Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Squeeze podcast. We're your shortcut to being informed. Good morning, I'm Alice Dempster.
And I'm Andrew Williams.
It's Thursday the 28th of May. In your Squeeze today, tax changes are introduced to Parliament, fighting ramps up in Lebanon, a thriller to kick off State of Origin and NASA's grand plan. This is your Squeeze today. Andrew, it's a big day in federal parliament.
The Albanese government's proposed tax changes, which were announced in the federal budget, are being introduced after a couple of weeks of pretty constant debate.
Yeah, this has been in the headlines all the time. We've talked about it a bunch. But just to recap what the proposals include at a broad level, it's four kind of high profile reforms.
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Chapter 2: What tax changes are being introduced to Parliament?
You've got a change to the way that the capital gains tax or the CGT works. You've got changes to negative gearing. You've got a $250 tax offset for Aussie workers and a $1,000 standard tax deduction for work expenses. But in the Albanese government's attempt to wedge the coalition, they will all be part of the same bill.
So if you want to vote for or against one part of it, you've got to vote or against all of it. So you can't vote for just the tax offset and not the negative gearing, for example.
Yeah, a wedge is essentially a political tactic that's designed to put an opposing party on an unpopular side of an issue, in this case, the coalition. And if you've been watching Angus Taylor and his team's reaction to the reforms, you'll know that the coalition doesn't support the CGT changes, but it does support the tax offset.
Yeah, so by packaging them all up at once, the Albanese government is forcing the coalition to vote them all down. And it's fair to say that the coalition is not alone in its opposition to the changes to the CGT, which is basically that it's moving from a straight 50% discount to a more inflation-based model.
There's been an ongoing campaign from small businesses and startup founders who say that that will hurt investment and innovation here in Australia by limiting the possible rewards for people who take the risk of starting or running a business by lowering the amount that they'll earn when they sell it. And here's another term for you that's raised the prospect of something called a carve-out.
So to try and keep the business community happy while also avoiding a backflip on the tax changes, the government may decide to apply the CGT to some areas and not others. So it might decide that the new CGT rate could apply if you sell an investment property, but not if you're a startup founder selling your business. That part would be carved out.
Our former PM, Paul Keating, is one who's urging Labor to stay the course, though. He doesn't think the impact on businesses and founders would be large. And even if we do see some carve-outs in the future, it probably won't be today. PM Anthony Albanese says there'll be more consultation down the track, so they'd likely come as part of another bill, but we'll see what happens.
Over in the Middle East, the ceasefire that came into effect between Israel and Lebanon has been in place since 17 April. But there's been an escalation in fighting in Lebanon in recent days. Israel's expanded its attacks against the militant group Hezbollah.
So yesterday, the Israeli military warned people who were living in southern Lebanon to leave as it prepared for new strikes in the region. That came a day after at least 31 people were killed in strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon on Tuesday night.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the proposed capital gains tax changes?
Iran, of course, is a key backer of Hezbollah for reaching a long term truce in its war with the US.
So all of this escalation plays into that. And the latest on that is US President Donald Trump says he's not satisfied with Iran's counterproposal yet. So a ceasefire extension is still pending. Winter's well and truly hit where I am here in South Australia, and I know it's been similar for you in Sydney. It's a different story in parts of Europe, though.
They're sweating through an early heat wave.
Yeah, they've got unusually high temperatures that have actually broken records for the month of May, and it has become a deadly heatwave as well. At least 11 deaths have been attributed to the unseasonable heat so far. Nine of those have been drownings because people are taking to the water for relief.
In London, temperatures went north of 35 degrees Celsius, which makes it the hottest May day on record. And while it's not unusual to see temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius in the UK in summer, It usually doesn't happen in May. It happens in July and August. So as you say, it's come early and it sounds like it's caught people by surprise.
It's also wreaking havoc with the London Tube, which mostly doesn't have air con. Anyone who's been on public transport with an air con outage in summer would probably sympathise there.
That's not fun.
And over in France, it's also recorded its hottest day in May. It's hit over 37 degrees in the country's southwest and it's not been much cooler in Paris. So it's been an extremely warm start to the French Open. A message now from Revolut. And a bonus, there are no monthly account fees with their standard plan.
To find out more and to score a $40 sign-up and spend bonus, visit the link in today's episode notes. Fees and terms and conditions apply. See the PDS and TMD at revolute.com forward slash au. We previewed last night's State of Origin game yesterday. And as a South Aussie and West Aussie, respectively, Andrew, we were both just hoping for an exciting game, really, which we did get.
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Chapter 4: How is the coalition responding to the tax reforms?
So it was a really thrilling start to the men's series.
And tonight, it's the final game of the women's series. New South Wales is looking to complete a 3-0 sweep of Queensland. That's happening on the Gold Coast from 7.45pm East Coast time. If you've heard or seen the US Space Agency, NASA, in the news over the past day or so, it's because it's shared the next steps in its plan to build a permanent base on the moon.
This is a thing that is happening. This is definitely happening. NASA is aiming to land humans back on the moon for the first time in over 50 years with what would be the Artemis 4 mission in 2028. Of course, we've talked a whole bunch about Artemis 2 from a couple of months back.
If that all goes to plan, the base will be built on the moon's south pole, and the idea is that it would become a base for future missions to Mars. So there are some well-known names already involved in this. Jeff Bezos is one. His company, Blue Origin, is one of four US companies who have been awarded contracts worldwide. to start building robotic landers, moon buggies and drones for it.
This all really does sound like a movie, even as I'm reading it out, as soon as possible. But it won't be Star Wars. If it is a movie, it won't be Star Wars. There won't be a big Star Wars-type city up there. The blueprint so far extends to setting up just habitats, power systems, labs, that sort of thing, and then moon rovers for people to get around.
Yes, still, it'll be one giant leap. NASA's describing it as humanity's first outpost on another celestial world. If you want to learn more about all of this, we did a shortcut a while back getting into the Artemis program, so we'll link to that in the episode notes today if you want to have a listen. Music Squeeze the day now.
Something else you might see around today is footage of five villagers who have been trapped in a flooded cave in Laos being rescued overnight. Seven people were originally trapped and the search, which has been going for about a week now, continues for the remaining two.
Yep, we'll keep an eye on that as it unfolds. And today is Kylie Minogue's 58th birthday, Alice. So what better time to listen to our latest quiz shortcut, which we published on Tuesday afternoon.
Larissa and I went through her career and her cultural and social impact in the wake of that documentary that was released on Netflix last week, which I think, and this is anecdotal, was watched by every single person that I know.
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