Even the Lefty Rags Are Admitting It

Lyndon B Johnson famously said, “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America”. Anthony Albanese might well say, ‘if I’ve lost the Canberra Times, I’ve lost my core voters’.

The Canberra Times is the famously left-wing paper of record for a city whose population is nearly 40 per cent public servants, a famously far-left group. Even the Media Bias/Fact Check website rates the Canberra Times as left wing – which means that it is in fact far-left.

Even the Canberra Times is now admitting the obvious: the Albanese government is introducing death taxes by stealth – and lying about it all the way.

Opposition Treasury Spokesman Tim Wilson nailed it in a fiery on-air clash with Labor’s Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth. Labor lied before the election about touching negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, and now they’re ramming through changes that hit families where it hurts most: after death.

“You didn’t give it to people at the last election; you lied before the Australian people before the last election, you’re now ramming it through the parliament.”

Rishworth’s response was pure evasion, claiming the ‘the fundamentals of the policy’ were ‘right’, which is calling a spade a rectangular manual earth-moving implement, while dodging the broken promise. Even Anthony Albanese has been forced to admit Labor changed its position on core tax pledges. The mask is slipping.

The latest broken promise targets testamentary trusts. These are created under a will to protect inheritances for children, spouses or vulnerable beneficiaries from divorce, creditors, bad decisions or family fights. Unlike inter vivos family trusts, they have long allowed income distributed to minors to be taxed at ordinary adult rates – up to $22,000 effectively tax-free. That concession recognised the unique role of a deceased parent’s judgement.

From 1 July 2028, Labor wants to slap a minimum 30 per cent tax on distributions from these trusts, regardless of the beneficiary’s actual tax rate. It is dressed up as cracking down on income splitting. In reality it is a death tax by stealth, aimed squarely at ordinary families trying to do the right thing by their kids.

Even the Canberra Times is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into admitting the truth.

Australia does not have death duties, estate taxes or inheritance taxes. But for years our tax system has achieved much the same result by other means, and the 2026 budget proposes another layer.

Even accountants are alarmed at how much Labor are miring the tax system in Byzantine red tape, designed to do nothing but squeeze every tax pip out of a taxpayer lemon already pulverised dry. The Institute of Public Accountants’ Tony Greco said the government had “thrown the book out the window” on proper consultation. Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand’s Damian Ogden warned of a record number of ministerial discretions handed to Jim Chalmers and “real compliance costs” imposed on ordinary Australians.

“Most people could actually calculate that CGT net gain on the back of an envelope. We’re going from that to something much more complex.”

Labor’s defenders will bleat that this is only about the rich. Tell that to the widow trying to protect her teenage kids’ inheritance from a future ex-spouse, or the parents who want to stagger distributions so a troubled child does not blow the lot at 18. The changes punish the very flexibility that makes testamentary trusts valuable for asset protection and family harmony.

This is the same government that swore black and blue it would not touch negative gearing or the CGT discount. Now it is quietly building a new revenue stream that kicks in only after the taxpayer is dead and cannot vote. Classic Labor: break the promise, hide the tax and hope the punters are too busy paying their power bills to notice.

Labor’s stealth death taxes are not about fairness. They are about grabbing more of what Australians worked a lifetime to build and they are doing it while pretending nothing has changed.