Ian Verrender

Now, over the past 25 years, there have been consistent decisions made to redirect wealth towards people who have investments and to make the people who work for a living pay for that.

So essentially, it's welfare.

And the people who have investments tend to be older people with money.

So wealthy older people have been getting welfare handouts that have been paid for by younger workers.

Now, that is a situation that has resulted in, you know, you've got a young kid who's just come out of an apprenticeship, maybe earning $80,000, $90,000 a year, paying far more tax than somebody who's not working at all, retired, and paying hardly any tax because they've got all their money in tax-effective investments.

Now, you know, that cannot continue, especially given that apprentice, but probably or just, you know, new tradesperson will never be able to afford a house anyway.

So there's a whole lot of issues that are building, you know, and becoming a political pressure point that the government is trying to address.

Look, the changes to capital gains tax, particularly back in 1999, I think it was, that really turbocharged the way negative gearing worked.

So negative gearing allows people who've got excess cash to be able to buy another property and you can rent it out at a loss and you can basically write that loss off your income elsewhere.

Yeah, that's right.

So, you know, you can write that off.

So that gives you an advantage when you turn up to an auction, right?

And you're there.

And normally, in MAZ cases at least, investors are competing with first home buyers because they tend to look for cheaper properties that they can rent out.

And so an investor will turn up at an auction with a

potential first home buyer, they've got a tax advantage there.

They can bid more because they can afford to take a loss on the rental income and still write it off against their income elsewhere.

So that was an incentive for people with already owning a home to go and buy another property.

Now, add into that, into this equation, the change in 1999 with capital gains tax.

Now, capital gains tax was introduced by Paul Keating.