Greens leader Adam Bandt has said that if Labor doesn't get enough seats on its own they would team up to form a Labor-Greens coalition who would scrap the capital gains tax discount and scrap negative gearing.
He has said those two things are the reason for housing unaffordiblity and for property prices escalating so rapidly. He didn't even comment on the rate of immigration far exceeding the rate at which we are constructing accommodation.
Discuss.
If you think they are going to make anything better you haven't been paying attention the last few years
Greens leader Adam Bandt has said that if Labor doesn't get enough seats on its own they would team up to form a Labor-Greens coalition who would scrap the capital gains tax discount and scrap negative gearing.<
NO LINK SUPPLIED BECAUSE HE NEVER SAID THAT.
Yes. I’m sure.
I’m sure he never said that a Labor-Greens coalition would team up to scrap negative gearing.
You might want to read then.
Greens leader Adam Bandt has vowed to compel a potential minority Labor government to fight to reverse "political bastardy" from previous leaders, which he claims has led to a housing market crisis.
Bandt said:
The Greens' plan would see negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts scrapped
@tenpercent: He never said that the conclusionary statement that a Labor-greens coalition would team up to scrap capital tax discounts and negative gearing.
Adam Bandt has vowed to compel a potential minority Labor government to…
see negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts scrapped
@tenpercent: Greens might ‘fight’ for it. But, he never said a Labor-greens coalition would ‘team up’ to scrap it.
I watched what he said at the National Press Conference.
I suggest you watch it.
Edit: how about giving actual quotes of his words (that should be pretty easy) instead of editorialising or spewing Liberal Party talking points?
@Eeples: We can go back to quoting the insane ramblings of Bandt.
Bandt said:
The Greens' plan would see negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts scrapped
Don't panic, Labor will win a majority.
Dutton's backfliped himself out of the election.
He even tried to play the Trump ' they tried to assassinate me ' card. What a dead-set tadpole.
yeeah replace capital gains with unrelised gains while making themselves exempt
so CGT discount would be replaced with the older, more painful method where you need to index it each year you've held?
and negative gearing might need some tinkering, but taking that away says businesses and people with more means should be given additional benefits over regular people on regular wages. It's just a deduction of costs against income, the same way a business can deduct costs from income to only taxed oin overall profit.
One more year of cap gains discount and negative gearing it's all I need to turn around the housing crisis, I swear to god bro, just one more. I know it hasn't worked in 30 years, I know it's only gotten worse, but I swear to god, this year, it's the one that'll seal the deal. Honest.
Removing negative gearing and CGT discount will not impact the total suppy of houses in Australia (it does not increase the supply of either new land, construction materials or qualified construction workers) and it will not impact the total demand for housing in Australia (it does not reduce the population or slow the population growth such as reducing the 1800+ per day immigrants arriving in Australia).
At best it will temporarily slow the house price growth (by disincentivising some smaller investors - bigger investors are already positively geared and hold their property portfolios in companies or trusts which can still offset costs against income like any other business) which may enable a marginal number of renters to become first home owners. That is just musical chairs though. The rental market will remain unchanged with the same ratio of dwellings in the market per family unit wanting to rent; currently there are fewer dwellings than family units requring a place to rent, hence the 250k+ homeless in this country growing by 10k per month.
TL;DR: it will not contribute to fixing the housing crisis or the homelessness crisis.
That's my point. It costs us billions in foregone revenue, and the entire point of it was to encourage investment in housing supply, a task which it has abjectly failed. It sounds like, immigration aside, you agree with the Green's plan. We could use the revenue to build public housing to really tackle housing affordability and increase non-economic supply, that is, demand that the private developers won't fulfill because it doesn't return enough.
What forgone revenue? It's not like by axing negative gearing everyone utilising it will suddenly start paying extra tax. That's a very naive assessment and a very naive policy.
Most investors who are utilising negative gearing now and who are no longer able to in future will simply stop being property investors. Those investors whose properties become cash drains due to not being able to offset costs against income will either (a) restructure what they're doing so that their properties are under a trust or company where they can claim business expenses against the business income (achieving a net same effect as 'negative gearing'), or (b) sell up resulting in a temporary influx of additional properties on the market, which in turn will result in either people who are already in group (a) buying those properties up i.e. still in investor hands, and/or a marginal increase in first home buyers. This is nothing more than musical chairs. No new houses have been created. No fewer people needing housing.
