As long as she’s not nutso like Katherine Deves or Abbott she could be competitive. Otherwise Zali Steggall’s going to walk all over her.
it shows how nuts the liberals are that they lost what was previously not only a blue-ribbon seat but the seat of a former PM
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Labor have just given the LNP this beauty for the next election.
Problem is that historically, the cash rate is not actually high at the moment, only moderate.
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While negative gearing was one of the reasons Labor lost the 2019 election, the current housing crisis means the issue comes up again. Even though LNP is opposed to changes to negative gearing, it is an elephant in the room that the Coalition cannot simply ignore.
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I’d be on board, Labor need to do something brave for their base and new voters. I don’t think small target will work for them again. Housing is a bigger issue now vs 2019 and 6 years of natural replacement will be a significant factor.
It will come down to the messaging and politics. I think they need to lean into it with conviction and address the critics head on, for once Labor needs to fight to sell it and change minds. If they go to the election avoiding a solid position or try to please everyone, it will be another 2019.
It wasn’t long ago that Nuclear energy was politically radioactive, but look where Dutton is now. Policy like this should be off the table forever.
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I think this is possibly a big vote winner especially with under 35s.
Labor needs to do more to distinguish itself from both the Coalition and the Greens and economically progressive measures such as this are as good a way as any (and I’d argue less risky than trying to outdo the Greens on socially progressive issues).
I would expect a bit of resistance from older, middle-class voters, in particular but I would wager at least 2/3rds of that cohort is always going to vote Coalition anyway so the loss could be manageable.
I’d market it from the angle that the budget situation isn’t great and this would raise a few billion dollars a year that can be put towards things like social housing, education and health. Also put an emphasis on debunking the claim that negative gearing ‘keeps rents low’, that has proven to be a lie given that rents have shot up so much since 2019.
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For those who are being negative about negative gearing changes, newsflash it’s not 2019 anymore.
Let’s be honest, the way housing policies in this country works, it’s really the housing equivalent of trickle-down economics with the rich getting richer and benefitting from franking credits and negative gearing in investment properties. The only difference is, the supposed trickle-down part to the less wealthy has not happened.
If people who used to be able to afford rent or housing cannot afford such these days whilst the top 5% are virtually unaffected, then you know that there needs to be reform. People who are in that top 5% needs to contribute, and if it means a higher tax then so be it. They earn so much they might as well hand some back fairly anyway.
Labor needs to secure its votes from the left voters that are floating or thinking voting Greens/Wilkie etc. They need them to come back to being safe Labor voters. They (sort of) did that with the Stage 3 tax cuts, and the energy rebates (Which is why inflation figures have dropped back to below 3%). With housing costs the only reason why inflation hasn’t dropped further, they need to do that with negative gearing. The Coalition only cares about the top 5% (given their ‘policy’ of letting people buy houses using superannuation, which is completely laughable) and Labor should frame it as that.
Having said that, if they go with NG, they need to do that only, not with franking credits. That’s what lost them last time, they need to focus on one.
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Agree some reform of negative gearing could be a vote winner if sold correctly. But that’s where Labor often flounder. If it’s a modest change like limiting the number of negatively geared properties or capping an amount for example, that’s probably palatable to most. But don’t expect it to actually do much to house prices, the problem is on the supply side vs demand. Any changes to NG would just be tinkering around the edges. Interestingly the % of investment properties that are actually negatively geared has dropped significantly over the last few years, with a much bigger % now neutral or positively geared. It’s not going to be a silver bullet.
I think tinkering with franking credits would still be political suicide, given the superannuation system has made so many people reliant on income from shares.
Capital gains tax changes might even be a step too far as well. But if the changes were grandfathered then maybe ok.
The problem governments have is for more than 30 years they’ve told people they will need to fund their own retirement and have pushed people to go out and make their own provisions through property, shares and superannuation. They can’t now all of a sudden start to call these people greedy because they’ve gone out and done exactly what successive governments have told them to do, and operated within the existing rules. And if the current rules are grandfathered and it only applies to new investors for example, aren’t they further disadvantaging younger people, and possibly for not much benefit overall?
In my own experience, investment properties only stay negatively geared for the first few years and then turn neutral or positive. Full disclosure I have two and they’re both positive and have been for quite some time.
There is also the very real risk that in at least the short term any scaling back of negative gearing provisions would push up rents in such a tight rental market.
Anyway I’m not arguing against changes, but people have to be realistic about the overall benefits and the risks.
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Agree that there will be adverse effects whether they make policies such as this or not. But the current landscape, particularly with the housing supply crisis and cost of living, warrants them to take this risk if they want to stay in government. Coalition voters will just keep Coalition-ing so there’s no point in chasing that cohort. The younger voters and swing voters drifting to the left are the ones Labor need to capture and they need to sell it to them and get them to vote for them instead of the radical Greens.
