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Sky News host Chris Kenny has backed former Labor prime minister Paul Keating’s call to lower Australia’s top tax rate.

In an interview with the Financial Review to mark his 80th birthday, Mr Keating declared the top tax rate is too high at effectively 47 cents in the dollar.

“There’s an issue that all societies should have of how much a person’s conscientious efforts and wealth should be delivered to the state,” he said.

“Once you start getting the top rate over, in my opinion, 39 per cent, it becomes confiscatory, and when they become confiscatory, you just lose all that impetus to make a dollar and do clever things.”

Mr Kenny said the former prime minister is “spot on” and his warning about tax is “most pertinent”.

“Keating is Labor’s greatest ever economic reformer,” he said.

“He understands aspiration, and he also understands this nation’s economic strengths and weaknesses, and for wage earners in this country to face a personal tax rate that can effectively take away half of their income, well, that is no way to encourage aspiration and prosperity.”