The great Australian dream is dying. Unless Labor acts now, it’s gone forever

May 5, 2026 — 11:35am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

In less than a week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will hand down the 2026 federal budget; the first of this Labor government’s second term. On the agenda this year is intergenerational equity. And for good reason.

Danielle Wood, chair of the Productivity Commission, tells me that “since the 1950s, every generation of Australians has done better than the last – until now”.

Based on her commission’s research, Wood says that “people born in the 1990s are the first generation to miss out on substantially higher incomes than their predecessors”.

A big reason for this growing intergenerational inequality is the housing market, which this masthead’s senior economics correspondent Shane Wright likens to a “Ponzi scheme”.

Today it takes more than 12 years to save the usual 20 per cent deposit for an average house, compared to six years in the early 1990s. This is a crisis that requires serious reform, and now is the best time to do it.

The current Labor government enjoys a record 94-seat majority, a severely weakened opposition, and an electorate hungry for real change. This is not the time for small-target policy that only tinkers around the edges. This is the time to be bold.

This budget is an opportunity for the Albanese government to show courage in its fight for........

© The Age