Albanese defuses his tax grenades, but does the backflip go far enough?

June 18, 2026 — 3:50pm

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Are the federal government’s new carve-outs to its deeply unpopular capital gains tax the backflip you are having when you’re not having a backflip? That’s a solid yes.

Just to be clear, the wind-back of the controversial tax hikes will cost the government $475 million over four years, out of the $8.1 billion in extra revenue it expected to raise from its changes to the taxation of capital gains, negative gearing and discretionary trusts.

As concessions go, this isn’t one to get excited about – but it is the concession that the government had to have.

Business groups like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry reckon that the size of the concessions relative to the government revenue bonanza tells the story.

The ink was barely dry on the May budget when the depth of broad-based disdain for the abolition of capital gains concessions on a broad sweep of assets became abundantly clear, and potentially problematic for the........

© Brisbane Times