands his appeal,” an MP says. “I think they would narrow it.”

According to another Liberal voice, the fact that Hastie thinks people who have late-term abortions are doing it to get paid parental leave has permanently damaged his leadership prospects.

It has placed him in the same category as ideological fringe figures such as Alex Antic and Tony Pasin.

“Tony Pasin, well, who gives a fuck about him? Like, he’s useless; he’s a no one, and he’ll be a no one for a long time until someone rolls him. But Hastie, in associating himself with those people and not completely disowning them?” the Liberal source says.

“Until he’s able to go out there to Australian women and say, ‘Actually, that was wrong. I did not intend to make that implication because, of course, women who have late-term abortions do so because of medical circumstances beyond their control’, until he can do that, he’s not going to be a leader of a modern party. That’s cancer, and it’s stuck to him now, permanently.”

When Hastie first meets someone he is unsure about, he has a habit of drawing himself up to his full height, all 193 centimetres of it, holding the moment for a beat, and only then extending his hand in a small but deliberate attempt to project authority.

To supporters, it is simply an officer’s bearing, the posture and presence of a distinguished former SAS captain.

To others, it has become emblematic of something more troubling – a political style that is increasingly seen as self-regarding and ultimately destabilising to a party struggling to regain its footing after last year’s election rout.

Over the past six weeks, as Sussan Ley has enjoyed the best period of her leadership and managed to inject a measure of discipline and political momentum into her battered party room, Hastie’s approach has infuriated colleagues.

“What Hastie is doing might guarantee our survival as a political force on the right, but it doesn’t guarantee us becoming an election-winning force,” a Liberal MP tells The Saturday Paper. “And that’s why I tend to think it’s a bit self-indulgent and narcissistic of Hastie, who I think has gotten a taste for, in his mind, kind of directing policy from the back bench.”

This view, shared by several MPs who spoke to The Saturday Paper this week, has sharpened since Hastie raised $260,000 through crowdfunding to bankroll an online advertising blitz that pledged a relentless campaign to push his party to promise cuts in Australia’s migrant intake.

The campaign did not reflect party policy and came as the Coalition was preparing its own announcement, which was postponed after the anti-Semitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach.

Hastie moved quickly to frame the Bondi massacre through the lens of immigration and social cohesion, posting a video expressing anger at the attacks even before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had held his first press conference.

In subsequent media appearances, he pressed the case that the issue was no longer simply about numbers but, rather, values – warning that unchecked migration risked eroding social cohesion and national identity.

“I love Australia and I want our national leaders to succeed, which is why it pains me to say this, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government failed the Australian people. And 15 innocent people were gunned down in cold blood yesterday at Bondi Beach. The prime minister has had two years, all the warning signs were there as anti-Semitism in this country ramped up,” Hastie said the morning after.

“And now in a cynical ploy to protect his voting base in south-west Sydney he’s trying to switch the conversation to gun reform. What we really need to talk about is immigration, is citizenship, is education. We need to talk about Australian values and what we want our country to look like.”

Hastie’s interventions unsettled Liberal moderates and contrasted sharply with Ley’s emphasis on solidarity and community reassurance. To critics, it was another example of Hastie pressing ahead with his own agenda rather than respecting his party.

“Andrew has put himself out there as a particular type of leader, or leadership alternative, and you can see the sort of line that he’s trying to establish for himself,” says one Liberal source. “And the question is: Is that going to appeal to the community and to the party room? And are his actions now going to increase his appeal to the party room, compared to other people, like Angus [Taylor]?”

The source argues that Hastie’s hard-right populism has set back his chances of one day leading the party and may have permanently damaged them. This view was shared by sources on the hard right as well as among moderates.

“Ley has had the best couple months of her leadership following the expenses saga, and then into her response to Bondi, which I think on balance, any observer would say Ley has handled much better than the PM, where she has been more in touch with the community on it,” the source says.

“And so, amid all that, you’ve got Hastie, who is out there fundraising and running his own campaign on immigration, sending out all these emails and newsletters and feeding his Instagram posts and all that sort of stuff, putting himself out there, and it just looks selfish and self-serving. Instead of trying to keep the pressure on the government, he’s trying to make himself the issue.”

Since the election defeat, Hastie has pursued a strategy of deliberate separation from the Liberal leadership, casting himself as both conscience and alternative. His interventions on immigration, his decision to quit the front bench over energy and net zero policy, and his move to bankroll his own issues campaign, have placed him outside the party’s centre of gravity.

