Anthony Albanese is resisting growing pressure to reverse tax cuts for Australia's highest earners, despite a spiralling cost-of-living crisis.
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Independent senator David Pocock has joined calls for the government to break an election commitment by scrapping its stage three tax cuts, scheduled for 2024, and redirect the savings towards
But speaking to the National Press Club on Monday, the Prime Minister stressed Labor had failed in its attempts to amend the stage three cuts out of the Coalition's package in 2019.
Mr Albanese said Labor stood by its decision to back the stage three cuts, half of which will go to people earning over $180,000, before the May election.
"The Parliament made a decision [in 2019] ... and we made a decision that we would stand by that legislation, rather than relitigate it. We haven't changed our opinion," he said.
Labor eventually waved through the Coalition's tax package in its entirety, and Mr Albanese said it had accepted tax cuts for high-earners to guarantee earlier relief for low-income families.
But he said he argued at the time it was unwise to predict the state of the economy in 2024.
"We were in a situation of all or nothing at the time, and we voted for tax cuts," he said.
"To vote against the package would have been voting against tax cuts, including for people who desperately needed [them] at the time."
But Senator Pocock, who holds a key vote on Labor's climate bill, insisted the intervening years - marred by the Black Summer bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, and deepening cost-of-living pressures - meant the plan should be scrapped.
He claimed a $243 billion saving could be redirected towards a Medicare rebate, "fully-electrifying" homes, and subsidised university courses.
"It's a massive amount of money ... I just don't think that we can justify handing out $240 billion over the next 10 years to the wealthiest Australians," he said.
Senator Pocock said how Labor would manage the political fallout from the reversal was a matter "for them".
"I get the Prime Minister doesn't want to open himself up to being accused of breaking an election promise," he said.
"[But] I think there's a really strong case to relook at these these tax codes and see what else could actually be be spent."
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Senator Pocock is also urging Labor to raise the Jobseeker rate to $70 per day, arguing surviving on $46 bordered on impossible.
He said the proposal should be on the table during this week's jobs and skills summit, pointing to a reduction in poverty when the rate was temporarily boosted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think to live on $46 a day is incredibly difficult, if not impossible," he told the ABC's RN on Monday.
"We have to be looking after people who need that support to actually be able to get back into the into the workforce.
"It doesn't make sense to have Australians living in poverty."
Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh in April revealed the party had no plans to increase Jobseeker payments, and had put a plan to review unemployment benefits on ice.
