Delaying reforms to negative gearing and other tax laws by the government of the day is gutless and short sighted.
Just like the ineffective and 20 years too late mining tax that became a politic football the longer that reform is delayed the worse it is for the future of Australia. The mining boom has by all measures come and gone and Australia as a society has very little to show for for the trillions of dollars in revenue made by the mining companies. Just a short term sugar rush but not nearly the amount of infrastructure that hundreds of billions of dollars in mining tax revenue could have paid for if any government in this period had the foresight and balls to go against the vested interest lobby groups.
Yes fear of bursting the property bubble is one reason why NG is such a contentious issue and also why FIRB laws are allowed to be flouted on a grand scale. Too many people have hitched their entire future to ever increasing property prices and of course the government is petrified of making any changes that might trigger a correction.
The government needs to look at what is good for Australia long term and ignore the lobby groups that want to control policy to favor their interests. The bust will come - NG has just delayed the inevitable and inflated the bubble to be that much bigger before it finally bursts. Perhaps on the other side of this correction we can have a rational discussion as to what advantages or otherwise exist to justify keeping NG for future property purchases. None that I can see.
