Budget 2026: That escalated quickly…
Chalmers kicks home-owner hopefuls in the teeth, Albanese takes the credit.
When the Albanese government's Budget plan to replace the 50 per cent capital gains discount with the pre-1999 inflation indexation model was leaked last week, I had to wonder if it was a false flag operation. Get everyone worked up about an outrageous tax grab across all asset classes only to announce on Budget night that, actually, the discount is only being wound back on residential property investors to solve for the actual policy problem.
Nope. Doctor Jim Chalmers might have a PhD on Paul Keating, but he's doing his best impression of Dr Jim Cairns. "This is a good Budget," came the verdict of Ross Gittins (virtually a Cairns contemporary). Of all the endorsements a treasurer should dread!
Chalmers and Anthony Albanese continue tacking further from the Hawke-Keating model of economic liberalism – as we first saw in the government's 2022 industrial relations reforms – towards a bastard of Whitlam-Daniel Andrews Labor. It's a salutary lesson for those who harangued the star pupil of PJK for doing nothing meaningful with his first four years on the abacus. We should've been far more careful about what we wished for.
