Anthony Albanese tax celebration attempt backfires as he is grilled as ‘out of touch’ on Seven’s Sunrise

Anthony Albanese’s attempt to spruik and celebrate his controversial tax changes has completely backfired in a failed breakfast television blitz that saw him slammed for being out of touch and a liar.

The Budget policies — that officially passed through Parliament on Thursday after a Labor deal with the Greens — included expanding capital gains exemptions for businesses, restricting negative gearing and delaying a new trust tax, and adding a Greens-backed ban on self-managed super funds borrowing money to buy property.

The Prime Minister and his party faced widespread backlash over the broken election promise not to touch negative gearing or capital gains, as well as a lack of consultation around the overhaul, with business owners, young Australians, the opposition and senior Labor figures themselves among those who spoke out against it.

Mr Albanese attempted to label the 45 days of intense criticism since the Budget a mere scare campaign in a TV blitz on Friday morning, headlined by an absolute grilling by Seven Sunrise hosts Nat Barr and Matt Shirvington.

“Now that it’s legislated, some of the nonsense and scare campaigns will dissipate, because people will be confronted with the reality,” he said.

“There has been a lot of misinformation, now people will have to debate reality and the reality is the system is broken.

“I, as Prime Minister, have a responsibility when something is identified as broken to do my best to fix it, even if there’s a political cost of that, my job is to do the right thing by the nation.”

Ms Barr pressed the Prime Minister on the lack of consultation with the public around the overhaul, asking him: “For 45 days, people have been angry and confused, they have been running to their accountants, they don’t know what’s happening, do you think you’re out of touch.”

“No I don’t, Nat,” he responded.

“What’s out of touch is saying the housing system is broken, but the government shouldn’t do anything about it.”

Ms Barr hit back at Mr Albanese for avoiding the question, pointing out the issue was with the “broad way” the shake-up was introduced.

“No, Nat, what we’ve done is put forward sensible legislation that’s modest,” he replied.

Mr Shirvington also pulled the Labor leader up on his “scare campaign” claims, saying Seven had been inundated with phone calls and messages from everyday Australians worried about their financial futures.

He attempted to list the elements of the tax legislation the public were worried by — including exemptions to small businesses and a “widows” tax that was abolished at the eleventh hour on Thursday — with the Prime Minister interrupting that it was “nonsense” on a number of occasions.

“Your integrity is dropping, your trust is dropping, your popularity is dropping,” Mr Shirvington said.

Mr Albanese replied: “Some of the things that you’ve raised there are just not true. We’re making no changes to people’s inheritance arrangements. None.”

The Prime Minister also defended his Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who handed down the Budget on May 12, saying he had done a “great job” despite the controversy around it.

“In the lead up to the budget, there was substantial debate already,” he said.

“We’d spoken about intergenerational equity and the need to give young people a fair crack.”

The Prime Minister faced a similar interrogation on Nine’s Today program, where he was told he had clearly been left “battered and bruised”.

Mr Albanese rolled out similar lines, saying the aim of the overhaul was to give young Australians “a fair crack” at home ownership.

“What we’ve done is to identify a problem and then do something about it,” he said.

“And I was elected as Prime Minister not to just occupy the space, but to make a difference to people’s lives.”

The Labor leader also talked up the ratified bill on breakfast radio, again stating the “scare campaigns” would now be more difficult to executive.

“A whole lot of people think at the moment that they are impacted, they’re not,” he said on radio.

Former ­Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe became the latest to express concern over the new policies on Thursday, warning the changes will not increase the supply of new houses and could stop Australia from being a great place to invest, expand, and hire people.

“We don’t have a growth agenda, we now have a redistribution agenda,” he said.

“We’re arguing over how we redistribute rather than make a bigger pie, and I feel like we’re losing our way.

“Too much political discourse is focused on how we cut the pie rather than grow the pie, and we grow the pie by investing, ­innovating, building new businesses, and hiring people with good skills.”

WA Liberal Dean Smith on Friday added that the former RBA governor’s remarks just added to a “chorus of other criticisms” over the Budget.

“Last night, the Senate passed the Budget but that cemented the Prime Minister’s position as incompetent, as a fraud and as a liar,” Senator Smith said.

The Shadow Assistant Minister for the Cost of Living described the Budget as “poorly delivered” and “poorly executed”.

“And by the Treasurer’s own admission, the government has lost paint as a result of its poor budget prosecution.

“It’s interesting today that the Treasurer has had to concede that negotiations around some of those budget decisions are ongoing.”

The Coalition and One Nation have been vocal about their opposition to the Budget policies, with Liberal leader Angus Taylor and his deputy Senator Jane Hume both vowing the party would repeat the changes if elected.

“We will repeal it in government and replace it with lower taxes, lower and simpler and fair taxes,” Senator Hume told Sunrise.

“I’m not interested in the polling. I’m interested in the outcome for Australians, and this has been a balls up from go to whoa.

“When the backlash came from business ... the number of backflips and changes and carve outs that needed to be made went on and on and on.”

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson earlier this month told the National Press Club it was one of the worst Budgets of all time.

“Albanese lied to become elected, and Australians are paying for it ... let me be blunt, if you lie once, why won’t you lie again and again and again?” she said.

“The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are desperate, and they keep saying that anyone who opposes the Budget measures is opposing the opportunity for young people to get into housing. I am loath to call this another lie, but how else do you describe it?”

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said on Friday Labor’s economic agenda was hurting the nation’s growth prospects.

“This is a redistribution agenda and the government’s been open about that,” he said.

“They’re really just trying to take from Peter and pay Paul. They reckon that this will help young people. I don’t think it will because higher taxes will hurt the economy and everyone will get hurt then.”

Dr Chalmers took aim at the Coalition and One Nation, accusing them of abandoning the field on economic reform, forcing the government to negotiate elsewhere to secure the bill’s passage.

“The three right-wing parties give us no choice but to negotiate with other parties in the Senate,” he said.

“When the Coalition vacates the field on economic reform we need to do what we can to get it through the Senate.

“We’re pragmatic about that and there’s no one party that controls all of the numbers in the Senate, so some of the implementation details we announced this week just reflect the reality of getting something through our Parliament.”