Do you see how this would significantly reduce the progressivity of the tax scale? That’s just what Scott Morrison, as treasurer and then prime minister, wanted: to shift the burden of taxation away from high-income earners and on to everyone lower down.

It’s the sort of policy you might expect from a Liberal government, but one Labor has always claimed to oppose. It initially opposed stage 3, but later changed to quietly supporting it, for fear of being branded as high-taxing by its opponents.

If Albanese doesn’t seize this chance to make the tax cuts fairer, he’ll be remembered as the prime minister who struck the greatest blow in cutting taxes for the rich. The man who did what ScoMo couldn’t.

Albanese has claimed that stage 3 will deliver tax cuts for everyone earning more than $45,000 a year. That’s true. Someone on $50,000 will have their average rate of tax reduced by 0.25c in the dollar, yielding a saving of $2.40 a week. Wow.

To get a weekly saving of more than $20 a week – not a lot if you’re struggling with much higher rent or mortgage interest rates – you have to be earning more than $90,000.

Loading

Only if your income is $120,000 will your average rate of tax be cut by 1.6c in the dollar, saving you $36 a week. At $180,000 your average rate falls by 3.4c in the dollar, saving you $117 a week. Not bad. But if you’re struggling on $200,000, your average tax rate falls by 4.5c in the dollar, and you save almost $175 a week.

According to calculations prepared by the Parliamentary Budget Office for the Greens, as they stand, the stage 3 cuts will cost the budget almost $21 billion a year.

Of that, people earning less than $45,000 a year get nothing, and those earning between $45,000 and $60,000 would get less than 2 per cent of the benefit.

The large number of people earning between $120,000 and $180,000 would get about 30 per cent of the benefit, while the relatively small number earning more than $180,000 get 44 per cent.

It’s been said by some that rejigging the tax cuts so that more of the money went to the low- and middle-income earners who’ve been hit the hardest by the cost of living – and bracket creep – would be inflationary because they’d spend more of any tax cut than would the well-off. True, but not a good enough reason to distort the tax system and keep beating ordinary families into the ground.

As it stands, stage 3 hugely benefits a minority of voters, most of whom are unlikely to vote Labor. If Albo can’t convince most voters he broke his promise because they needed a break, he ought to get out of politics.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.

Ross Gittins unpacks the economy in an exclusive subscriber-only newsletter. Sign up to receive it every Tuesday evening.