Economic News

Liberal MP Tony Pasin told Parliament on 26 October of a retired farming couple with $90,000 ofLeaseincome whose tax could rise from about $8,000 to about $27,000.

"Some pain now will prevent even worse pain down the track." Of everything Governor Michele Bullock said at her media conference on 3 November 2026, that sentence most directly addressed the people who feel a rate rise first: households with a mortgage.

At the SenateEconomicsLegislation Committee hearings, McKim asked whether business owners would respond by switching to salaries, and whether a business could convert to a fixed trust cheaply.

Central bank statements are written with care, and individual phrases often carry more weight than their length suggests. In theMonetary PolicyBoard's statement of 3 November 2026, one clause did much of the explanatory work: "the Board judged that a further tightening in financial conditions …

Practitioners Dianne Hanna and Lee-Ann Hayes, of Accurium and TaxBanter, argue that the discretionary trust structure will survive the minimum tax.

When the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.85 per cent on 3 November 2026, the headline number said little about what a household might actually pay. A quarter of a percentage point sounds small. Translated …

The committee held public hearings in Canberra on 5 and 6 November into Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 3) and the Minimum Tax on Discretionary Trusts Bill.