Can you imagine the scare campaign that would be started if they even mention changing negative gearing? An entire industry of real estate, which can turn media to their side through the massive advertising dollars they spend in media, not to mention the 1.7 million taxpayers who believe media spin rather than doing real research....it would make the mining campaign pale into insignificance by comparison...although the miners were smart to attach a threat to everyone's superannuation returns to their campaign.
I was watching Sky Business when the Henry report came out - negative gearing had been mentioned often in the lead up to it - the palpable relief in the property experts was extremely amusing when the government included it in the 'ruled out' category.
I got the whole report delivered at the time, and was just leafing through it again the other day. There are some great ideas in there - shame we have such a weak government. Does anyone know what the tax summit planned for later this year actually aims to achieve? Getting all the interest groups together isn't going to achieve anything - look at Copenhagen and the effect self-interest had on that. The blueprint is in their hands now - anyone believe that they have the balls to do anything with it?