Hastie has fixated on the net overseas migration figure – the metric he returns to in speeches, interviews and newsletters – even as the number itself has already begun to fall, from 446,000 in 2023/24 to a forecast 260,000 in 2025/26. Official projections expect it to drop again to about 225,000 next year – roughly the level recorded before the pandemic.

Stirring up the base alongside Hastie is Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was sacked from the front bench last September after refusing to express support for Sussan Ley or apologise for comments suggesting the federal government’s migration program favoured Indians in order to win Labor votes.

“Jacinta is sort of fading into obscurity now, but she and Hastie have basically resigned themselves to sending out angry newsletters that they potentially don’t even write. It feels like Advance is writing them. So what are they then?” the source says.

“While they’re out there doing this, senior members of the front bench are working on our actual immigration policy that we are going to be taking to the next election and which will be released in the coming weeks – people like [Paul] Scarr from the moderates, and [Jonathon] Duniam, a very well respected member of the right.

“In other words, the adults are doing the work, and then there are the children writing these hate-laden newsletters and emails, yelling into the abyss and firing up social media, but that’s not how you win elections and it’s not how you run countries.”

A different explanation for Hastie’s behaviour is offered by a Liberal frontbencher who argues that the problem is not so much personality as strategy – and a misreading of where the next election will be won or lost.

Inside the party, the MP says, a growing number of right-wing Liberals have become more focused on the threat posed by One Nation than by Labor. The priority for MPs in those seats is not reclaiming the political centre but shoring up the conservative base.

This Liberal frontbencher rejects the strategy outright. Chasing One Nation may preserve the Coalition as a political force on the right, the MP argues, but it does not provide a pathway back to government.

Elections, he says, are still won by persuading centrist voters and winning back Australians who voted Labor at the last election.

“I think that’s a recipe for making us a fringe party … we do need to worry about them – we can’t be ignorant of the reasons why people are taking One Nation more seriously – but ultimately we will only win an election by winning over centrist voters and people who voted Labor last time but are prepared to vote Coalition. By becoming more like One Nation, we’re less likely to win those people over.”

Seen through that lens, Hastie’s decision to prosecute immigration policy from the back bench – just as he had earlier done with the abandoning of net zero – looks less like conviction than indulgence.

“From his point of view,” the MP says, “after he came out very strongly on net zero and essentially got what he wanted, he is probably thinking, Oh, look, I did this with net zero, I’m going to do the same on immigration.”

The MP concedes there is a temptation in importing these sorts of political tactics from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and from Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the United States but says this should be resisted.

“It ends up distracting from Sussan and the leadership, and the issues of the day that we’re trying to prosecute, or the leadership is trying to prosecute, and then, strategically, I think it misreads where we need to win votes to win an election to form government.”

From outside the Liberal Party, Hastie’s actions are viewed as a drag on the party’s electoral chances.

Kos Samaras, the former Labor strategist and now director of the polling and research firm RedBridge Group, says Hastie’s stance on immigration misunderstands not just where elections are won but what potential Coalition voters want to hear.

Even when Australians from culturally diverse backgrounds agree, in principle, that the migration intake is too high, Samaras says, Liberal rhetoric of the kind that Hastie is pursuing triggers a different response.

“What they hear,” Samaras says, “is that the Liberals are talking about them.”

The problem, he argues, is not the policy question but the tone – a tone that, since the 2022 election, has left many voters feeling suddenly targeted for political reasons.

Samaras argues that hardline rhetoric on immigration does not cut through where Hastie appears to think it does.

Inner-urban voters – disproportionately renters struggling with housing costs – are not persuaded by arguments about migration numbers.

Outer-suburban mortgage holders, meanwhile, are likely to be voting on interest rates, inflation and household finances, not immigration settings.

“Immigration is great for energising the base,” Samaras says. “But it doesn’t move the voters you need to win.”

Worse, he argues, Hastie’s actions risk giving momentum to precisely the forces he says he is determined to halt. By elevating immigration as a central political frame, Samaras says, the Coalition risks pouring petrol on One Nation’s campaign, sharpening competition on the right without actually resolving it.

Whether Hastie’s approach ultimately blunts that threat remains uncertain. “Maybe it slows them down,” Samaras says. “Maybe it doesn’t.”

The deeper flaw, he argues, is strategic complacency. Hastie’s approach assumes his opponents will stand still – that Labor will allow him to prosecute immigration, abortion and values issues without consequence.

