Australia politics live: Albanese denies tax reforms aimed at courting votes from growing gen Z cohort

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said that the additional 700,000 gen Z voters being added to the electoral roll by the time of the next federal election were not a factor in deciding on the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes in Tuesday’s federal budget.

Asked by Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30 about the additional voters, Albanese said he only considered the merits of the policy change.

He said:

double quotation markIf you concentrate on good policy, the politics will look after itself.

What we’re concentrating on here is good policy in the interest of young Australians, but also in the interest of that social cohesion. In the national interest as well.

He said the government could not “sit back and continue to watch” income from labour treated differently to income from assets.

On deciding to grandfather existing negative gearing arrangements, Albanese was asked how he would explain to a young person that the negative gearing advantages are “locked in” for older generations now.

Albanese said negative gearing is still available for new builds, and the average time negative gearing operates is a little over five years because people either dispose of the property or it becomes positively geared.

He said the government is also making sure “we don’t change the basis of people who have gone into investing in a property, on the basis of arrangements that were made available to them”.