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One Nation’s Sean Bell says Jim Chalmers’ fumbling budget defence rivals John Hewson’s infamous GST gaffe — and warns housing costs will keep climbing.

One Nation Senator for New South Wales, Sean Bell, believes the Albanese Government could lose office at the next election due to its 2026-27 Budget disaster. Picture: Facebook.

One Nation Senator for New South Wales, Sean Bell, believes the Albanese Government’s defence of its hugely unpopular federal budget has been so bad that he has compared it to John Hewson’s infamous birthday cake line.

In 1993, Liberal Party Opposition Leader Hewson could not explain to reporter Mike Willesee whether a birthday cake would cost more or less under his proposed tax reforms.

His interview played a major contribution in the failure of the Coalition to win the federal election, which took place just 10 days later on 13 March of that year.

Capital Gains Tax Shake-Up Leaves Homeowners and Small Businesses Spooked

The Albanese Government broke major election promises in its 2026-27 Federal Budget, after repeatedly arguing that it would not touch negative gearing or capital gains tax prior to the 2025 election, before reversing course.

It is introducing a minimum capital gains tax rate of 30 per cent on property and shares sold from mid-2027, and assets bought before 1985 will be brought into the tax net for the first time, but only for gains that accrue after July 1, 2027.

The existing 50 per cent discount on capital gains for individuals, partnerships and trusts will be scrapped from July 1, 2027, to be replaced with an inflation indexation model that will tax only the real gains on assets from that point.

Bell believes Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ interview with Billi Fitzsimons on her The Daily Aus podcast, following his delivery of the 2026 Budget, had similarly embarrassing moments to Hewson’s infamous “birthday cake” responses 33 years ago, when trying to explain these changes.

“We haven’t had a better example of how incompetent the Albanese Government is than with this budget,” Bell told The Daily Declaration during an Australian Jewish Association video conference.

“Frankly, watching some of the interviews that Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese have given post-handing down that budget, it’s pretty clear that they do not appear to have a clue about what they’ve done.

“In fact, in one interview with Jim Chalmers, it was so borderline incoherent that it actually reminded me of a very famous interview with John Hewson when he was attempting to talk about GST and birthday cakes.

“I think this might be one of the most poorly-received and ill-thought-out budgets in my lifetime.”

In The Daily Aus podcast, this was Chalmers’ explanation for introducing a 30 per cent minimum tax on capital gains, promoted as a way of levelling the playing field for first-home buyers by the Albanese Government.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been widely criticised for scrapping the discount on capital gains tax, while introducing a tax rate of 30 per cent on property and shares sold from mid-2027. Picture: Facebook.

“The new way that people will be paying tax on their capital gain is a more accurate reflection of how much inflation there’s been while you’ve held the asset. A different kind of way of calculating the discount, but still a discount – still paying tax at your marginal rate, but calculating the discount differently,” Chalmers said.

“The reason for that … is in 1999, the Howard–Costello government changed the capital gains tax arrangements. What happened then was, it made investing in existing homes way more attractive and other kinds of investments way less attractive because of the types of returns that people were getting.

“A lot of analysts and economists have noticed since that change was made a quarter of a century ago, was that house prices grew much more quickly than incomes. Young people now are paying a price for that policy mistake, and we’re trying to fix it.”

Not only was Fitzsimons sceptical of Chalmers’ explanations of his capital gains reforms after handing down the budget.

Small businesses across Australia have also cast doubt over whether the changes will benefit first-home buyers.

Jasmine Papalia owns and operates Minocco Concepts, an interior design small business in Sydney’s southern suburbs that specialises in residential renovations.

“We’re dealing with the couple getting into the market for the first time, the families growing and expanding, and people who are retiring and downsizing, or upsizing to accommodate grandchildren,” she told Sky News.

“It’s the first time I’ve actually had to have clients coming to me with fear-based reactions, saying, ‘Hold on, pause – what are we doing?’

“They’re looking at it, saying, ‘How am I going to access my money? Hold on – I thought I had this much. I now have this much. What are we going to do?'”

Bell: Coalition Must Unite Against Labor — Not Attack One Nation

Bell said all genuine conservative politicians in Australia now had a massive opportunity to land a potential knockout blow on the Albanese Government over its unpopular budget reforms.

But he added that Coalition members of parliament needed to stop their personal attacks on One Nation – which is surging in opinion polls – if they were to defeat the incumbent government.

“One thing I always say and consistently stress to our party and colleagues is that the real target has to be this terrible Albanese Labor Government,” Bell said.

“What we saw at the by-election at Farrer was the Liberal Party and National Party do everything they could to attack One Nation.

“And I’m very proud of the fact that for the entire time, we put the blinders on and talked positively and talked about our policies because that’s the way to do it.

“That’s what we’re going to continue to do. We’re going to continue to hold a terrible government to account.

“We’re going to recognise who the real threat is, and hopefully conservative politicians can realise that we have more in common than with our opposition.”

Mass Migration the Real Housing Villain, Says One Nation

Bell said the key to again making housing more affordable and less of a fearful proposition for young Australians would be to drastically reduce immigration numbers.

One Nation Senator for New South Wales, Sean Bell, believes the key to reducing housing prices is to drastically cut Australia’s current high migration numbers. Picture: Facebook.

This would also help renters. 

“There’s one pretty obvious explanation as to why you’ve seen a sudden spike in rental prices. That’s because you’ve had the Albanese Labor Government engaging itself in one of the largest mass migration experiments in Australian history,” he said.

“Under this Labor Government, the net growth in population is approaching two million people since Albanese took office. When you think about it, that’s an incredible amount of people.

“And that does put pressure on the market.”

Bell added that the capital gains tax changes would lead to rental increases nationwide.

“Unfortunately, the other thing I think we’ll experience is with these Labor Government changes in this recent budget, landlords are simply going to increase rent,” he said.

“The way they’ve gone about removing negative gearing is going to increase rent.

“So, with these changes that the government has brought in, unless they take active steps to dramatically cut the rate of immigration, the way the market works and the fact that the housing supply is not keeping up just means the cost of housing will continue to go up.

“And rents will continue to go up. The only way that we can guarantee that there will be some kind of stabilisation in rent prices would be to do what One Nation has proposed.

“That is to end this mass migration experiment that Liberal and Labor governments engage in, but it’s really been turned into overdrive by this Albanese Government.”

Bell said One Nation would cap visas to about 130,000 per year if it were to win office at the next federal election in 2028.

“We believe multiple issues are caused by uncontrolled mass migration,” he said.

“You’ve got issues of distortion in the housing market, issues where infrastructure can’t keep up, and our cities get completely overcrowded.

“And suddenly that starts pulling resources from rural and regional areas to build additional roads, hospitals and schools.

“Then you have cultural issues when you have governments that refuse to vet people and acknowledge that Australia is its own unique country with its own identity – you end up with things like Islamic extremism taking hold.

“That’s because you have governments that are too afraid to criticise, or afraid to say no.

“Australia is a western nation with standards we have to uphold, and things like extremist Islamic beliefs have no place in Australia.”

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Featured image courtesy of Adobe.