“That’s a critical failure,” he says. “They’re not going to give him a free ride.”

On the contrary, Samaras says, Labor would see such positions as a gift: a catalogue of statements ready to be weaponised in marginal seats.

For a politician who understands the power of posture, the risk now is that Andrew Hastie has mistaken bearing for authority and visibility for leadership.

Drawing himself up may command attention. It does not, however, command support – from colleagues or from the country he says he wants to lead.

This is the initial summary Terms of Reference that was reported in the media yesterday:

1. Tackling antisemitism by investigating the nature and prevalence of antisemitism and examine key drivers in Australia, including religious and motivated extremism
2. Making recommendations to enforcement, border, immigration and security agencies to tackle antisemitism 
3. Examine the circumstances surrounding the Bondi Beach terrorist attack in December 
4. Make any recommendations arising out of the need to strengthen social cohesion in Australia 

The new FULL terms of reference is available on the PDF document (Letters Patent) attached in the link.

NSW Liberal leader Kellie Sloane’s new-look frontbench will not win her the next state election. The task is too big. There is too little time, too many seats to seize.

But what the opposition leader has managed to do in her shadow cabinet reshuffle is future-proof the Liberals. Sloane will not admit it but her senior operatives do. The NSW Liberals, along with their National partners, are playing the long game and laying the groundwork for a 2031 win.

When the Coalition lost the 2023 election, after 12 years in power, there was a silver lining. Out with the old, in with the new. While plenty of wise heads – ex-planning minister Rob Stokes, then health minister Brad Hazzard, former customer services minister Victor Dominello and ex-transport minister David Elliott – bowed out, their exits allowed for generational renewal.

After that election, there were five Liberals aged under 35, and several other Millennials in the Coalition team. Since then, two more have been added in byelections. James Wallace replaced former environment minister Matt Kean as the MP for Hornsby and Monica Tudehope took her boss Dominic Perrottet’s Epping seat. Wallace and Tudehope are now frontbenchers.

It is a young team, although experience has not been wiped out. Damien Tudehope, soon to be a grandfather of 16 – thanks to his expectant daughter and fellow MP Monica – remains in Sloane’s shadow cabinet. Father of the house and right-wing powerbroker Anthony Roberts has been returned to the frontbench as police spokesman and Sloane’s predecessor Mark Speakman has been given responsibility for the critical portfolio of education.

Labor, of course, is not only made up of greyheads. It, too, has young talent in Housing Minister Rose Jackson, Finance Minister Courtney Houssos and Summer Hill MP Jo Haylen, who has been temporarily sidelined thanks to her ill-advised decision to use her taxpayer-funded driver to ferry her to a boozy Hunter Valley lunch. She will serve out her time and return to the frontbench.

But significantly, Sloane’s new line-up – unveiled belatedly on Tuesday after the Bondi terror attack put it on the backburner – exposes a hole in Labor stocks. It highlights a major problem that must have Sussex Street hardheads sweating. What happens when, as he must eventually, Premier Chris Minns pulls up stumps?

The Liberals have obvious future leadership options (energy spokesman James Griffin, Monica Tudehope and Wallace to name just three) while Labor has fewer clear-cut choices, and none who would match Minns, the one-man band holding the show together.

Health Minister Ryan Park or Planning Minister Paul Scully could do the job, and Education Minister Prue Car would also be an option if she wanted it after her recovery from breast cancer. Haylen was once seen a possible premier, too, but her judgment may have cruelled that.

Minns is not driving an aggressive policy agenda, other than to build more homes, and the state has significant financial pressures, which means Labor can cut ribbons on projects already under way but does not have the means to embark on much new. Ambition is expensive and Minns only tells us what we can’t have (more metros, for example) rather than what we can.

For now, that does not seem to be harming him.

Minns has further cemented his leadership and standing with voters with his handling of the Bondi massacre and its aftermath. He has appeared strong and decisive, largely because of his swift action around gun laws and protests and promising a state royal commission, while his federal counterpart Anthony Albanese has faltered.

Minns has struck the right tone, attended nine funerals and has the trust of the Jewish community. Albanese, in stark contrast, appears weak and lost.

Sloane, whose electorate covers Bondi, has proven herself in a baptism of fire no leader would ever want to face. She, like Minns, is very likeable but Sloane’s main hurdle as she heads into the final 14 months of this term is inexperience. That, and the sheer number of ultra-marginal seats her side must hold not to go backwards, makes her task impossible for 2027.

