Mark Bouris's initial reaction to the Federal Budget

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Well, it was very early morning here in Sydney. I'm back in Sydney and um of course I didn't sleep very well last night because I tried to unpack the treasurer's budget for 2026 going into future years.

[00:00:16]I mean, a lot of stuff in there, but um today I'm going to be interviewing Chris Richardson, the economist. He's going to come to me via Riverside from CRA and it's going to be really interesting because Chris Richardson does not hold back when it when it comes to unpacking things like budgets and government policies etc. A lot of the stuff that's really concerning me of course is the uh changes to the capital gains tax, changes to negative gearing. Um but also importantly I want to look at have a good hard look at um what this budget is proposing to spend of the money is now going to be taking from Australians who have been accumulating assets over you know 40 50 years you know those Australians who have worked really hard those Australians who have actually got tax deductions for negative gearing and the reason by the way they got tax deductions for negative gearing is because they actually losing money the rent minus the interest was negative and they were allowed to offset that offset that against their other income which might be their wages or whatever the case may be. And uh you know why wouldn't you get a tax deduction when you're losing money and with the hope that one day the property will go up in value and one day that the property will be positively geared which is so many Australians I know have done that over the last 30 40 years. Um and it's been very beneficial to them. They've you know they've grinded away grinded away year after year after year. You know paid their strata title fees pay paid their stamp duty paid all their taxes.

[00:01:37]um you know pay their payroll tax the pay tax as they go and they've claimed a tax deduction for the loss that they made that year against that property and now those individuals are looking after their families there is wealth that's going to be passed down to their families which is probably the is the dream of most parents that one day they can leave something to their parents like I'm from a migrant family that is 100% the dream of migrant families you know like migrant families like my family they didn't have the opportunity to go to university They didn't have professional jobs, bigger incomes, etc. And uh the only way they could actually build wealth was through property, buying houses, particularly the Greek community. I mean, it's a big thing in the Greek community. You buy real estate, you never sell it. You hold it. And of course, nothing you don't get any benefits from it um by it going up in value. Sure, you feel good, but you don't get any real benefits from it because really what you're hoping is you're going to be able to leave it to your kids when you pass away. And I don't understand why you would take that that fundamental piece of Australianism out of the reason why migrants love this country because of the opportunities that other governments have given to us.

[00:02:43]This intergenerational inequity is a whole heap of crap. And in actual fact, the intergenerational inequity that has now been created by this government by taking that very same mechanism that people like me and my father and other people in, you know, similar circumstances to us have done over years in terms of building wealth for ourselves. This government has created intergenerational inequity by stripping that away from Australian kids. people from age 20 to 30, for example, who don't have a property, the only time they're going to be able to get negative gearing and capital gains tax relief is if they go out and buy a brand new property. Um, you know, like that's sort of limiting the property market to them. And actually, what that will do is that will create demand for new properties and the demand for new properties will ultimately end up pushing those prices up. every time government goes in there to try to do something to increase the incentive for people to buy real estate with um stamp duty relief or uh um you know uh grants given to them by government. All it does is increase the price of the real estate. Like that the 5% government grant uh the 5% government guarantee right now where the government guarantees your loan uh to the bank where you only have to put 5% deposit.

[00:03:58]All that's done is put a whole lot of demand into that particular category of real estate. You know, properties between 750 and 1.5 million. And that's the only if you go and have a look at totality or um any of the other um data centers that talk about prices of real estate all those prices have gone up and government once again you know so-called virtue signaling about how great their uh labor um policies are relative to labor values so-called labor values.

[00:04:27]That's a whole bunch of crap. You know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm really pissed off. I mean, I didn't sleep last night because I've been laying bed thinking about this all all night. It is a bunch of crap. If you really want to help young people save more money, try and do something about rent. Or perhaps what you can do is say to people young people, if you're paying rent on a property, you you can get a tax deduction of half that rent against your income and you have to pay less tax. Why don't we do something for young people that pay less tax? I'm happy for young people to be paying less tax. If people under pick a number under 40, anyone under 40 doesn't own a house, their tax rate is less. Fine. That's for, you know, I mean, we can be a bit more sophisticated about that, but let's reduce the tax rates. The the way forward is not increasing taxes to help what so-called intergenerational equity.

[00:05:15]I mean, they're just fancy terms to try and narrate your way out of what you're actually doing. You are increasing taxes. What we need to be doing is what like what they're doing in the United States and other countries around the world like Singapore etc Dubai reduce the taxes attract more business into this country because you got less tax more business coming into this country will employ more people and pay more wages that's what we need to be starting to see a bit of innovation like that instead of just taxing your way out of your problem anyway listen later on today I'm going to be talking to Chris Richardson a bit later this afternoon I'm going to release it tonight we're going to unpack this budget and what's it going to do to inflation important ly what do we think what more importantly what's Chris Richardson think that this budget will do to inflation therefore what's it going to do what is it going to do to interest rates and therefore how is it going to affect our economy stay tuned