Tim Lester

Disruptive change, when you go back and have a look at it, is never easy in the moment.

You go through the change that Hawke and Keating made back in the day to the philosophy of privatising businesses that Malcolm Fraser and the coalition government before them had not been willing to undertake.

They were difficult changes at the time, but over time came to be seen as positives for us and were largely, not entirely, but

largely applauded for many years they'll hope they can do that but it's a big ask because it's been heading in the wrong direction for a long time and they are they're having to break a very stubborn trend economically that has just made house prices a kind of

Housing investments are protected species, really.

They're moving on that ground.

And it is a fairly rare act of political courage, I think.

well yes yeah it is it is i i'm i'm not of the belief that it was done for that reason i mean cynics will all point to that but yes it is and the really courageous economic decision would have been to say no negative gearing really is over it's really over

Forget grandfathering.

Forget if you were already lucky enough to have got in on a property.

So the point being there's 70 federal politicians.

Well, there's hundreds of thousands of Australians who have those two, three, four or more properties settled away and they're going on negative gearing ad infinitum.

So there's still a cost.

against a fair level playing field.

But Labor's taken the decision that about as courageous as it could afford to be was to say to Australians, right, enough of that, we stop here, but we're not going to go and try and untangle decisions you've made in the past.

Well, I think that a government has made a decision to stop focusing on older Australians, on my generation, the baby boomers, to look to younger Australians is a big play and an interesting play.

Probably a pretty good and predictable one the more you think about it, because if you think about

a lot of baby boomers, and certainly I'm in this category.

No, it doesn't suit me to have a go at what I've saved up over the years, but I've got children who want houses in Australia, right?

And they're voters.