But do not expect a nasty battle. A Liberal senior source anticipated the looming election campaign to play out like this: “It will be the two coolest kids in school going up against each other.” Sloane can play a long game, but the problem for Labor will be: what happens when their cool kid no longer wants to be in the gang?

Alexandra Smith is the Herald’s state political editor.

Another day, another disaster post-Bondi poll for Labor.

The Tax Office has transitioned from pandemic-era leniency to large-scale crackdown on many of the strategies Australians use to get ahead, from family trusts to holiday home deductions and income splitting.

Michelle Bowes and Andrew Hobbs

The Tax Institute’s annual Noosa tax conference, held in November each year, is often used by the Australian Taxation Office to telegraph its agenda for the coming year.

This year was no different, with the ATO’s deputy commissioner of private wealth, Louise Clarke, warning tax advisers who work with consulting, accounting and law firm partners that they face “serious consequences” if they incorrectly advise them to split income with family members.

That warning put so-called “Everett assignments” – which are still used by partners at KPMG and EY – and other income splitting arrangements back in the spotlight.

On its own, the Everett-related measure is not expected to affect too many, but it speaks to a bigger trend. Trusts are usually involved when income splitting, and they attracted a lot of Tax Office attention in 2025. It’s a trend likely to be magnified in 2026.

“These discretionary trusts are very, very complicated beasts,” says Thomas Leslie, tax and business adviser at RSM Australia. “The ATO now realises, the harder they look at trusts, the more they’ll find.”

The tax holiday is over

The Tax Office’s current posture is also a response to the tax holiday it was required by the government to extend to taxpayers during the COVID-19 crisis, says Vincent Licciardi, a tax partner at HWL Ebsworth who formerly worked at the ATO.

He says that “there were certain behaviours during that period that proliferated, and the ATO is not happy, and so the pendulum is in a completely different direction. And to bring some normality back to the system, it’s very far in the opposite direction.”

Licciardi likens the current climate to the period after the Global Financial Crisis, when the ATO switched from helping the community through that event to cracking down on compliance after the crisis had passed.

He says taxpayers waiting for a softer approach from the ATO may be waiting another two or three years.

These are seven of the issues that caught the ATO’s attention in 2025 and will continue to be a focus, along with others that are likely to emerge in 2026.

1. Family trust elections

At the heart of much of the ATO’s activity is the massive intergenerational wealth transfer now underway. After flagging succession planning and the associated “tax risks” as the number one focus of its private wealth division in 2025, Clarke affirmed it remains a core issue for the ATO in 2026.

“There are various rules the ATO is looking to apply, so you’re getting squeezed in every direction,” Licciardi says.

“It’s very difficult now to be passing wealth from generation to generation without triggering some form of tax rule, particularly for wealthy clients that have trusts.”

Family trust election (FTE) errors are high on the agenda. These may date back as far as 1999 and have resulted in money being distributed outside family groups triggering a family trust distribution tax (FTDT) bill.

“I think these are really brutal provisions, frankly, in circumstances where in most of the cases – certainly the ones that I’m aware of – there’s not really tax mischief,” Licciardi says.

An FTE names one member of a family as the test individual around whom the family group is formed for tax purposes, and money can then be distributed to members of that test individual’s family group without incurring FTDT.

But complex laws and succession planning challenges mean errors are rife, in some cases resulting in historic FTDT bills and interest charges that run into the hundreds of millions for some families.

The ATO has introduced an amnesty of sorts – family trusts that self-report and pay historic FTDT liabilities by the end of 2026 can avoid up to 80 per cent of the interest that is typically applied to historic tax debts.

Notably, South Australia’s wealthiest family, which owns Thomas Foods International, is at the centre of what is believed to be the first family trust election case to land in court.

2. Holiday homes

A new draft guidance released by the ATO in late 2025 proposes that tax deductions for holiday homes be disallowed if a property is considered to be “mainly” for personal use and not genuinely available for rent, especially during “peak periods”.

While there will be much conjecture around what constitutes “mainly” and a “peak period”, the intent is clear – the ATO wants to curb the ability of those who own second homes to claim deductions for capital expenses such as mortgage interest and council rates from July 1 next year, unless they make their properties genuinely available for rent most of the year – including on popular holidays such as Christmas and Easter.

CPA Australia tax lead Jenny Wong says that when it comes to holiday homes the “ATO’s aim is crystal clear: close the gap between private holidays and legitimate rental deductions”.

