Labor’s budget will benefit the young – but does little to woo voters drawn to One Nation

Jim Chalmers’ budget tips the scales in favour of younger and less well-off households – but it’s middle-class gen X that are turning to the rightwing party Explore all of our 2026 Australia federal budget coverage Labor’s fifth budget will do what it says on the tin: it will benefit the young and the poor at the expense of the older and the rich. This is the most obvious takeaway from distributional analysis conducted by Ben Phillips, an associate professor at the ANU’s Centre for Social P...

By Patrick Commins Economics editor