Anthony Albanese visibly emotional after defending Labor’s capital gains tax and negative gearing changes
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/may/23/anthony-albanese-visibly-emotional-after-defending-labors-capital-gains-tax-and-negative-gearing-changes
35 Comments
I support these changes. I feel represented. I understand it was always going to have a vicious reaction from those with money. This is spending political capital. Don’t bend.
We don’t want an Australia that’s for the top 10 percent, so we’ve made it for the top 20 percent because anything more than that and our corporate and international masters will crack the whip!
I mean it’s a minor boon, but is this the best we’re going to get? Still zero chance for a working class person to afford a home, or increasingly even a rental.
It’s genuinely bizarre seeing outrage – albeit largely on social media – from people who, if anything, are objectively more likely to benefit (or at least see no tangible consequence) from these changes, while defending the opposing interests of those who are considerably better off.
I’m getting emotional everytime I have to interact with other people in startups and small business to stupid to form an opinion based on fact and just parrot the misunderstanding of people that are protecting their own financial interests. Can’t blame Albo for being sick of it as well.
I’d be emotional too if a bunch of finance bros, tech bros, and establishment media catering to the 0.1% stymied a long overdue reform to bring housing back to normal levels and fix a looming economic issue in this country.
This is starting to remind me of how the reaction to the mining tax went.
I really hope the outcome isn’t the same this time.
I legitimately love the negative gearing changes but stocks is the only way for young people to invest and great for the economy so that does make me a bit upset. But I’ll take this budget over anything else in this century
it’s just non-stop people upset that they didn’t get to rort the system as much as the previous generation. The people who got to scam the system earlier will always make out like bandits, it doesn’t mean we can’t change the system to be fairer now just because you were hoping to also scam it.
I actually support him now.
Unfortunately the grandfathering means it didn’t go far enough, but it’s a start!
They put a shit load of contingencies, but this was always going to be the hard part.
Every radio host, tv presenter, podcaster… They all have a voice, and they get paid enough to be part of the very bracket where it makes financial sense to use these tax benefits.
There’s left wing presenters who I’ve been listening to where I could hear the audible ‘oh shit, I’m part of the group he wants to target’.
Most of them are losing their shit because they get paid enough to be affected by this.
Geez. Imagine how emotional he might be if he raised the rate and introduced renters caps and actually built some public housing. Might disenfranchise the donors though.
Indexing everything to inflation except our wages. No tax on gas! I’m in favour of the negative gearing changes but still annoyed he lied about it. Don’t lie to win votes
I don’t understand all of this very well. Can some explain the changes, how they affect people in and out of home ownership and what it means for me as a non house owning person.
Seeing how passionately he’s defending these changes and explaining their need makes me see why people like him
These changes will make me worse off financially.
They’re the right thing to do for Australia. It’s that simple.
I don’t support these changes as they are biased and half measures
– negative gearing : why grandfather existing investments. If you are removing, remove for all
– CGT : why touch non property investments. How does that help housing affordability.
– tax breaks: 250$ a year. Really?
– spend: the focus should be reigning in spend. It’s getting out of control without much accountability
He used political capital, now has to weather the absolute storm of rich people who have access/control with the mainstream media, not just that but flow on effects this will have on people working in the property sector.
If he backs down I don’t think anyone will ever try it again, so only hope he can hold.
God I hope he holds firm, but I’m so cynical I think they’ll cave. This is some sustained pressure from all corners of the media. Please Albo 🙏
The amount of right wing talking points from friends that own businesses or have family money is extraordinary.
Problem is they are drowning out the common wage earners. The media, in general, is assisting them.
If he had left out shares and other investments from the CGT changes then it would have been such an easier conversation.
Yesterday I talked to my father about the changes and halfway through he paused me and asked “Wait..so the changes don’t effect existing stuff?”
I said “Yeah, it’s grandfathered. I think It shouldn’t all be grandfathered personally, but that’s the law.”
He was honestly surprised, he had no idea. There is literally video of major TV shows trying to grill the government and the woman says “yes, that’s exactly what’s happening.” and the media are saying “Oh, there is some messaging stuff here!” as if the government hasn’t been saying the exact same thing all week.
I personally think they should change is so IPOs and capital raises (with some rules around Dividends and buyback in) should get discounted, but otherwise they seem sane.
I think the major backlash is this is just another take take take. If you say you are going to fair up the system, then you can’t just ignore half of the issues that everyone agrees isn’t fair.
He really should have done something like adjust the tax brackets to be in line with inflation. Or look at single income vs double income families
When you claim you are doing something to fair up the system, but ignore the parts that are clearly not fair but benefit you by staying in place. You lose the moral high ground.
Claiming to be out for moral justice but ignoring half the moral shit is what’s getting him in trouble.
This is going to be an interesting and tough time. Rudd went through something similar, and Shorten lost his campaign on just the franking credit refunding section. So he got a long road ahead of him.
My partner and I are Gen Z and have a substantial mortgage, we fully support this change. We benefited from some family support to be able to buy our home and really wished that was not necessary to get into the market. Something had to change and tbh I really didn’t expect this government would do it.
The Jacinda Ardern experience. Tough knowing that you pulled your punches for years as you played out your sensible theory of change, built political capital, established yourself as a popular but pragmatic centrist. Then when you carefully try to cash the tiniest amount of that political capital, the elites run the exact same scare campaign they would have run on you if you’d stayed radical.
A vocal minority making lots of noise to a sensible desicion,dont let em shout you down Albo !!
This sucks for me as someone who just bought into the market 12 months ago, but I support the changes all the same. I genuinely hope that this doesn’t culminate to a Rudd 2.0 situation where we somehow end up worse off than we started.
It’s almost like he should never have grandfathered it
I don’t get it why is he emotional?
The position doesn’t make sense – redirect investment away from property to shares buy incentivising shares, not punishing both equally.
I guess I’m technically an investment property owner since I’ve got my apartment rented out while moving in with my partner. Even if the changes significantly negatively impacted me (which they don’t – they barely affect me) I would support the changes because I believe in sending the elevator down not pulling the ladder up behind me.
As the changes stand, they’re completely fine for me, a parent landlord investor. I’m deeply skeptical of the media stories to the contrary.
Would kind of love him him to add a change that anyone under 35 can get the cgt discount and negative gear, just to see all the boomers heads explode from the ‘unfairness of it all’
I’d be annoyed too if I had a policy position to fix intergenerational inequality and then my treasurer adjusted it based on supposedly good advice from treasury and now it doesn’t do what I wanted it to do because they wanted economic purism and didn’t properly consider against the policy baseline I was trying to set as a political position to offset the threat from radical parties tapping into a disenfranchised demographic…
Labor will fold. They can not handle anything nasty written about them by the MSM which they deeply want acceptance from.
Anyone opposed to these reforms is a greedy cunt.