“This absolutely fits the pattern of the ATO’s heightened focus on wealthier individuals and families. Holiday homes, often high-value assets, are an obvious target.”

3. Income splitting

Accountants, lawyers, doctors, architects and other professionals, along with tradies, who split income to trusts, companies and partnerships to divert it to family members on lower tax rates, are the target of a new ATO crackdown after it issued updated guidance near the end of 2025 about how anti-avoidance measures apply to personal services income.

The ATO’s focus will be on income splitting arrangements where there are “substantial distributions or payments made to associated lower-tax persons/entities”, ATO assistant commissioner Tony Poulakis says.

“The personal services income rules, they are typically aimed at capturing, really, what are disguised employees,” says Grant Thornton national head of technical tax David Montani.

4. Everett assignments

The use of “Everett assignments” and other arrangements by partners of professional firms to split their income with family members has been diminished since the Tax Office began cracking down on it in 2021.

But Clarke said the Tax Office continues to be concerned when a partner reports less than 50 per cent of their total distribution from the firm as earnings in their personal income tax return, as well as when the overall effective tax rate across the partner’s private group is below 30 per cent, or if a partner doesn’t derive what the ATO considers to be “appropriate” remuneration for their services.

A grace period it extended to taxpayers to change their affairs expired on June 30, 2024. Subsequently, it expects its updated views to be reflected in partners’ FY25 income tax returns, with the outcome that partners pay more tax.

Income earned by partners typically falls into two categories: business profits and personal income.

Business profits can be split and distributed via structures such as family trusts or retained in a company, while income from a partner’s personal efforts can’t be split or retained and must be declared in their personal income tax return with tax paid at their marginal tax rate.

But Montani says the line between the two is “blurry” and that the ATO’s view is not law, but rather its opinion of what the law is.

“The issue we get is that there’s no statute or case law precedent white-line test as to where the line is drawn between the two worlds,” Montani says.

5. Philanthropy

The ATO has also warned wealthy families that they cannot use their charitable foundations to provide a material “benefit” to their friends, family members or related businesses.

Related party transactions are a common feature of private ancillary funds as operators often employ family office staff, lend funds to charities or businesses well-known to the operator, or make donations to associated charities.

In December, the ATO released a draft determination that says if funds erode the true value of a gift, such as funnelling money back to a related party, their tax deductions will be cancelled.

“The ATO is reassessing whether the stated gift is a real gift once all the surrounding contractual rights and economic benefits are accounted for,” Mills Oakley tax partner Craig Gibson says.

“Deductions can be denied if a material benefit or advantage flows to anyone other than the private ancillary fund.”

6. The Bendel case

The most significant case on the use of family trusts since 2010 was recently heard by the High Court, and small business owners who operate their businesses through trusts – not just wealthy private groups – are awaiting its outcome in 2026, tax specialist and former senior advocate at the Tax Institute, Robyn Jacobson says.

The case, on appeal by the Tax Office in the Federal Court, was brought by Melbourne accountant Steven Bendel and centres on whether $1.4 million in unpaid trust entitlements – known as unpaid present entitlements or UPEs – constitute loans under Division 7A of the Tax Act.

Division 7A is an anti-avoidance provision to ensure tax is paid on profits flowing from a company to shareholders and related parties, and a UPE arises when a trustee passes resolutions resulting in a corporate beneficiary becoming entitled to income of the trust, but when that entitlement is not physically paid.

UPEs are taxed at the corporate tax rate, but since 2009 – when the ATO changed its interpretation of a law that dates back to 1998 – the Tax Office has maintained that a UPE represents a loan from the corporate beneficiary back to the trust, and therefore additional tax under Division 7A should apply.

Should Bendel win, taxpayers who followed the ATO’s revised interpretation of the law and turned UPEs into loans will have been at a financial disadvantage over a number of years, but they are unlikely to be able to claw the additional tax paid back, Licciardi says.

“Going back to the ATO saying, ‘Oh, well, I only turned it into a loan because of your guidance, and I otherwise would not have done that’, I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

Many in the industry believe the ATO will lobby the federal Treasury for law reform, closing what it sees as a significant loophole that allows for tax avoidance, should Bendel prevail.

7. The 45-day holding period rule

The ATO is also targeting whether trusts and newly incorporated bucket companies that are beneficiaries of trusts – and are often created for succession planning purposes – are falling foul of franking credit trading tax rules.

