Australia CGT reforms need to include really bold changes | The Canberra Times

canberratimes.com.au · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Scrapping the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount on the sale of investment properties makes sense. Picture by Megan DingwallJacob Shteyman ("Chalmers urged to be bold in budget," February 23) refers to the popular idea of returning to the original design of indexing the capital gains tax discount for inflation instead of having simplified proxies for that such as the 50 per cent discount.Subscribe now for unlimited access. or signup to continue readingSave 30%All articles from our website & appThe digital version of Today's PaperCrosswords, Sudoku and TriviaAll other in your areaBut, the expectation of increasing values of capital gains tax (CGT) assets, like property and shares, is a commercial reality taken into account by those who invest in those assets. Consequently, income tax design should ideally try to mirror that commercial reality by assessing CGT assets' annual gains (and losses) in order to minimise tax effects on investment decisions and, so, on national productivity.Income tax design already does just that for annual accrued capital losses (depreciation) on a multitude of wasting physical assets.Thus, not assessing accruing capital gains of CGT assets year by year at investors' current tax rates is a tax break that distorts the overall pattern of investment.Moreover, comprehensive inflation adjustments are not attempted across all investment assets (like wasting assets, trading stock and monetary items) and all investment liabilities (like debt) to have only real investment income taxed.Thus, providing inflation adjustment - or any proxies for that - just to CGT assets is a second distortive CGT tax break.Simply abolishing the current 50 per cent discount across the board would at least remove one layer of CGT distortion and move our income tax design closer to having a neutral impact on investment decisions.Polluters must payIt's a classic drug dealers' defence to say "they will simply get the coal from another source" (Letters, February 23).It is a great comparison because of the questionable morals and ethics from Australia continuing to be one of the world's largest exporters of coal and gas.We need all countries to rapidly reduce their climate pollution, not seek to shirk responsibilities.On that, Australia currently fails to properly tax companies for extracting coal, oil and gas.Norway taxes their resources and provides free education.Australia, at the very least, should make polluters pay if they insist on wanting a spot as a top global exporter, and key driver of global emissions.Otherwise Australians pay for climate disasters, while largely foreign-owned companies ride massive profits. That's highly unfair in a cost of living crisis, and an obvious thing for the Australian government to do.Weasel words on oilLast May Prime Minister Albanese met Ukraine's President Zelenskyy (during the Pope's inauguration in the Vatican) and solemnly promised him that Australia was doing "whatever we can" to put pressure on Russia.They were weasel words. Over the last three years, Australia has imported millions of tonnes of Russian-originating petroleum products, worth billions of dollars, using a third party import sanctions loophole that our government has declined to close.Robert Menzies was nicknamed "Pig Iron Bob" for allowing iron exports to Japan leading into the Second World War. When Mr Albanese next looks into President Zelenskyy's eyes and shakes his hand "earnestly", I wonder whether the Ukrainian president will think "Blood Oil Tony"!Richard Manderson, Red HillGriffin grave savedCanberrans may recall the concerns expressed in 2023 about the neglected state of Walter Burley Griffin's grave in Lucknow. Thanks to the intervention of the Walter Burley Griffin Society the grave is now well maintained, courtesy of Prateek Hira, proprietor of Tornos, an Indian tour company.I'm pleased to report that last week a group of prominent Canberrans, including Dr Anne-Marie Schwirtlich (former director-general of the National Library), historian Dr Michael McKernan and archivist-historian Michael Piggott, gathered at the grave and conducted an informal ceremony, an expression of our appreciation for the visionary creator of our city. Thanks to Canberrans' advocacy and Indian philanthropy, Walter's grave will be preserved.Nuclear hypocrisyBy what authority does the US, with over 5000 nuclear weapons, preach to Iran, which has none? ("Time's up for Iran: deal or no deal," February 22).It was none other than Trump himself who, in his first term as US president in 2018, destroyed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action under which Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear program and accept IAEA inspections, in exchange for relief from certain sanctions.Trump walked away from the agreement and reimposed sanctions.Nuclear programs must indeed be the focus of international scrutiny and appropriate action. But none of the nine