Jim Chalmers, Treasurer of Australia: The Record, 2022–2026
Inflation (21220) +2.1049σ June quarter 2026
New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) +1.6228σ March quarter 2026
The Office and the Office-Holder
Jim Chalmers has been Treasurer of Australia since 23 May 2022 and has represented Rankin, in Queensland, since 2013 (Parliament of Australia). He was Shadow Treasurer from 2019 to 2022 and Shadow Minister for Finance from 2016 to 2019. Before entering Parliament he was principal adviser to the Treasurer and then chief of staff to the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer from 2007 to 2013. He holds a doctorate from the Australian National University.
The Treasurer is responsible for the Budget, the government’s economic forecasts, taxation and the Commonwealth’s part in housing policy, including the National Housing Accord. Interest rates are set independently by the Reserve Bank; the Treasurer’s bearing on them runs through the Budget’s effect on demand and inflation, which is the question at the centre of much of this record.
The Record in Decisions
He has delivered five Budgets (October 2022, May 2023, May 2024, March 2025 and May 2026) and three mid-year updates. The Budget recorded surpluses of $22.1 billion in 2022–23 and $15.8 billion in 2023–24, the first since 2007–08, followed by deficits of $10.0 billion in 2024–25 and $22.3 billion in 2025–26. Every budget-balance forecast that has now resolved was bettered by the outcome, by between $6.0 billion and $59.8 billion.
Underlying Cash Balance: First Forecast Against Outcome, $ billion
APN chart based on Commonwealth of Australia data: 2022–23 Budget (October 2022), Budget Paper No. 1, Statement 1, Table 1.2; Final Budget Outcomes 2022–23 to 2025–26, Part 1, Table 1.2. Gold bars: the forecast in the Treasurer’s first Budget; slate bars: the outcome.
His principal housing and tax decisions were these:
| Decision | Date | What followed |
|---|---|---|
| National Housing Accord: 1.2 million homes over five years from 1 July 2024 (first set at one million in October 2022) | Aug 2023 | Open: see the claims ledger |
| Redesign of the legislated stage 3 income tax cuts | Jan 2024 | In effect from 1 July 2024 as scheduled |
| Ban on foreign purchases of established dwellings | Feb 2025 | In force from 1 April 2025; extended to 30 June 2029 in the 2026–27 Budget |
| 5% deposits for all first home buyers, without caps on places or income | Aug 2025 | Started 1 October 2025 |
| Negative gearing limited to new builds, and the 50% capital gains discount replaced with indexation, from 1 July 2027 | May 2026 | Passed by Parliament in June and August 2026; holdings bought before 12 May 2026 are grandfathered |
What Was Said, and What Followed
The ledger records his principal statements on inflation, the budget and housing, tested against ABS data and the government’s own Final Budget Outcomes. Across the 67 statements identified in the record, 28 held, 16 held in part, 6 were not borne out, 3 were revised and 14 remain open or cannot be tested from public data. Of 65 forecast cells in the Budgets and mid-year updates presented since October 2022, inflation was the weakest measure and the budget balance the most consistently bettered.
| Date | Statement | What followed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Jul 2022 | Inflation “now forecast to peak at 7¾ per cent in the December quarter this year” (ministerial statement) | It peaked in the December quarter 2022 at 7.8%. | Held |
| 28 Jul 2022 | Inflation back to 2¾ per cent by the middle of 2024, inside the Reserve Bank’s target band | It was 3.8% in the June quarter 2024 and entered the band in the September quarter 2024. | Not borne out |
| 25 Oct 2022 | A deficit of $36.9 billion for 2022–23 (Budget speech) | The year ended in a surplus of $22.1 billion. | Not borne out |
| 9 May 2023 | A surplus of $4.2 billion in 2022–23, the first in 15 years (Budget speech) | A surplus of $22.1 billion, the first since 2007–08. | Held in part |
| 14 May 2024 | Inflation back in the band “perhaps even by the end of this year” (Budget speech) | Headline inflation was 2.8% in the September quarter and 2.4% in the December quarter 2024. Underlying inflation stayed above 3% until March 2025. | Held |
| 25 Mar 2025 | Inflation “sustainably back in the band 6 months earlier than anticipated” | Headline inflation left the band two quarters later and was 3.9% in the June quarter 2026. | Not borne out |
| 12 May 2026 | Inflation expected to peak around 5 per cent in the middle of the year | The June quarter outcome was 3.9%. | Not borne out |
| 29–30 Oct 2025 | “when we came to office spending was about a third of the economy” (Hansard) | Payments were 26.4% of GDP in 2021–22, the year he took office. About a third matches only 2020–21. | Not borne out |
| 3 Feb 2026 | “The Board’s statement today does not mention government spending.” (media release) | The Reserve Bank’s statement of that day attributes the rise in inflation to private demand and does not mention government spending. | Held |
| 28 Sep 2026 | “if you look at that year, 4 in every 5 dollars of demand came from private demand, not public demand.” (press conference) | Private demand supplied 79.8% of the growth in domestic demand in 2025–26. | Held |
| 26 Nov 2024 – 13 May 2026 | The 1.2 million homes target “will be hard but we can get there” (Hansard) | 307,882 homes were completed in the first seven of twenty quarters, against 420,000 on an even path. The government’s own advisory council projects the target will be reached in the December quarter 2030. The period runs to June 2029. | Open |
| 12–13 May 2026 | The tax changes will help around 75,000 more owner-occupiers into the market over a decade, with the Budget supporting up to 30,000 more homes | Ten-year Treasury estimates, published in the Budget papers and the Budget’s tax explainer. | Open |
Housing Accord: Dwellings Completed Against a Straight-Line Path to 1.2 Million, from 1 July 2024
APN calculation based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data: Building Activity, Australia, March quarter 2026, Table 37 (A83801977V, original). Gold line: dwellings completed, summed from the September quarter 2024; slate dashed line: 60,000 a quarter, the even pace to 1.2 million by 30 June 2029.