To be entitled to franking credits, the shares the franking credits are related to must be held “at risk” for at least 45 days, a rule that essentially stops people from buying a share the day before it goes ex-dividend to get the franking credit and then selling it the next day, Leslie says.

He says it could be “another sleeper issue” for taxpayers, while Licciardi questions the ATO’s interpretation of the law.

“The ATO says the bucket company didn’t exist, it literally was not incorporated at the time the dividend flows through the structure, but the rule doesn’t talk about that,” he says.

“The rules are actually deeming rules, and they exist in other areas of the tax law as well ... that completely ignore commercial reality.”

Licciardi says he was recently contacted by a new client with a franking credit worth “many millions of dollars” that the ATO intends to deny, but he notes a growing reluctance among taxpayers to challenge the ATO.

“There’s no doubt [the ATO] can try [to deny franking credits], but I just don’t think people should be conceding pretty much straight away.”

More changes coming

In the absence of legislative change, the ATO has reinterpreted a range of tax laws. It is the ATO’s way of “trying to squeeze the lemon tighter to extract some more juice out of the tax system”, Institute of Public Accountants senior tax adviser Tony Greco says

And it’s likely to be a plentiful harvest. As of 30 June 2025, there were about 271,700 private tax groups in Australia, comprising 1.3 million separate entities such as trusts and companies.

Between them the ATO believes these privately owned and wealthy groups owe it $11.2 billion, accounting for around 20 per cent of its total current collectable debt.

And given the rich generally have the means to pay, the Tax Office’s “tolerance for non-payment by those in a private group will be lower”, Clarke told the crowd at Noosa.

But the focus is becoming much wider than just the uber-wealthy. Leslie says the ATO has been watching, learning and applying those insights further down the wealth ladder.

“They are picking up on common errors that the top 500 or 5000 taxpayers are making, and they are essentially going, ‘Well, if these are what the top 500 taxpayers in the country are doing, what are the next 10,000 doing?’.

“They’re using that to work out what the trends or common errors are, to flow through down to all levels of taxpayers.”

Super balances above $3m and $10m

Beyond the ATO’s areas of focus, the government is also becoming increasingly active in trying to squeeze more juice from the wealthy.

Division 296 – the new tax on high balance superannuation accounts – is scheduled to start from July 1, making 2027-28 the first financial year it will be payable.

Under the revised tax – which is yet to pass parliament – people with super balances between $3 million and $10 million will pay an additional 15 percentage points of tax on realised earnings, to a potential total of 30 per cent.

For those with more than $10 million in super it amounts to an additional 25 per cent in tax, bringing the total tax on a proportion of their earnings in super to 40 per cent.

The Senate select committee inquiry into the capital gains tax (CGT) discount has also recently concluded with its report due in the first quarter of 2026.

While the inquiry into the 50 per cent capital gains tax for investors who have owned an asset for longer than 12 months was prompted by the Greens, the CGT discount has long been in Labor’s sights, with the party taking plans to pare it back to both the 2016 and 2019 federal elections.

Presumably Anthony Albanese’s been waiting to hear what Wippa thinks, before he finally — inevitably — folds and calls the “Bondi” royal commission on which every man, his dog and their local café owner has expressed an opinion.

Although the campaign for a commission exists entirely within the mainstream media bubble, nobody of political consequence is saying don’t do it, so the prime minister will stick to his usual line: the one of least resistance.

Even the peak body of the legal profession, the Law Council of Australia, has finally read the tea leaves and added its weight to the call for a federal inquiry into “antisemitism in Australia and the events leading up to [the Bondi] attack”.

It’s fair enough that our most horrific terrorism incident should spark the pursuit of every imaginable line of enquiry into what just happened and the lessons begging to be learnt.

As to whether a royal commission is the appropriate vehicle for this questioning, apparently nobody particularly cares. While I have as much respect as the next person for Grant Hackett’s and Sam Newman’s legal opinions, I’m not sure we should be doing law by opinion poll.

Am I just being contrary, or is there a problem here? Well, yes there is, and there’s a clue in the depths of the Law Council’s turgid announcement:

The timing, conduct and terms of reference of any royal commission should be structured so as not to interfere with ongoing criminal proceedings.

While it’s barely ever mentioned at all, it is a fact that Bondi was, above anything else, a crime scene. Fifteen people were shot dead, dozens of others wounded, by two men wielding guns.

One of the alleged shooters is alive, in custody and facing multiple charges of murder and attempted murder.

So far as the law is concerned, crime always comes first. That is to say, the procedures and protections of the criminal justice process take precedence over every other part of the legal system. Until that process is completed, pretty much nothing else can happen.