nuclear-armed nations - the US and Russia which between them have over 90 per cent of the global total, France, the UK, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - can preach nuclear abstinence to others.They are a constant stimulus to other nations to acquire the weapons.Israel remains the only nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are perpetuating an unsustainable nuclear apartheid.Australia could play a positive role by asserting the same rule - no nuclear weapons - for all nations, friend and foe alike.By far the most effective way to do this would be by signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which stigmatises the weapons themselves, rather than picking and choosing who's allowed to have them.Clean transport mythAn analysis of emissions from trucks and buses on Australian roads has concluded that pollution from those vehicles is costing Australia more than $6.2 billion a year in premature deaths and serious medical conditions ("Big trucks and buses drive a heavy healthcare burden," February 23).Canberra's public transport system provided 11 million passenger journeys in 2023-24, and burned 11 million litres of diesel and 70,000 gigajoules of natural gas.It caused about the same pollution as 11 million personal journeys by car. Buses caused all of that pollution, but provided the equivalent of only nine million passenger journeys.The government-funded Make the Move website portrays Canberra's polluting buses as "clean transport." The ACT government plans to continue to use polluting fossil-fuelled buses until 2039.There are three ways the ACT government can reduce the territory's health costs from bus pollution.First, it can ensure that its polluting buses are no longer promoted as "clean transport."Second, it can advance the date for the territory's public transport fleet to become zero emissions.Third, it can put more resources into achieving its targets to increase the proportions of commuters who walk or cycle to seven per cent each in 2026, from four per cent walking and two per cent cycling in 2001.Divisive slogansShortly after Angus Taylor was described by a senior parliamentary colleague as the "smartest policy brain" in the shadow cabinet, he started running after Pauline Hanson on immigration.The new Opposition Leader was quick to huff and puff about "bad immigration" and "good immigration" and praised the latter for bringing cappuccinos to Cooma.The opposition's lazy, divisive adoption of Hanson-lite sloganeering and reliance on Australian flag quips highlight its disregard for the genuine bipartisan effort needed to build social cohesion across the country. ("Can Taylor get beyond slogans?," February 21).Tragic civilian tollContrary to Roderick Holesgrove's claim (February 20), Israel did not confirm the IDF had killed 70,000 people in Gaza.An anonymous official confirmed that number had died, but that includes those who died of natural causes.At least 10,000 people die in Gaza every year as would be expected out of a population of two million.An unknown number of people were also killed by misfiring Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets. Then there are the people murdered by Hamas to keep control.While it is tragic civilians were killed that doesn't mean Israel committed atrocities, as Roderick and Peter Stanley claim.About 25,000 of those killed were fighting, and the civilians killed were victims of Hamas's human shield methods. Even so, the ratio of around 1.5 civilians killed to every fighter is far better than any other urban war, due to Israel's efforts to warn and evacuate civilians.TO THE POINTBONDI IN NEW YORKRe Letters, February 23 on overseas Bondi coverage. On the morning after the attack I flipped to The New York Times. The entire first column was about Bondi. I was crying as I read. So yes, Mr Stanley, in the US newspaper readers knew of our tragedy promptly and in detail.EERILY QUIETAustralia's monarchists and republicans are so eerily quiet about the sordid Mountbatten-Windsor revelations you'd think they were on a unity ticket.The Justice Department in Washington, DC, now has a large Orwellian-type banner featuring Donald Trump's face glaring down on the proles.GIFT OF LIFEThank you to Neville Tomkins for his remarkable gift of 600 blood and plasma donations. As a survivor of acute leukaemia, and the recipient of a stem cell transplant, I owe my life to the generosity of people like Neville. Bravo.ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTSMokhles Sidden is right that it is wrong to label the demonstrators pro-Palestinian, but not the way he means (Letters, February 22). If they really cared about the Palestinians, they would have been urging Hamas to surrender. The demonstrators were never pro-Palestinian. They're just anti-Israel.Jane O'Neill, ArandaA BROAD CHURCH?With Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson holding polar opposite views on race issues will we hear that the One Nation party is a broad church? Maybe. So long as it's a Christian broad church.PROPER PERSONI see that they're talking about applying a "fi