Greens put negative gearing and CGT on minority government table
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The news: Greens Leader Adam Bandt will announce on Wednesday that reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax (CGT) exemptions would be the two main topics on the table in negotiations over a minority government.
The context: Both Labor and the Coalition have avoided changes to negative gearing and CGT since the ALP unsuccessfully took major reforms to the property investor tax concessions to the 2019 election.
With the polls still suggesting a minority Labor government, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may need Bandt’s support to form a government after the election on 3 May. The Greens would not back the Coalition under such a scenario.
In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, Bandt will announce that the Greens will make negative gearing and CGT reform “a priority” in minority government, making a direct pitch that the Greens are the party of renters and first-home buyers.
Bandt will release data from the Parliamentary Library suggesting that these changes would allow more than 850,000 additional people to live in a home they own. This would mean 31% of households who rent could move into home ownership, he will say.
Bandt will also release analysis from the Parliamentary Library showing that renter households would have paid an average of $6,318 less if a rent freeze had been implemented in August 2022, when the Greens first called for it.
What they said: “I can announce today that the Greens will make reforming negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount a priority in the next Parliament, including when there’s a minority government,” Bandt said.
“This reform has always been urgent, but the threat of a Trump-fuelled attack on Australian renters and first home buyers in the next few months now makes this a matter of housing life and death.
“Welcome interest rate cuts are on the cards, thankfully, but they will also be a magnet for property speculators unless we change these warped incentives now. Renters and first home buyers may get smashed even further in the next few months as wealthy investors spooked by Trump leave stocks and shares and pile into property, pushing house prices into the stratosphere.
“Investors with big money behind them could jump into the housing market because of these incentives and lower interest rates, while first homebuyers with their life savings would be priced out of the already overheated market.
“If you think it’s a horror show on real estate websites now, it could be about to get much worse, unless we reform negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts now. We need to act urgently — within weeks after the election — to protect renters and first home buyers from Trump’s fallout, otherwise the door may be slammed shut forever.
“The Greens’ plan would see negative gearing and the CGT discount scrapped for wealthy property investors but preserved for what are often called ‘Mum and Dad investors’ with one investment property.
“John Howard left us a time bomb. It needs to be defused. We have to do it in a way which recognises there are a huge number of people who are using this scheme to look after their retirement, people who have made plans for their future based on the levers available to them.”
The source: The Greens
