Anthony Albanese had his reservations about Labor's pledge in the 2019 election to scrap a generous tax break on share dividends.

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A mere shadow minister at the time, Albanese worried that abolishing franking credits, however justified, presented a risk better avoided in election season - technical changes that are difficult to explain yet easy to misrepresent.

Tougher still to propose them from opposition as then leader Bill Shorten was attempting. Albanese told some close to him that he feared Labor would face a major scare campaign, could be defeated, and would then have to forswear future changes to dividend income rules.

That is precisely how things transpired.

During the campaign, Labor MPs fielded deep concerns from pensioners and others who owned no shares, received no dividends and thus stood to be unaffected. This spoke to the confusion in the electorate.

"We misread the mood about franking credits," Bill Shorten later conceded. "In hindsight there were a lot of people who felt vulnerable."

It is an example of how Labor's shock 2019 failure has played an outsized role in Albanese's thinking around promises, mandate, and the primacy of keeping faith with voters.

Which is why it is so telling that Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have pointedly not ruled out fixing another Howard-era boondoggle for the well-off, the 50 per cent capital gains tax concession.

All the signs are that some change will happen, although in what form has not yet been determined. "You can bank on the Albanese government doing the absolute minimum," quipped one Canberra cynic to me on Friday.

We'll see. Suffice it to say, the government will avoid the pitfalls of its franking credit careen which brought protests over retrospective impact and other........

© Canberra Times