I reckon if they can negotiate some sort of reform in negative gearing that makes housing supply more accessible to lower-income people (for example, making it progressively less incentivising for investors to pour money into investment housing and then charging huge rents for those who want to get into the rental market) along with the Help-to-Buy scheme it will be a start to helping people get into the market. Supply is a long-term issue that needs to be monitored and acted upon constantly for any reasonable effect.
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I definitely agree, it is quite unfair to target people in the Gen X/late Baby Boomer age bracket as being greedy for becoming self-reliant given the messaging from government especially around the age pension. Some of the ageist rhetoric I see bandied about is quite tiresome too- especially when there are plenty of people in that age bracket who (often through illness or relationship breakdown) have nothing to show for their years of hard work and sacrifice.
The superannuation and retirement savings system in this country is deeply flawed and it is one of the worst legacies that Keating left- it punishes anyone who ends up unemployed, injured or unable to work for a period of time (for whatever reason) on a compounding basis (and this is multiplied when you factor in insurance premiums and fund management fees that get taken out regardless).
It benefits white collar workers and men the most as those cohorts are the least likely to have to take a significant period of time out of the workforce for whatever reason (such as injury or for parenting purposes).
I’d much prefer we went back to a proper age pension that was high enough to be livable for all, and for superannuation to be a nice bonus on the top.
I’d like to see the system adjusted so that 9% of what you put in goes to your super fund as per now, and the other 3% is pooled to help fund the age pension. This would lessen the level of inequality in the system we see while still rewarding those who have worked to build themselves a nice retirement nest egg.
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And they haven’t lost just one. They’ve lost countless:
- Kooyong (Sir Robert Menzies and Andrew Peacock would be spinning in their graves)
- Higgins (Holt and Gorton wept, Costello weeps)
- North Sydney (Sir Billy Hughes, treasurer Joe Hockey’s old seat. Funnily enough Allegra Spender’s late father John Spender also held this seat)
- Wentworth (Turnbull)
- Add in Mackellar, Goldstein and Curtin for what it’s worth even if it wasn’t held by former PMs.
It takes a certain brand of stupidity and arrogance to lose all of these within the space of 2 election cycles. But then again given this is the same party whose leader and PM lost their crown jewel of Bennelong in 2007 to a token candidate I guess there’s some sort of a trend.
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Most of it is demographic change and not appeal of policies – which most voters don’t know or care about – the seats the Greens won from the Libs were not mostly Liberal voters anymore so it’s not the broadening appeal of the Greens that Bandt and Co. express the untruth that it is.
The Hon. Bill Shorten MP has today released the final lists of what NDIS participants can and cannot spend their funding on.
Interesting to see how the NDIS has been abused and some of the “therapies” that have previously be paid for in the past. Tarot cards and cuddle therapy will no longer be approved !
https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/10428-support-lists-boost-clarity-ndis-participants-and-providers
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As someone who is on the ndis they should be looking at making all agencies to be registered. There is way too many that i know of that are not registered.
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Some existing service providers have some really bad clauses in their contracts like they can arrange additional services without anyone’s authorisation and charge it against a participant’s plan. That should never be allowed. That’s just asking for someone to be fraudulent.
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A new political party being set up by Labor-turned-independent senator Fatima Payman will target progressive voters across the country.
The ABC understands the party will not carry Senator Payman’s name, and will not be pitched as a religious-based party.
The new party will aim to run Senate candidates in every state and potentially run candidates in some marginal lower house seats.
Watching the condolence motion on the October 7 attacks right now that is taking place in the lower house and my goodness Dutton is just proving how out of touch and how angry he is on this whole thing. This supposedly ‘bipartisan’ motion has been torn apart by him because of his party’s one-way obsession with Jewish people who have suffered whilst completely ignoring the deaths in Lebanon/Gaza. It’s the kind of stuff that makes your blood boil because you just have to question how much humanity or decency exists in this caricature of an opposition leader.
No doubt we’ll see Adam Bandt speaking and also condemning Israel without looking at the number of Jewish deaths caused by Hamas and now Hezbollah. This issue really shouldn’t be a one-way street on backing either Israel or Palestine. Albanese has it right in recognising the conflict for both sides and that both Jewish and Palestinians are suffering and dying, both Dutton and Bandt are tone deaf and stupid.
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None. He is pretty evil. He is an authoritarian in the making. He frightens me beyond belief. Just a purely awful human.
He takes issue with the fact that the motion includes recognition of Palestinian civilians then proceeds to oppose it, as if Jewish people are the only ones that mattered (they matter, but they’re not the only ones). He’s evil personified as human.
Fancy he claims that Albanese has ‘misread the public mood’ when there’s literally a pro-palestine movement outside parliament as we speak, not to mention the many protests against Israel. Talk about who’s misreading the public sentiment, it’s Dutton by a long mile.
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