Even if there were revenue from this, although there won't be besides a small uptick in stamp duty as properties change hands, it can't be used to increase the housing supply very quickly because the construction industry is already bottlenecked (by both materials and manpower) and throwing money at it will only increase prices (for both materials and manpower), not supply. But no politicians are proposing anything like that. They're proposing pie in the sky headline grabbing quick fixes which simply won't work. Red tape could be removed to speed up construction but then that comes at the expense of safety, quality, and so on.
On the supply side, the biggest impact governments could have is to restrict incentives (including negative gearing, shared equity, home owner grants, etc) to some kinds of new builds (most new builds except knock down rebuilds which results in no additional supply, and not including granny flats which results in substandard crowded accommodation and uses land that could probably have had at least a duplex put on it). That would shift some construction away from knock down rebuild and granny flats to new additional houses speeding up the growth in housing stock. But there is going to be a lag of at least 18 months to 2 years on that (a lag for knock down rebuilds and granny flats already under construction to be completed plus a lag for building the new houses). Meanwhile theres 250k homeless in the country and its growing by 10k per month at the same time as 54k new immigrants arrive every month.
On the affordability front (for homeowners) the biggest thing governments can do (and this is mainly at the State level) is to (a) release more land for new builds, and (b) release it directly to first home owners at the same prices they offer it to the big developers. But they won't because both sides are in bed with the big developer companies.
No matter how you slice the cake or what toppings you put on it, we can't rapidly increase housing supply enough to deal with the rental crisis and homelessness crisis. But we can rapidly decrease growth in housing demand, at least until supply catches up to demand.
I mostly don't agree with the Greens plan because it is half baked (lacks the crucial ingredient of an at least temporary reduction in housing demand) and is not nearly as complex as it needs to be.
@tenpercent: The Parliamentary Budgetary Office estimated in 2024 that NG and CGT discount cost Australia over $84 billion in foregone revenue since 2014. They projected that from 2024 to to 2034 that the government would forgo $166B in tax revenue.
I don't disagree that in the short term it would be musical chairs as the massive discounts to property investors are wound back. I also don't disagree that investors would try to restructure their investments and would be in favour of laws restricting that. You and the Greens (I'm not a Green's voter, fwiw) agree that the special treatment of property developers should be wound back.
The bottlenecks around labour and skills are the result of policy choices that can be changed. For instance a government owned building org responsible for public housing wouldn't be subject to the same boom and bust cycle that private builders are and could create a skilled labour and talent pipeline. The restrictions on land being made available and planning and heritage restrictions on building multistory flats (the so called "missing middle") in the inner city are policy choices that can be changed by stripping local councils of planning powers.
I don't think the Greens are proposing or claiming that ending NG and CGT discount would be an overnight fix, I just had a look at their policy proposals and they extend out over ten years.
Net overseas migration is down and falling faster than it rose post-pandemic lockdowns. 54k immigrants might arrive every month, but net migration is falling at a rate of around 100k per year, at current rates will equalize and then fall after 2027. I don't disagree that immigration puts pressure on supply, I do think it's overstated though as some immediate cure-all. Our universities fleecing international students is like our 4th biggest export, no major party is seriously going to touch that particular golden goose, and they're 25% or so of temporary visa holders. Labor tried to fiddle with those numbers a bit and got shut down by the Libs and Greens.
Migration is falling rapidly and a nation building project of a massive increase in government owned public housing would remove pressure on the private sector developers, who can't even keep up with current demand.
Greens can promise whatever they want because they never have to deal with actually implementing their policies.
The last time Labor went into a coalition & were forced to apply even a few watered down green promises it ended up killing their government. Remember the pinkbatts deaths & clusterF of unlicensed installers? The policy was implemented too fast & with too little forethought to keep greens happy. Too this day there are houses with half-assed installs remaining because of it.
Neg gearing should be restricted to houses less than 10 years old. If the justification is that it increases housing stock then fine, it can be restricted to actually new housing & there wont be a problem.
Right?
Negative gearing should be for new houses only. Only a new house increases the housing stock (assuming an existing house wasn't knocked down to build it).
A blanket "new house only" restriction just means those who build new will just never sell & sit on it forever. A 10 year cap means you gotta build a new one every 10 years & those seeking to neg gear without the risk of a newbuild can buy near-new existing stock.
It also forces "investors" that are supposed to be contributing to supply to sell that stock after 10 years so it actually becomes supply to those looking to own.
It would also drive a LOT of investors out of older homes, driving down prices of homes older than 10 years (while driving up prices of new build homes, with investors eating most of that differential)
Someone should send these ideas to the dolts in parliament (all of them Red Green and Blue).
The Coalition, an actual coalition, love chucking out "the Labor-Greens coalition" just as much as the Greens love fantasising about a minority government where Labor needs their cooperation.
