The Daily Telegraph editorial: If negative gearing is a rort for the rich, Labor’s living in the past
IN recent decades an economically powerful sector has emerged from the working class showing that in Australia opportunity is available to all who work hard enough to earn it. This makes Labor’s portrayal of negative gearing as a rort for the rich just wrong.
Opinion
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ONE of the significant social changes in Australia in the past few decades has been the rise of an economically powerful sector emerging from the working class.
This welcome development blurred previously clear political boundaries. As tradies and others scaled social and economic ladders, many gained access to investment opportunities that traditionally were available mainly to the wealthier.
The idea of anyone not middle-class or higher owning investment properties, for example, was exceedingly rare well into the 1980s.
So now half the people who benefit from negative gearing tax savings on investment properties live in Labor electorates. Again, this is a wonderful development. It shows that in Australia opportunity is available to all who work hard enough to earn it.
It also shows a dedication to responsible retirement planning. People who buy investment properties are far less likely to require pension assistance in their retirement years.
But Labor leader Bill Shorten and senior figures in his party appear to be living in the past, portraying negative gearing as a rort for the rich, which is why Labor plans to shrink the pool of new investors able to claim the housing investment tax breaks.
“I say to people I want to make sure that your kids when they are in their 20s and 30s don’t face unfair competition from property investors who are getting a tax subsidy from the government,” Shorten said yesterday, from within the entirely egalitarian and working-class surrounds of the Melbourne Cup’s Birdcage.
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg rightly takes issue with Labor’s scheme. “No real estate market will be harder hit by Labor’s ill-conceived property tax than the NSW market,” Frydenberg points out.
“More than 350,000 people in NSW negative gear a property … and half of these are in Labor seats.”
By standing up for what he believes are Labor values, Shorten would actually be hurting his own base. As the Property Council of Australia’s Ken Morrison puts it: “We are talking about ordinary people who are saving for their retirement and are building a nest egg outside of their super.”
By attacking housing investment, Shorten is siding against Labor heartland. He is also on the wrong side of history.
MIXED BLESSINGS OF CUP RUN
AN inexperienced runner combined with an English trainer is basically a recipe for Melbourne Cup failure.
But yesterday Charlie Appleby became the first English trainer to win the Cup, with three-year-old Cross Counter storming home.
Tragically, the event was marred by the death of stallion The Cliffsofmoher.
Such losses are always regrettable, but the industry’s overall welfare record is a proud one.
And we should never forget that the life of a thoroughbred is far easier than is life for any horse in the wild.
RADICAL SHIFT TO THE RIGHT
MARK LATHAM’S political trajectory is the most complicated of any parliamentary figure since former prime minister Billy Hughes.
Just 14 years ago, Latham was Labor’s great hope in the 2004 election battle against John Howard.
Many on the left hailed Latham as a potential national leader of equal qualities to Bob Hawke. It helped Latham’s Labor credentials, too, that he was the member for Gough Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa.
But that election proved catastrophic for Labor, with Howard easily winning and gaining Senate control into the bargain.
Latham has shifted significantly to the right of politics during the years since while maintaining his always-acerbic views on various political and social issues.
His shift has now reached the point where today he will announce his membership of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.
Nobody could have predicted this back in 2004.
A direct and forceful individual by nature, Latham is not given to enduring circumstances that displease him. His One Nation experience might not be the longest spell in Australian political history.