I bought my first home because I got lucky in the stock market. After holding an ASX investment for a year, the returns – half tax‑free – helped me scrape together a deposit for a one-bedroom apartment in Canberra. But it was a workaround for a deeper problem: a steady salary was not enough to secure a basic need like housing. For a long time, I believed home ownership was out of reach.

Peter Costello would recognise that story. He says the government is slugging investors with a new tax that will “punish young people trying to build wealth” and leave them with “a lifetime of these higher taxes”. And he has a point. The federal budget proposes to wind back the old rule that taxed only half your profits from selling investments, which means more of those gains will now be taxed. For people like me, who leaned on shares to get ahead, this matters.

But it is a stretch to say this budget “will not help the young in the slightest”. To see why, you have to look at how we got here.

For years, Australia’s tax system leaned hard on wages while giving a lighter touch to income from assets. The capital gains tax discount and negative gearing made it easier for those who already owned assets to........

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