The Federal Budget isn't great

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]having diarrhea on the tiles instead of the carpet. Hello, I want to talk about the changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing in this budget. Mainly because I'm seeing a lot of like labor hack accounts and even the media talking about like oh how this is such a [ __ ] massive win for young people and labor's done a really hard thing here when that's just like not the case. I don't want to start by saying like it was incredibly important to make changes to the capital gains tax discount as well as like negative gearing but that's not what they've done.

[00:00:40]Like yes, they did change the capital gains tax discount which is good. They should have done that. It's not going to change anything. Like it's not going to change anything substantively for people experiencing the housing crisis but also they didn't make significant changes to negative gearing.

[00:00:57]It still exists for pretty much every single property that was previously purchased as well as new properties.

[00:01:03]Like that's still a thing that people can do want to invest. The capital gains tax discount and negative gearing have had a massive impact on housing in this country in a number of ways. They've encouraged you know speculative investment and whatever but they've also like significantly pushed up the cost and the price of housing for you know people getting into the market for renters whatever. Like for investors too but like [ __ ] them. I don't care about them.

[00:01:31]These changes do nothing to deal with the existing wealth that was created through these like incentives nor do they do anything to push down the house prices that were created by this existing wealth and these incentives.

[00:01:46]What it does is like perhaps and by the Treasury's own modeling only very slightly reduce the amount of investors competing in the market for existing builds. But like this this effect is like very minor. We have the modeling to show that. And it's false to say that like it doesn't benefit people like owner-occupiers buying new homes.

[00:02:12]But this is only again very slightly.

[00:02:14]And the owner-occupiers who are looking to buy new homes are people that would have most likely already been able to buy like a new house. Not a new house, like an existing house that is new to them. But that's kind of the same with most of the government's like housing policy.

[00:02:31]Like the 5% deposit scheme and things like that. Even the 10% one before.

[00:02:37]And even like you know the super stuff.

[00:02:40]Another thing I wanted to talk about is like all this fear-mongering by landlords that are like "Oh, if you get rid of my negative gearing, I'm going to [ __ ] massively raise the rent." None of these landlords are affected by these changes.

[00:02:53]These are like they're grandfathered the buddy. Like yes, your capital gains tax discount is affected like going forward, sure. But the negative gearing still applies to you. I think the media is playing this as like "Oh, these changes are going to be detrimental to renters cuz it's going to raise rents." These changes won't raise rents.

[00:03:12]It's landlords who raise rents.

[00:03:14]Landlords will raise rents because they can, not because the tax incentives, you know, or tax discounts or tax disincentives require them to or not to.

[00:03:27]Landlords will raise rents because they can. They're evil people that profit from our human need. And that's what they're doing. Like we've already seen examples of like, you know, that [ __ ] evil guy being like "These changes don't affect me. I'm still going to raise rents by 10 to 15%." I posted an example of a rental that went up $500 like overnight after the budget. Again, these changes don't affect that landlord. But it also kind of explains the futility of like simply making these minor changes to tax settings on the housing crisis.

[00:04:01]Like if you don't introduce rent controls, if you don't introduce like mass public housing, like landlords who still control like the housing market that we require to survive, have just an ordinary amount of control over our lives and how much we spend on the things that we need to survive. I would say that like while these changes aren't like actively harmful, and I'm just referring to the capital gains tax discount changes and the negative gearing changes cuz there are budget measures that are actively harmful to working class people in this country.

[00:04:34]But what like while they're not actively harmful, these ones, um they're not necessarily [ __ ] great.

[00:04:41]Like they're pretty [ __ ] Um and the example I use is like okay, so you imagine your cat's got diarrhea or whatever. And you know, it's going to [ __ ] somewhere. And it's going to be in your house and it's not going to be in the litter box. It's the equivalent of like your cat like [ __ ] having diarrhea on the tiles instead of the carpet. It's like oh, you know, that's better than it could have been.

[00:05:07]Um but it's still not [ __ ] good, is it? But like yeah, ultimately these changes are going to benefit some of the people who probably would have been able to buy houses anyway eventually. Um but for the vast majority of people who will never be able to own a home, this does absolutely nothing for. Uh and landlords are using this as an excuse to raise rents. I think also like making changes to the tax settings in the name of generational equity and then like grandfathering [ __ ] anyways is just like kind of funny. Like it's not funny, it's pretty stupid. But like that's the Labour Party, I guess. The answer to all of this is so [ __ ] simple and it's been litigated all over the world, um, including in Australia by liberal governments in the past. And that is that the market will not provide housing or any of the things that we need to survive. We need to do that, um, and we need to build mass public housing. We need to publicly build mass public housing. We need to expropriate the wealth that has already been unfairly generated. Um, expropriate those homes, redistribute them based on need, and like do it quick smart. Because literally people are dying. Like the amount of people living in homelessness encampments are increasing. They're giving birth in these encampments.

[00:06:25]Children are dying. Like an increasing amount of people are experiencing hunger for the first time ever. Like this is atrocious. Um, these are like brutal attacks on the working class, um, that the government is doing absolutely nothing about. And yeah, I'm just like really pissed off that people are like, "Oh, what a massive win for young people." [ __ ] off. Love you all.