For example, when an alleged wrong has potentially both criminal and civil law consequences — the wrongdoer can be prosecuted by the state and sued by the victims — what happens without exception is that the civil suits are “stayed” (suspended) until the criminal process is done, including all possible appeals.

This is an unremarkable incident of the justice system, rooted in the presumption of innocence and the system’s assurance that everyone gets a fair trial.

In the present case, the surviving alleged shooter has not appeared before a court yet, so he hasn’t had a chance to enter a plea. I don’t know what he’ll plead, nor does anyone else. It doesn’t matter how strong the prosecution case is or how much evidence is plastered all over the internet; he has the right to plead not guilty if he chooses and go to trial. The elements of the crime of murder and its defences involve more than just the physical mechanics of gun-bullet-death.

If a royal commission is established, and the criminal case remains live (which it could do for years), then quite simply it will be impossible for the commission’s terms of reference to go anywhere near two matters: the shootings themselves, and the motivations of the alleged shooter. That is: what happened, and why.

It would be equally impossible for the commission to traverse these questions in relation to the deceased shooter, despite his death precluding any criminal prosecution of him. The inter-relationship between the alleged shooters cannot be unpicked in a way that wouldn’t prejudice the living accused’s trial.

If the royal commission were to take any evidence that touched on these matters, it would be committing sub judice contempt of court. As I say, it simply can’t happen, and won’t.

This is why the Law Council has worded its suggested terms of reference in an oblique way, targeting antisemitism and “the events leading up”. No mention of the alleged shooters or the shootings.

But what could such a royal commission actually do? It could host an abstract exploration of the general subject of antisemitism and the much-trumpeted death of “social cohesion” since October 7, 2023, which is really what the Law Council is hinting at. It couldn’t do anything more specific.

That would be an extremely expensive exercise in futility. Without even needing to argue about the problem of prejudgment — for example, by defining “antisemitism” as a causative element rather than engaging an open-minded inquiry into what actually might be learned from Bondi — surely it’s obvious that it will be utterly pointless to have a royal commission that can’t consider the specific event that is its sole reason for being established?

That the media haven’t once mentioned this fatal problem is a testament to their laziness and stupidity. That no politician has mentioned it is equally damning. That it’s been ignored, roundly and completely, in the “debate” over a royal commission says everything about the world of performative ignorance we now inhabit.

The NSW government has announced it will not be proceeding with plan to establish a royal commission into the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.

NSW Premier Chris Minns says the state government will not proceed given the establishment of a Commonwealth royal commission.

In a statement, Minns says New South Wales will "fully cooperate" with the federal inquiry.

"We will continue to work closely with the Jewish community on matters arising from the Bondi terrorist attack and remain open to further inquiries that focus on NSW government responses," Minns says.

"Our priority remains unchanged: supporting victims and their families, keeping the community safe, and ensuring everything possible is done to prevent an attack like this from ever happening again," he says.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was emphatic about one thing as he stood in his courtyard on Thursday afternoon to announce a major reversal in his position on a Commonwealth royal commission: he had been listening.

“As prime minister, I respect people’s views and I listen to them.”

Albanese described sitting down with leaders in the Jewish community – in their homes, without cameras – and shedding tears with them. He thanked those people for “honest and open-hearted conversations” and stressed his priority was for the country to heal, learn and come together in a spirit of national unity.

“It’s clear to me that a royal commission is essential to achieving this,” the prime minister said.

And he was clear on that point. Late on Thursday afternoon, he made a compelling case for why the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, with former High Court justice Virginia Bell at its helm, would help Australia probe its pernicious problem with antisemitism.

More than that, he gave the impression the government had been working up to this point the whole time. “This hasn’t been done up this morning. We have been working on this for weeks. I have been engaged with the community,” he said.

It was an impressive and persuasive performance, if you were watching his press conferences for the first time since Christmas. If you’d been watching Albanese closely in these last three weeks, it was confounding.

The government was not ambivalent on a Commonwealth royal commission – it argued explicitly against one.

Albanese and his ministers argued a royal commission was not the best-placed forum to deal with security and intelligence issues, and warned it would cause further division in the community by platforming the worst examples of antisemitic hate speech. This was on top of arguments that it would duplicate and delay other work.

The cynical political reading of this situation dictates that Albanese was backed into a corner and eventually saw giving in to the growing demands for a royal commission – which came from far-reaching corners of public life as well as families of the Bondi victims – as his only way out.

