14/05/2026
I know I said keep it light and informative...I think this is in the informative bracket
Since leaving politics I have tried very hard to stay out of public political debate. Labor's Budget made that impossible.
A decade ago, in the Turnbull government, I worked on a reform package called the National Innovation and Science Agenda. The idea was simple. If we made it easier for Australians to start, fund and grow a new business in this country, we would build a new engine for our economy.
That bet has paid off. Australian technology is now one of our biggest industries, employing nearly 950,000 Australians. Companies like Canva, Afterpay, AirTrunk and Atlassian were built here. Backed by Australian investors. Competing with the very best in the world. The Economist asked last month whether Australia could "recreate Silicon Valley down under." It is not a hypothetical. We are.
Labor's Budget would put that at risk. Their proposed changes would roughly double the tax on a capital gain in Australia. The highest in the developed world. Higher than every G7 economy.
Capital and talent are more mobile today than they were a decade ago. Doubling the tax on the upside of a decade of work and risk does not keep our founders, engineers and investors at home. It books their flights. Our companies, our jobs, our tax base, our brightest young people. All heading offshore.
The deeper problem is that Australia is already too heavily taxed. We have some of the highest personal income tax rates and corporate tax rates in the developed world. Taxes on our resources fund government spending today, not a sovereign wealth fund to secure our future. State payroll taxes punish employment. Stamp duty punishes home ownership. The GST is collected federally and shuffled back to the states through a formula so complicated that most ministers cannot explain it. Layering one of the world's heaviest capital gains regimes on top of all that is not reform. It is a country choosing to be uncompetitive by design.
Australia needs a tax system that moves capital into the businesses that will pay tomorrow's wages, not away from them. Lower, simpler and fairer taxes. The kind that keep our brightest people building businesses here at home, hiring Australians, paying Australian tax, and giving the next generation the same opportunities we have had.
Churchill put it best in 1904. A nation trying to tax itself to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket, trying to lift himself by the handle.
We have spent a decade building a new engine for the Australian economy. The case for cutting its fuel line has not been made.
My piece on this in today's Financial Review: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/labor-s-capital-gains-hike-will-cut-off-local-innovation-at-the-knees-20260514-p5zwnd
