Backbenchers concerned about the government’s persistent yet non-specific smoke signals on negative gearing are expected to raise their concerns in the Coalition party room meeting on Tuesday.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, told reporters on Sunday he was carefully considering changes to tax policy after a discussion on Saturday with John Howard in which the former prime minister urged Turnbull to be cautious about altering negative gearing concessions.
While blasting Labor’s policy to restrict negative gearing concessions to new housing investments from mid-2017, the government is leaving its options open on capping the losses that investors can currently claim.
Victorian Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent told Guardian Australia on Sunday that he thought it was reasonable to look at both negative gearing and superannuation concessions to ensure they remained fair.
If the concessions were “out of whack” then it was appropriate for the government to “draw a line through it to make it fairer” Broadbent told Guardian Australia.
He said the government needed to act to safeguard the best interests of all Australians.
But South Australian Liberal Cory Bernardi – who has been raising his opposition to any move against negative gearing for some weeks – said on Sunday he stood by his concerns.
Changing the system would not be a positive step “for taxpayers, the government, or the country,” Bernardi told Guardian Australia.
He said one of the problems backbenchers faced was they were currently in the dark about the government’s thinking on tax reform. “One of the difficulties is responding to mooted tax changes when we only know what is being advanced through the media,” Bernardi said.
