Australia news live: Queensland Labor ahead in Stafford byelection despite large swing

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Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the government is not contemplating changing its position on the introduction of an export tax on gas.

Labor had been under pressure internally and externally to introduce a 25% export levy as part of the budget, which would have produced an estimated $17bn revenue.

Well, not something that we’ve been contemplating.

Obviously, that’s been a lot of public debate about that and a lot of strong views about that but we’ve made it clear that there are good reasons to prioritise our gas reservation policy and the two-way supply arrangements with Asian partners.

A really big mistake was made in 1999 and it introduced this massive distortion in the way that Australians invest in our economy. It made fixed housing much more attractive and it made other kinds of investment less attractive.

So by taking that distortion out of the system, it is a fairer, more neutral treatment of investment, capital gains in particular, and if you look at the average over a couple of decades, since that policy mistake was made by Howard and Costello, what you can see on average is that established housing was overcompensated. Shares were under-compensated. That’s one of the reasons we had this big spike in prices.

We didn’t do this to get a bounce in the polls.

We did it to get a boost in first home-ownership, particularly among younger Australians who have been locked out.