Frequently I heard a version of the following interview:
Interviewer: So, you went to the 2025 election promising no changes to negative gearing or capital gains… Isn’t this a broken promise?
Labor Politician: Well, it’s not up to me to pre-empt the budget but governments need to be adaptable and to do the right thing…
Interviewer: But what’s changed since the election?
Ok, at this point, the obvious point to make would be: HAVE YOU NOT NOTICED THAT THERE’S BEEN A FUCKING WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST SENDING OIL SKYROCKETING AND INFLATION THROUGH THE ROOF AND THE RISE IN INTEREST RATES JUST MAKES IT HARDER FOR FIRST HOME BUYERS…
Of course, this might be met with: “So you admit that it’s a broken promise then?”
Which would mean that the Labor politician being interviewed would either be castigated by his party for not sticking to the talking points or promoted just so that they felt more need to stick to the talking points or they’d resign from the party and create a party called: “Not One Nation But Another Better Nation”
Let’s be real for sixty fucking seconds…
Broken promises are not lies unless they were made with the full intention of breaking the promise.
This is not a comment on the current situation. It’s a general comment.
However, I have no idea whether Jim and Albo planned to get back in by telling us that they weren’t going to do what Bill Shorten promised in 2019 in order to get back in and then do what Bill Shorten promised in 2019 once they’d secured 94 seats, OR whether they only said that now that we’ve got 94 seats so let’s do what Bill Shorten promised in 2019 but whatever…
People inside the Canberra bubble like to talk about the Canberra bubble but, let’s face it, the Canberra bubble isn’t something that occupies a lot of discussion outside the Canberra bubble… I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone about the Canberra bubble and I’m someone who talks a lot about the things that people in the Canberra bubble like to talk about but I rarely use the words “Canberra bubble” and – in fact – have probably used the words more frequently in this paragraph than in my entire previous conversations…
In other words, most people just say, mm, good idea, I don’t know why they didn’t put to us before the election OR those bastards tricked us into voting for them before they sold us into slavery. I mean, nobody says, “Thank god they kept their election promise about selling into slavery even though I voted against it, but a broken promise is far worse than their policies!”
Anyway, I’ve read a lot of the material about people who say that the changes won’t allow young people to use the same tax breaks that enabled some person with 250 investment properties to take the same advantage…
I just want to see some interview with a person sleeping rough or in their car where the interviewer asks:
Are you worried that the changes to capital gains and negative gearing will prevent you from ever owning your own investment property?
re. the ‘Canberra bubble’, and the fact of probably using those two words more frequently in this essay than in any of your previous conversations, you’ve also added another first, at least to this scribbler’s recollection, that of using the word ‘fucking’ more than any other time – actually I don’t recall you ever using it, so twice in one post is significant. I get it. Being confronted by inane journalists will do a man’s head in. As will having to wade through the quagmire of weasel language, obfuscations, flowery phrasing lacking meaning, obscurantism and all the other tricks employed by those who are averse to straight speaking and blunt truths.
Journalism used to be a noble profession. It still can be. The pressures on professional scribes from employers and peers are significant, as is the temptation to favour low-hanging fruit in preference to doing the hard yards and telling stories that have meaning and mass. It’d be good to go back to hot lead, smoke-filled newsrooms, newspapermen with fedoras and tickets in the brim, fag ends drooping from their lips and a gruff no-nonsense approach to telling it how it is. Too bad, them days are gone, forever.
You’re a good writer, Rossleigh. Keep at it.