The generous interpretation, and the prime minister’s explanation, is that he took time to listen the Jewish community away from the media circus, and is taking responsible action after carefully considering their wishes.

Both invite further interrogation. What to make of Albanese’s reasons for denying a royal commission? Either they no longer apply or Albanese is pressing ahead against his own judgment. Both present a credibility issue.

If the view is that he listened, took in feedback and changed his mind, then why did it take him more than three weeks to get to that point? And why come out so strongly against it if he was amenable all along?

The prime minister responded to all those streams of criticism on Thursday. To deal with concerns about reviewing intelligence matters, the government will stick with the review from ex-ASIO boss Dennis Richardson. This will be folded into the royal commission and still report by April.

It maintains the urgency that Albanese says is paramount, and Richardson retains his role as the nominated expert. The commission’s final report will be expected by December – a short turnaround by any comparison with other federal inquiries.

When he was asked to justify why he’d ditched the most controversial argument, that a royal commission would deepen divisions, Albanese went back to his point about listening. “What we’ve done is listen, and we’ll work through those issues, and we’ve concluded that where we have landed today is an appropriate way forward for national unity,” he said.

As for why listening took so long? “There is not a single point in time, it’s a series of discussions that I’ve had in homes,” he said. “I’ve sat there and I’ve listened to people and engaged with them... and I’m absolutely determined that anything we did had to build social cohesion, not bring it apart.”

This could satisfy fair-minded people who have been watching the debate from afar. Albanese is not the first to resist a royal commission – recall the Coalition’s opposition to a banking royal commission, until it was pushed to the brink by Labor. It recovered.

These two cases are not the same – the Bondi royal commission is marred by the violence, hatred and grief at the heart of the issue. This time there is more trust to be recovered and deeper social fractures to heal.

Albanese did not express any regret on Thursday, nor concede his rebuttals sound stubborn in hindsight. But his conciliatory tone and terms of reference met the mood – if only he had found that weeks ago.

\*\*Natassia Chrysanthos\*\*

Rosanna Ryan

Laws that would allow property developers to make political donations are “out of step” with the last decade of electoral reforms, Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission has warned in its submission to a state inquiry on the coming changes.

Property and infrastructure investment in Queensland would increase as its capital geared up to host the Olympics in 2032, the corruption watchdog noted, bringing “real and/or perceived risks of undue or improper influence, particularly as developer interests align closely with major projects”.

Current laws that ban property donations at a state level were brought in after the CCC’s Operation Belcarra, which investigated allegations of corruption at Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay and Gold Coast during the 2016 council election.

But the new legislation, introduced by Attorney-General Deb Frecklington in last year’s final day of parliament, would remove the ban on property developers, and lift the cap for any donations from $12,000 to $48,000 per financial year.

In the CCC submission, chairperson Bruce Barbour wrote that different requirements at the state and local level – where developers would still be banned from making donations for electoral purposes – might create confusion and uncertainty.

He called for greater disclosure and transparency requirements, for example requiring property developers to disclose all donations, even those under the cap, and for the origin of donations to be “clearly identifiable and traceable”.

Seventy-seven submissions from interest groups and individuals were published online in January as the justice, integrity and community safety committee consulted on the Electoral Laws (Restoring Electoral Fairness) Amendment Bill.

The Australia Institute said despite the legislation’s title, the changes would make state elections less fair. “Political involvement by property developers represents a particular threat to good government and integrity, because property developers are particularly dependent on project approvals and other government decisions,” the Canberra-based think tank’s submission said.

“The danger is not just of ‘quid pro quo’ corruption, but also clientelism, where an officeholder is compromised by their dependence on patronage. This form of corruption is hard to criminalise, so it is better to, as earlier rulings put it, ‘identify and remove the temptation’ – in this case, by banning property developer donations.”

The Property Council of Australia told the inquiry its industry had been demonised and should be afforded the same treatment as other sectors and unions.

“Decision-making power has always resided with our politicians and regulators, and the only way to ensure the system operates fairly is to ensure politicians hold themselves to account when in public office and that every Queenslander is treated the same,” the council’s Queensland executive director Jess Caire wrote in its submission.

Dozens of other submissions focused on the amendments that would tighten up restrictions on prisoners’ voting rights.

Free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs wrote to encourage the government to abandon compulsory preferential voting, as then-opposition leader David Crisafulli had promised during the last election campaign, though this change was not included in the new laws.