25/06/2026
Sad Times
Negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms have now passed both houses of Parliament.
Some corners of the country are currently imploding.
Others are quietly patting themselves on the back and trying not to frighten the property section.
This is a significant structural change. It will not solve the housing crisis overnight.
House prices will not suddenly become affordable by Monday.
Young people will not wake tomorrow to discover that a three-bedroom house near a railway station now costs sixty thousand dollars and a firm handshake like the good ol'days.
But that was never the realistic test...
For decades, Australia has operated a tax system that gave substantial advantages to investors purchasing existing property, helping turn shelter into a heavily subsidised competition between households trying to live somewhere and investors trying to minimise taxable income.
The reforms begin changing that direction.
Negative gearing will be redirected toward new housing construction rather than the endless trading of existing homes between investors.
Existing investments are protected. The change is prospective.
And the capital gains system will move away from automatically discounting half the gain, instead accounting for inflation and taxing the real increase in value.
This is not revolution by guillotine.
It is government adjusting the incentives beneath the housing market and setting a more sustainable course for the decades ahead.
The effects will take time. Structural reform usually does.
But there is another reason this matters.
For a generation of Australians who have watched governments describe housing affordability as terribly concerning before carefully doing almost nothing that might upset existing wealth, this demonstrates that difficult reform can actually pass.
That government can confront a politically protected tax concession.
That policy does not always have to surrender the moment somebody with four investment properties appears on breakfast television and describes themselves as an ordinary battler.
Will this fix everything? Of course not.
No single tax reform can carry the entire housing system home on its back.
But this is real change. It alters incentives. It challenges an entrenched advantage.
And it tells younger Australians and people locked out of ownership that their interests are not permanently subordinate to those who already got through the door.
Big reform rarely arrives perfect, complete and universally loved.
Sometimes it arrives while half the country cheers, the other half yells “shame,” and several property investors begin furiously calculating depreciation schedules.
Well done to everyone who pushed this issue for years and helped get it through.
It will not repair the housing system overnight.
But it has changed the direction of travel.
And after decades of governments driving in circles, direction is no small thing.
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