Labor would probably rather work with Independents on the crossbench than have to work with the Greens.
EDIT: Specifically regarding negative gearing, Labor took negative gearing reforms to an election and gave Scott Morrison a "miracle win". They've been burned very recently, it'll probably be a while before there's any meaningful reforms unfortunately.
Can be easy done with little political fall out, simply phase it out (the CGT discount) over 25 years, 2% per year…simple hey!
I find it interesting how people dismiss the Greens and argue that getting rid of negative gearing would under cut the gains of the current policy settings.
The same settings that have led to a huge shortage of homes and the highest prices going around - in the world's emptiest habitable continent no less. I would have thought that that was proof the current policies are not working and it's time for an overhaul.
I salute the Greens for having the juice to say what the other parties are too scared to say and actually come up with an alternative. We need a fairer Australia for our kids.
Current policies are not doing it. Correct.
But the Greens policies won't do it either. It's half baked nonsense.
Their policies will merely encourage some temporary musical chairs with houses switching hands from disicentivised investors to bigger investors (who are already positively geared or have their portfolios under a company structure where they can get the same effect as negative gearing offsetting business expenses against business income) and possibly to a handful of first home buyers.
No new houses will be created under the Greens plan.
No fewer people needing housing under the Greens plan.
So no improvement in homelessness or the rental crisis under the Greens plan.
Green does have policy to build more public housing.
Moreover, CGT discount apply to everyone, so it will impact big investors as well.
Also, once the government remove the NG then many small investors are no longer interested in investment property, which will reduce the demand. It means no more crazy growth in the house price. And, last thing any investor want is price to go flat or reduce.
Green does have policy to build more public housing.
How? With what? Throwing money at the problem will just increase prices. The construction industry is already running near capacity and is bottlenecked by availability of materials, qualified labour and land. Land is the only area where the government could help out (with prices) but they won't because they're all in bed with big developers at the State government level.
Sure they could fund more apprenticeships to get more labour into the market (nothing to do with NG or CGT discount though) but there's a lag for that to take effect and we've got 250k homeless today and growing by 10k per month. The only way to stem the homelessness crisis is to slash immigration temporarily while construction of new dwellings catches up with the number of people we have here.
Moreover, CGT discount apply to everyone, so it will impact big investors as well.
So the big investors will just sit on their properties for longer to delay paying CGT. No biggie. Supply of houses for sale will decline further pushing up prices.
Also, once the government remove the NG then many small investors are no longer interested in investment property, which will reduce the demand. It means no more crazy growth in the house price. And, last thing any investor want is price to go flat or reduce.
Some smaller investors won't be interested in investment property any more so demand for buying houses will reduce a little bit, allowing the bigger investors (and a few lucky first home buyers) to snap up the properties they dispose. That's just a brief and temporary game of musical chairs.
Demand for buying houses is still going to continue to grow because we're still going to be bringing in 38k net new arrivals every month. And so prices will continue to go up. And rents will continue to go up.
@tenpercent: Yes, we need to cut the immigration, but it's not the policy of any major party. Liberal want to cut the immigration but only for 2 year, and it will be up again.
Also, liberal track record is not very good with immigration. When they were in power ; in budget they always say that we cut the immigration and give some target. however, at the end of the year we always got more people.
So, among the labour, liberal and green. Green has the best policy for housing.
Do people really think simply getting rid of negative gearing is going to fix the housing crisis straight way?
The core problem is supply and demands. There are simply not enough houses on the market, for both sale and rental.
Also, collapsing housing price the is last thing Australia needs. Foreign investors on count for 2% percent of the housing stock so whatever policies on limiting foreign investors are just to buy votes.
Removing capital gain tax discount is most likely to make investors to hold on their properties longer, causing less stock and subsequently drives the market and rental further up.
A better policy is to introduce policies to encourage investor to sell. Several were discussed in the past such as vacancy tax, increase supply but all these have their own pros and cons.
The other core issue is construction cost. Some trades are overpriced in my opinion. But again, this is a supply and demand issue because we just don’t have enough tradies. Because construction cost is so high, price of existing property will also go up. For example, if a house and land package cost a million dollars, the pre existing house next door is not going be much cheaper than that.
There is an assumption that NG is a god given right. Or that it's an integral part of the economic policytool kit everywhere. It's not. Only a handful of countries allow it. If it was so beneficial to social and economic outcomes all countries would be on it.
I'm not arguing that repealing NG is the silver bullet. It needs to brought in with with a large number of reforms. This doesn't mean we should abandon doing what's right simply because we're not doing other important measures.
