Following Duncan Storrar’s appearance on the ABC’s 'Q&A' program on 9 May 2016, one of the milder reactions to his questions about tax cuts was an article in The Australian - “ABC’s ‘budget fairness’ victim pays no net tax”.

The article pointed out that Mr Storrar was “sporadically working as a truck driver on $16 an hour and relying on a $520-a-fortnight Austudy allowance to survive”. As a result he was labelled as a 'zero net taxpayer', an expression used to describe people who either pay no tax or whose benefits received from government are greater than the taxes they pay.