James Kirby

So talking about being informed...

Our senior reporters in Canberra are very well informed because, you know, the government is leaking like a sieve, leaking at a pace I haven't seen for quite some time.

I'll just try and synopsise what's been leaked, what I take seriously, and then I'll put it in there and see how it matters to you folks.

So the key changes would seem to be

that the CGT arrangements are going to change for sure.

The 50% discount which is applied on CGT after you hold a property for a year or any asset is going to go and they're going to go back to the future and revert to the pre-1999 arrangements whereby the indexing is done every year.

This sort of smoothing effect.

That's number one.

Number two is negative gearing and it would seem, believe it or not,

that they're going to make changes to trim negative gearing, perhaps to two properties per person, but new properties will be exempt from those changes.

Narada, tell me, what do you think that will make to the property investment market?

What impact do you think those highly likely changes would make?

In the immediate term, because of our relatively high rates just now of inflation, that is, folks.

So just keep that one in mind.

And also the speculation is that in terms of how this will be applied in terms of grandfathering and all that,

they are talking about this thing called time-based approach, where rather than picking a valuation, it will be applied yearly, these new changes.

And we won't get into that today.

But interestingly, as I say, I'm reluctant to talk too deeply on it, folks, before we know for sure what the facts are.

It's only a week.

Hang on.