Positions Held Throughout
The Reserve Bank’s independence. His one public controversy with the Bank came in September 2024, when he said rate rises were “smashing the economy”. Asked three days later whether the remark was directed at the Bank, he said: “Of course it wasn’t my intention.” (press conference, 4 September 2024). He has presented the Bank’s new governance arrangements as strengthening its independence.
Spending and inflation. His consistent position is that the Budget has not been the main source of inflation, and that private demand has driven the rises in rates. The record supports the claim about composition: private demand supplied about four in five dollars of demand growth in 2025–26. It qualifies the claim about direction: public demand grew in every quarter of 2025 but one, and in the December quarter 2025 it grew faster than private demand.
Responsible budgets. He has described his cost-of-living measures as relief delivered without adding to inflation. That claim rests on a model of the Budget’s effect on demand that is not published, and the record cannot test it directly.
Housing and Households
Negative gearing and capital gains. The sharpest change of position in his record is on housing tax. In October 2024 he told the House: “We’ve made it really clear that our policy is not to knock off negative gearing or the capital gains discount.” (Hansard, 8 October 2024). In March 2025: “We’re not going down that route because we’re not convinced that it would build more homes to change that.” (ABC Radio Melbourne, 26 March 2025). In March 2026, six weeks before the Budget: “The government hasn’t changed its policy or position”, adding that any further changes would be “a matter for cabinet in the usual way” (Hansard (proof), 30 March 2026). The Budget of 12 May 2026 limited negative gearing to new builds and replaced the discount with indexation. That evening he said:
“Yes, I acknowledge that the government’s come to a different view about some really important policy areas.”
Jim Chalmers, 7.30, ABC, 12 May 2026 (Treasurer’s transcript)
The ledger records this as Revised: each statement described the policy then in force, the earlier position carried no end date, and the change was made openly in a Budget and acknowledged. He later said: “We didn’t finally decide on negative gearing, capital gains and trusts over the summer” (National Press Club, 13 May 2026).
Supply. He has held to the 1.2 million homes target while acknowledging its difficulty: “It’s an ambitious target, and I’m confident that we can get there if everybody does their bit.” (National Press Club, 13 May 2026). Completions have averaged about 44,000 a quarter against the 60,000 an even pace requires. APN’s New Housing Supply Forecasts (21520) reads +1.6228σ for the March quarter 2026, reflecting a large volume of work in the pipeline rather than completions.
First home buyers. Help to Buy, funded in October 2022 for up to 40,000 households, opened in December 2025; by July 2026 about 4,800 applicants had found or settled on a home. The expanded 5% deposit scheme began on 1 October 2025 as announced. Of 55,000 social and affordable homes committed by mid-2029, 7,002 had been delivered by 30 April 2026.
Under Scrutiny
The housing tax change. In the House in May and June 2026 the Opposition pressed him on the reversal of his earlier statements. In reply he read from the Shadow Treasurer’s 2020 book, which had criticised the capital gains discount: “I want to tell the House what the shadow Treasurer wrote in his own book about capital gains.” (Hansard (proof), 13 May 2026).
The inflation record. After the Reserve Bank raised rates in February, March and May 2026, the Opposition asked repeatedly whether public spending had contributed. He said that public demand “is part of the calculation of aggregate demand” but that it plainly had not caused the late-2025 rise (Hansard (proof), 9 February 2026). The ledger holds this in part: the Reserve Bank attributed the surprise to private demand, while in the December quarter 2025 public demand grew faster.
Conduct in debate. In the exchanges on this record the Speaker required him to withdraw remarks on several occasions: “Rhodes committee” (February 2023), “old son” (May 2023), “deliberately” (February 2026), an interjection (August 2026), and on 16 September 2026 his description of the Shadow Treasurer as a “karaoke clown”, for which he was also placed on a warning (Hansard (proof), 16 September 2026).
