The PM’s about to offer selfish Boomers like me a chance at redemption

April 25, 2026 — 3:00am

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On Anzac Day, as we remember the generations who gave their all for their country, take a moment to think about how our generations will be remembered.

Will we be revered too? Or will we be reviled?

If you are, like me, an Australian aged between roughly 45 and 80, you are in a group likely to be reviled by our children’s and grandchildren’s generations. We will be held culpable for what economist Ken Henry has described as “intergenerational bastardry”.

Unless the system is changed, we will be damned. For looting the environment, hoarding the national housing stock, rorting the tax system and leaving behind a national debt for the next generations to service.

“Once you accept that the next generation and the one after that are going to be worse off, holy hell!,” says Henry, “That’s a helluva change.” It’s a breach of the unwritten social compact – that each generation will be better off than the one before.

Anthony Albanese, long derided for reform timidity, has decided that it’s gone far enough. A formal decision in the inner sanctum of the cabinet’s budget subcommittee is expected next week. But his recent rhetoric is so consistent that we can assume safely that his mind is made up.

In recent weeks, he has repeatedly told us that “intergenerational equity” will be a theme of the budget. He’s told us that there’s a need for “younger people to have a stake in the economy”.

Specifically, this will find budget expression in reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax. Long speculated, the prime minister is now committed. It will be the biggest political risk of his prime ministership to date.

It won’t be reckless. It’s expected that existing investments will be protected, by so-called “grandfathering”. But it will be a threshold moment.

Albanese will be attempting to exorcise the ghost of Bill Shorten’s quixotic 2019 tilt at the windmill of intergenerational bastardry. Its blades chopped him to pieces. Labor was haunted.

We have arrested the development of our young

Ross GittinsEconomics Editor

Albanese is offering our........

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