NG is distorting the market and exacerbating inequity. I'd rather the government claw back the $27 or so billion it gives out via NG kickbacks (90 per cent of which goes to the top 10 per cent of earners) and spend that on more deserved causes, including social housing. Topping up the property portfolios of rich people is not where I want my taxes going.
They wouldn't 'claw back' (as though they had that money in the first place, they didn't) that much money because disincentivised negatively geared investors will just sell up and there will be a brief pause in house price increases as the market plays musical chairs shifting investment properties from the smaller negatively geared investors to the big positively geared investors and maybe a few lucky first home buyers.
I'm not arguing that repealing NG is the silver bullet
Good. It's not. It's not any kind of bullet. It will instigate a brief game of musical chairs with investment properties changing hands between different kinds of investors with the small potential (although not certainty) to help a few first home buyers once off who are lucky enough to be in the market at the same time. That's it. It will not improve rents. It will not increase the number of dwellings. It will not reduce the number of people wanting to live in dwellings (rather than tents or cars or cardboard boxes). We will still have 250k homeless growing by 10k per month.
Young Australian's should be able to start a family save for a house, and buy an average 3 bedroom house on average wages.
I dont carr how they do it. Its been the biggest tax scam for those who who bought when house prices were cheap.
In my area a super basic 50÷ yr old house isn13 times my annaul income.
I live in regional nsw not a major ciry.
Removing negative gearing and cutting cgt discount isn't enough.
1 investment house per person, any above this should be taxed hard enough to discourage monopoly house hording.
I have customers casually mentioning they have 20+ investment homes often.
Their portfolio let's them get pre approval for more loan and they buy more houses.
It's impossible for young working couples to afford a basic home - the system now is broken.
Today the LNP announced a plan that will break it further. In fact house prices will now rise at least 20% as soon as either parties plans are law. Morons in charge. NG has to go or we will be a paupers paradise in a withering dust-hole within 50 years.
What is the LBP plan to make it worse?
Albo annonced a plan to fuel the house price bubble further too.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-12/election-2025-labor-f…
NG isn't the problem, as explained throughout this thread removing NG will simply initiate a brief game of musical chairs between different kinds of property investors but it will have no impact on rents and no persistant impact on house prices.
An imbalance of new dwelling completions (supply growth) and net immigration (demand growth) is the actual problem.
NG is one of the major problems. And opportunistic greed is the underlying driver.People who migrate here must think they've landed in a fiscal Nirvana.
NG has had it's day. The only thing keeping it alive is political cowards, and most of them profit from NG and the rich sponsors who want it kept.
@Protractor: I'm not saying we should keep NG. I'm saying its mostly pointless removing it, in the grand scheme of things.
Larger investors will achieve the same effect by holding their properties inside company structures (and still only get taxed on profit, business income minus business expenses, and be able to carry forward losses like any other company). So if anything this policy is just gifting more houses to bigger investors.
The Greens policy is to let people have 1 negatively geared property. Which is most NG investors. So it would only affect a small minority of property investors and it will be a very brief game of musical chairs (shifting houses from small investors to bigger investors).
It's not going to resolve the absurd house prices we have in the country which is primarily due to the supply-demand imbalance, and it's going to do SFA for renters and rent prices (since its going to do nothing for the supply-demand imbalance).
And now the uniparty is really trying to stoke the house price fire. They keep outdoing each other and we still have a few weeks to go of this season of the political dramedy.
I have customers casually mentioning they have 20+ investment homes often.
There are people out there with hundreds of investment properties.
Haven't we all suffered enough?
People who benefit from negative gearing: Don't get rid of it!
People who don't: Who cares
Thread closed.
pretty sure both the ALP and the LNP have modelled getting rid of negative gearing internally and both concluded it would make the rental and housing crisis worse as it would reduce supply coming online from investors and dry up available rentals making it more expensive to rent
people got to stop listening to woke media and the Greens NG has a net benefit for the market
Maybe Adam should have been a bit more measured in his pre-election statements and proclamations.
Microeconomics suggests that increasing the supply of housing and/or decreasing demand for housing would cause the price of housing to drop.
Negative gearing and capital gains impact only investors who own 20-30% of the housing supply, but in reality, 10% of those investors most probably own 30-50% of the entire investment housing supply.
I don't think the top 10% of investors owning 30-50% of all rental housing care much about CGT and negative gearing because they're probably positively geared. They have the property held in trust and/or in a legal entity that can be transferred without incurring capital gain tax and/or reducing the tax via distribution and other legal tax avoidance schemes.
This type of talk is click bait to get you to vote for them so they can do a bunch of nothing.