Reception
Praise has centred on the budget position and on the 2026 tax changes. Most economists surveyed by the Economic Society of Australia and The Conversation in May 2023 gave that Budget “top marks”. Of the 2026 Budget, the Grattan Institute said “the government delivered a broad and ambitious budget.”, Ross Gittins of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote “this is a good budget.”, and Ken Henry, a former Treasury secretary, said he liked that the tax agenda was “focused on restoring some measure of intergenerational equity”. ACOSS and Everybody’s Home supported the housing tax changes.
Criticism has come on spending and on the tax changes. Richard Holden of the University of New South Wales, writing in the Australian Financial Review as reported by The Nightly in October 2025, argued that a revenue windfall had been spent rather than saved, and Saul Eslake, criticising the absence of a self-imposed spending or revenue rule, said “Chalmers threw the rule out.” Warren Hogan of Judo Bank said in February 2026 that “The government spending is a big factor in the inflation”. Master Builders Australia and the Property Council opposed the tax changes as working against supply, and the Opposition Leader, Angus Taylor, and the Shadow Treasurer opposed them in Parliament. From the other side, Senator Nick McKim of the Greens said they would “leave in place the vast majority of tax handouts for the ultra-wealthy”.
Several assessments were mixed. Zac Gross of Monash University said “It’s not a given that higher spending leads to higher inflation”; Chris Richardson said “I wouldn’t have done negative gearing.”; and Michael Brennan of the e61 Institute noted of the capital gains change that “it has inflation indexation at its heart”. Fact-checkers have tested his claims several times: RMIT ABC Fact Check rated a 2022 debt claim exaggerated and a 2023 claim as spin, and AAP FactCheck found two 2025 claims misleading and a 2026 claim a mixture.
On the Record
| As reported | The primary record |
|---|---|
| That he accused Ted O’Brien of “egregious lies” (5 November 2025), as some headlines put it | Answering Mr O’Brien’s question, he attributed “an egregious lie” to the then Leader of the Opposition and spoke of “the egregious lies being told by those opposite”. He did not direct the words at Mr O’Brien (Hansard, 5 November 2025). |
| A widely shared post attributing a quotation about “wasting taxpayer money” to him (January 2026) | No such statement appears in his transcripts, releases or Hansard. AAP FactCheck found the quotation fabricated. |
APN Analytical Synthesis
The record of four years is one of a Treasurer whose budget forecasts were consistently cautious and whose inflation forecasts were not: every budget balance now resolved came in better than forecast, while inflation ran above his forecasts in 2023–24 and 2025–26 and below them in 2024–25. The strongest part of the record is the budget position, with two surpluses and deficits smaller than forecast; the most material change is on housing tax, where a position stated repeatedly to March 2026 was reversed in the May 2026 Budget and acknowledged as such. His claim that private demand has driven recent inflation is supported by the composition of demand growth, though public demand has not fallen.
The record is open. The Housing Accord runs to June 2029, the tax changes take effect from July 2027, and the September quarter inflation figures follow in October. This record is updated after each Budget, economic update and relevant parliamentary exchange. It speaks only to what the published record can independently support, and does not constitute a view on future interest rates, inflation, tax policy or the housing market.
Sources
The Treasurer’s speeches, transcripts and media releases are published at ministers.treasury.gov.au; parliamentary exchanges are from the official and proof Hansard of the House of Representatives. Figures are drawn from the following:
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (Reference period: June 2026) Consumer Price Index, Australia [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/consumer-price-index-australia], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (Reference period: March 2026) ‘Table 37. Number of dwelling unit completions’ [data set], Building Activity, Australia, March 2026 [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-activity-australia], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (Reference period: June 2026) Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/national-accounts/australian-national-accounts-national-income-expenditure-and-product], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Commonwealth of Australia, Budget Paper No. 1, 2022–23 (October) to 2026–27, and Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, 2023–24 to 2025–26 [https://budget.gov.au], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Commonwealth of Australia, Final Budget Outcome, 2022–23 to 2025–26 [https://budget.gov.au], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Commonwealth of Australia, Budget 2026–27: Tax explainer, negative gearing and capital gains tax [https://budget.gov.au/content/factsheets/download/tax-explainers-negative-gearing-capital-gains-tax.pdf], accessed 29 September 2026.
- Reserve Bank of Australia, Statement by the Reserve Bank Board: Monetary Policy Decision, 3 February 2026 [https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/], accessed 29 September 2026.
Australian Bureau of Statistics and Commonwealth of Australia material is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Calculations are APN’s and are not attributable to the Australian Bureau of Statistics or the Commonwealth of Australia.
Reception is drawn from The Conversation, the Grattan Institute, the Sydney Morning Herald (via Pearls and Irritations), ABC News, The Nightly, AAP, the Law Society Journal, Master Builders Australia, the Property Council (via Elite Agent), ACOSS, the Business Council of Australia, HIA and API Magazine, with fact-checks from RMIT ABC Fact Check and AAP FactCheck.
Disclaimer
The analysis and information contained in this publication are for general informational and strategic purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, legal, or any other form of professional advice. Australian Property Network is not a licensed financial advisor. Property values and market conditions can go up or down. Before making any property or investment decisions, you must conduct your own thorough research and seek independent professional advice tailored to your specific circumstances.
