http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-17/treasury-data-undermines-government's-negative-gearing-claims/7521930
Quelle surprise! The Property Council and their lackeys in the real-estate industry, and the Liberal Party have been running an scare campaign all along. For *three months* the government has known from the Treasury Department that the current arrangements of negative gearing benefit and capital gains tax benefit the richest in the country, and have reduced the budget bottom line by $6b.
Malcolm Turnbull, from all accounts a somewhat intelligent man, of course must be aware that Australia's policy of negative gearing and capital gains tax has demonstrably failed to improve housing supply and is being used as a one of the worst tax rorts by the wealthy in existence. He must knows this, he's not *that* stupid.
But it seems in his hope to retain power in the next Federal election he can run a divisive campaign that manipulates people who are not as well versed in economics, but are subject to emotive fear-mongering. He is also subject to the vested interests of the support base that makes up much of the power brokers in the Liberal Party of Australia.
The 1.2 million who negative gear receive a subsidy of approximately $310 per annum from the 11.7 million of taxpayers who don't. Guess who those people are? Look at the electorates of the top ten benefactors of negative gearing: would you be surprised that are the blue-ribbon old money seats of Australia? Would you be surprised that to discover that every single one of them is held by the Liberal Party?
What is frustrating is that in their quest to retain power they're not actually interested in good public policy. It is a shameful and manipulative campaign that they have run where there are real social problems that need to be addressed.
We need policies that increase the supply of new housing. We need affordable housing and we need to turn around the poor policy that has seen an average house in Sydney costs 10 times the average annual income in 2015, up from 4 times the average annual income in 1985. Malcolm Turnbull obviously knows that the right policy is to encourage new housing stock - but he and his masters prefer that you continue to fund their private property speculation instead.