Labor’s capital gains tax and negative gearing reforms are a major step forward, but Australia still lacks the long-term national housing strategy needed to address social housing, rental security, energy efficiency and supply failures.

The most remarkable aspect of the post-budget ruckus over the government’s proposed Capital Gains Tax reforms is surely the way that the housing dimension of the changes has – at least thus far – sailed forward with relatively little contention.

As they apply to landlord tax breaks, the changes to CGT and negative gearing are a highly commendable structural reform of Australia’s housing system – the first such initiative for a quarter of a century. Concessions incentivising property speculation at public expense, disproportionately benefiting the already-wealthy, are finally to be reined in.

While Treasurer Chalmers had deftly prepared the ground for change in the Budget lead-up, keeping faith with the measures through to Budget-night must have seemed to carry serious political risk. But the PM and Treasurer had correctly sensed the electorate’s probable openness to a reform justified by intergenerational equity concerns, and at the same time signifying government solidarity with first home buyers.

Labor’s ‘National Plan’ for housing

With the reforms now before the Senate, the Government has packaged them with its extensive array of first-term housing policy initiatives in a policy statement, ‘Homes for Australia: A National Plan’. Launched at the Press Club on 28 May by Housing Minister Clare O’Neil, ‘Homes for Australia’ is an apparent attempt to deliver on Labor’s 2022 election promise of a National Housing and Homelessness Plan (NHHP).

The inclusion of 2026 Budget property tax reforms substantially re-balances a policy suite that has also enhanced homebuyer purchasing power, hence tending to increase prices. But titling this collection a ‘Plan’ is problematic.

First formulated by Jason Clare as pre-2022 shadow housing minister, the NHHP pledge was later reiterated by Minister Julie Collins in 2023 in her commitment that this would provide ‘a 10-year national vision … to help guide future housing and homelessness policy’.

In a country facing........

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