Smart governance and the media circus
I want to talk about the absolute farce Australian political discourse has become since the budget was announced. Housing Affordability and Cost of Living concerns were rated as the biggest issues facing voters in 2025, so when the incumbent government promised to not touch negative gearing or CGT, a huge groan went up from their support base, who were counting on bold policy to see Australia pull out of this insane property bubble nose dive.
This wasn't really a surprise to anyone who watched Scomo defeat Shorten for trying to correct these issues in an "unwinnable election", we understood those promises, even if they were extremely demoralising for anyone watching the trajectory of our housing market. So I want to talk about why this budget, and these broken promises, are absolutely the correct path forward.
The media circus around this budget has been absolutely insane, and is part of the reason why doing this now was such an obvious and wise decision. Seeing the absolutely rabid response and massive expenditure on astroturfing these changes even when we're far from an election honestly shocked me, with absolutely no chance to really combat this the amount of money spent disparaging it has been staggering.
If Albo and Chalmers had taken this to an election the media and wealthy donors would have glazed Dutton's lack of policy, or absence of any counter policy aimed at affordability issues, and he probably would have lost, to a man with no plan except more of this endless spiral into gross wealth inequality, and to funnel money into nuclear projects that would take decades and protect existing business moguls in transitioning to a new form of power.
The transparency of the people who lose out on this budget has been pathetic, property moguls, private landlords and big business crying out how the young people will not have the same opportunities they did. As though being able to negative gear a second house is a simple thing to do when you can't afford to outbid investors who are willing to make unconditional offers fifty thousand over value on a house they haven't even inspected.
I haven't met a single person who voted Labor who is actually upset about this broken promise, and when I have pursued this topic with folks on the aussie subs in the last few weeks who are screaming foul over Broken Promises they either confirm they voted LNP or answer around the question. If you didn't vote for them, you were neither invested or swayed in any way by those promises, pretending you care what he said now is the most pathetic kind of virtue signalling. You are not part of some "silent majority" who have been wronged, the very vocal majority already elected this government with a full mandate because we wanted to believe in change, and could not stand even the possibility of the status quo.
Drastic action was required, pretending otherwise, pretending we could maintain massive tax loopholes that punished the majority voting blocks of Millenials and Gen Z, was naive and absurd. We are getting much needed change, finally, with hopefully more to come in this and subsequent cycles, and we could not be happier about it.