James Thomson

I am in Canberra, yes.

A long day on Tuesday, but we survived and plenty of reaction, positive and negative.

Some of the...

Some of the stuff's been wild.

Well, there were so many leaks, I guess it was possible.

Yeah, there was probably some of the stuff around the tax loss relief for businesses was a little bit unexpected.

But yeah, it's...

Well, it was, you know, I don't quite know why we do a lockup if everything's going to be leaked in the three weeks before.

It's a strange and unique Australian thing.

Well, yeah.

I mean, I think the sort of general idea here is if you've ever been to an ASX AGM, you'll know that the audience is usually made up of older, wealthier shareholders, and they are being hit through the combination of changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing, and the taxation of trusts.

And this is designed to, in the words of treasurer Jim Chalmers, to make it easier for first home buyers to get in the market by ensuring they have less competition from investors and generally trying to tilt, equalize, level the playing field, I guess, in terms of the taxation of income and capital.

Does it do all that?

I guess that remains to be seen.

Are there wrinkles with it?

Yes.

I think the application of the CGT changes and the negative gearing changes to property is good.

Perhaps the application of those changes to invest other asset classes like equities and certainly early stage capital is a worry.

And there's this general question of how much intergenerational fairness is created when you grandfather all these rules.

Because in one way, as several critics have pointed out in the last couple of weeks, and particularly in response to the budget, you could see this as an older generation pulling the ladder up behind them.