James Thomson

Investors are going to want to see more evidence.

Well, I think part of the reason you have a different tax system is also that you want to encourage investment.

So, you know, we provide tax incentives, which is what the CGT discount is, to encourage investment and so you have a different regime than you would to working.

So...

You know, maybe Aidan's idea simplifies everything, but historically we've tried to give a little bit more for investors.

Andy has a related question I feel we spend a lot of time debating super and other tax concessions but we don't talk enough about why Australians are so obsessed with amassing assets residential property in Australia has now hit a staggering 12.6 trillion and super 4.5 trillion a huge driver of this seems to be a rational fear the age pension is essentially a survival payment at the poverty line

Australians have realised that if they don't buy property and hoard assets while they're working, they won't have a dignified life in retirement.

We've created a system where people feel forced to stockpile houses and super capital because they can't trust the government to provide a decent floor.

If we actually had a reasonable and liveable pension that people could rely on, wouldn't that take the pressure off this massive asset hoarding cycle?

I think, though, the premise of Andy's question that we're all obsessed with hoarding assets, we're not obsessed with it.

The government literally forces us to do it.

We literally do not have a choice.

It's very compulsory super.

Yeah.

That's right.

We're not hoarding assets in super because we all want to swim around in pools of dollar coins.

The government forces you to do this to take pressure off the age pension.

Now, Andy's sort of suggesting that if the age pension was bigger, then we wouldn't have to hoard assets.

You know, the choice we've made is that we do hoard assets so we can have a more sustainable pension system and we don't have to jack up, you know, income taxes or other taxes to increase the age pension.

I'm not sure where Andy expects the, you know, the reasonable and livable increase in the age pension to come from.