Wooley: Sorry Albo, you are not living on Struggle Street now
Loads of Aussie politicians are enjoying the tax benefits of negative gearing property – sometimes more than one, writes Charles Wooley.
Opinion
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I must be getting cranky. I was writing a review of John Grisham’s latest novel while watching federal parliament on television and wondering whether the book or question time was the more imaginative work of fiction.
But then Albo once again started to go on and on about growing up in a council flat.
And I completely lost it.
I’ve heard that tired, self-indulgent story too many times, as has the parliament and so have you. Even members of his front bench were nodding off. It was embarrassing.
No wonder I started to yell at the screen (a sure sign of encroaching dementia?). But poor Dusty the dog thought I was yelling at him. I had to explain that I don’t yell at dogs, only at prime ministers and then only when severely provoked.
Albo’s childhood was such a long time ago he really should get over it.
Do I bother you with repeated tales of growing up the wrong side of the Tamar in the working-class Launceston suburb of Newnham? Well only now and then and only for laughs.
Like the time Ricky Ponting remembered growing up in Mowbray, which he described as a “disadvantaged suburb of Launceston”.
I had to point out that I grew up in Newnham where we “could only dream of moving to Mowbray”.
He’s nowhere as rich as Ricky but Albo repeatedly feels the need to dredge up the spectre of a disadvantaged past, we can only assume for some perceived political advantage or sympathy.
In doing so he underestimates his fellow Australians, who have highly developed bullshit receptors. Anyone who can read (about half of us) knows that the Prime Minister during his long political career has owned, and negatively geared, many rental properties. Albo’s council flat saga is annoyingly repetitive, dull and boring and a collateral danger to dogs.
But still the PM thinks it makes the point that he really is just an ordinary person.
Rest assured Prime Minister, we already know how ordinary you are.
But cash-strapped he is not. Estimates of Albo’s wealth go as high as $14.7m. If that is anywhere near the mark, much of it would likely derive from extensive property investments over a long and financially successful political career.
I have no problem with leaders getting rich as long as it is not too much at our expense. And of course, the PM is not alone in the ownership of multiple houses.
The parliamentary declarations of interest reveal Australian politicians to be among the greatest of all professional cohorts resorting to the advantages of negative gearing in order to reduce the amount of tax they pay. More than 65 per cent of federal parliamentarians own two or more properties. All property investors in Australia can use the losses they incur to reduce their tax bill. More than a million Australians negatively gear at least one property which they rent out. With the present interest rate hikes the rent does not always cover the cost of owning the property.
Oddly, people would rather pay the bank than the taxman, so the total combined investment rental losses have provided a yearly tax benefit or a subsidy of $2.7bn to property investors.
That’s a lot of “forgone revenue” which could have gone to submarines, wind turbines or nuclear power stations. Or how about affordable housing?
It’s tolerable if you or I do it. But politicians deliberately avoiding paying tax when the taxpayer has to fork out their generous wages and allowances is just cynical and insatiable. Feeding from the taxation system, but not wanting to contribute to it, almost makes you question the moral decency of most of our parliamentarians.
Well, you might ask if you didn’t already know the answer.
And kiddies, if you are having trouble finding a house to buy, go online and look up how many houses some Tasmanian politicians own.
The Greens want to introduce legislation to limit negative gearing in Australia to one house per person. Good luck getting that through the parliament when seven out of 10 greedy politicians have at least a couple of houses in their property portfolios.
Parliament abolishing neg gearing on residential property?
Pull the other one. It’s not even worth having the debate. That would be the proverbial snowflake in hell, as unlikely as politicians voting to travel economy, down the back of the bus with the voters who can actually tell a few present-day stories about life on struggle street.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist
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