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To update an old joke about policitians and lying: how do you know when Anthony Albanese is going to do something? When he vehemently denies he’s going to do it.
Whenever Anthony Albanese issues a flat denial these days, sensible Australians reach for their wallets. The man’s track record on truth-telling makes Pinocchio look like a model of probity.
Just months after solemnly promising not to touch negative gearing or the capital gains tax discount during the 2025 election, Labor has done exactly that. “We’ve changed our position,” Albanese shrugged this week, as if breaking a core election promise was some quirky policy tweak rather than a brazen lie. The same man who repeatedly vowed to lower household electricity bills has presided over them skyrocketing. He even denied falling off a stage during the campaign — until the video evidence made denial impossible.
So when Albo and Jim Chalmers swear black and blue there will be no return of death taxes, the only rational response is: watch this space and your inheritance.
The trigger, of course, is their latest assault on property investors. Negative gearing scrapped for new purchases after July 2027. The 50 per cent CGT discount replaced with inflation indexation. The kicker is that Albanese is trying to sell lying through his teeth as a virtue. The spoon-fed narrative for Labor’s legacy media bootlickers is ‘fixing intergenerational inequity’ while conveniently ignoring that Labor’s own migration madness and planning failures are the real drivers of housing pain.
The Albanese government’s decision to adopt many of the property reforms pushed by the former Labor leader – which Mr Shorten this week called a “vindication” – fuelled coalition accusations that a death tax would be the next item on Dr Chalmers’ agenda.
“I know our opponents will say that because of the changes that we’ve made tonight, but we’ve never thought about, never considered, never looked at (it),” Dr Chalmers told Sky News on Tuesday. “We won’t do it, and they won’t happen.”
So, it’s definitely happening.
The writing has been on Labor’s red wall ever since before Shifty Shorten got shafted by the voters. The ACTU, the union bloc that effectively writes Labor policy, has been agitating for the return of death taxes for years. The idea was toxic enough to sink Bill Shorten in 2019, but Labor’s base never stopped craving it. Now, with the budget knives out and ‘intergenerational equity’ the new mantra, the path is being cleared.
Australia actually abolished federal death duties in 1979 under Malcolm Fraser after they became a grotesque penalty on thrift. States followed suit. The result? Families could pass on farms, businesses and homes without the taxman demanding his cut of the grave. Labor has always hated that. To them, private wealth is something to be seized and redistributed, preferably before the owner has the cheek to die.
“We’ve changed our position, I’m upfront about that,” Albanese said, with the air of a man expecting a medal for honesty after getting caught. He even admitted he probably wouldn’t have won his 94-seat majority if he’d been upfront before the election.
The man has more front than Myers, as Mum would have said (even as she dutifully voted Labor, as she had her entire life).
This is the same government that lectures us about ‘compassion’ while importing ISIS brides and dancing to Xi Jinping’s tune. Now they want to raid the estates of the very people who built Australia so they can bribe the next generation with other people’s money.
The pattern is unmistakable. Promise one thing to win power. Deliver the opposite once safely installed. Deny the next logical step until the moment is politically ripe. Then act shocked when people call it a lie.
If history is any guide, Chalmers’ ‘never considered’ death tax will morph into a ‘modest’ levy on ‘the wealthy’ before you can say ‘Get your hands out of my dead granny’s purse.’ Probably starting with family farms and small businesses, because that’s where the assets are and where the votes aren’t. The ACTU will cheer. The inner-city commentariat will hail it as ‘progressive reform’. And battlers watching their parents’ life’s work get carved up by Canberra will be told it’s their patriotic duty.
Albanese’s reflexive denials have become the surest tell in Australian politics. The more stridently he rules something out, the more certain you can be it’s already on the drawing board.
“No we’re not.”
Tui. Pull the other one, Albo. It’s got death duties on it.
UPDATE
Man, I hate being right. The slippery slope is already secretly being greased.
The Albanese government has blindsided the financial sector with a surprise “death tax” on wills and estates, triggering urgent calls for clarification from wealth advisers.
Under new budget measures, family trusts are set to be hit with a minimum 30 per cent tax rate. The new rule will also apply to the most common form of estate planning trust: the Testamentary Discretionary Trust [...]
Estate planning expert Rachel Rofe said, “The government can say that technically we are not taxing assets in estates, but it is a tax to be introduced on income generated on those assets … This is a death duty by any other name.”
They didn’t even have the guts to lie to our faces about it.
