The Chaser Report - A Capital Planes Tax

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Charles is frustrated with the feeble narrative being constructed by the Albanese Government, and suggests a better way for the PM to dress up what he says he's doing. Meanwhile Dom takes a deep dive into the electorate of Farrer, and Pauline's private plane gift.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, we are back on the daily updates. We'll be astonished to see two episodes in two days from us. And just so you know how dedicated we're out of recording this podcast, I'm currently sitting on a towel, on a wet chair outdoors, and frankly, there's some seepage going on. So by the end of this podcast, now it's all good.

I have a wet butt, but I'm doing it for the people. Okay. I know it as part of my job of covering Australian news with a depth and gravitas you won't find anywhere else. Yes. And it is just under a week, Charles, until Budget Day, 2026. And I'm sure that while you're over in the UK with Wankanomics, all the papers over there were full of news as to what the Australian budget might hold.

It's the only thing they could talk about, Tom. But for those who haven't been in the UK or any other thriving metropolis where they're fascinated by Australian politics, we'll get into what seems to be in store after the news. Charles, there's a bit of an existential question going around. Our friend, Sean Kelly, who's been on the podcast before, we should get him back, actually. I wrote a quarterly essay recently, but what the point was of the Labor government at the moment, if they were timid and didn't really do anything? Yes.

And that seems to have been really resonating around. I've heard quite a few people who've been playing that back to them. And Anthony Aberdeensis has actually been giving a lot of interviews in the past week. Oh, right. Kind of a year, ran around about a year since the election. Yes. What do we do with the whopping majority? And he seems to want to reassure everybody, including those in his own party,

that they are a progressive government. They are getting stuff done. Right. And there is a wider agenda. But you've believed that since day one, haven't you, of this? Since the election in 2022. I like the idea that, you know, they're fixing a problem with action, like they're inaction, basically, by using comms.

Like, I think the idea is if you just say it enough, then people will start believing it. Because I'm sure that messaging has come from actual, they've looked into it, they've polled it and they've realized, oh, people don't think we have any action. How do we solve that? I know. Let's come up with a message box about it. So it's good to see that they're taking action on the messaging side of things. Yeah. The one thing that I'd say is, look, I think what you've got to, like, the way to interpret the Albanese government is, I think a really good way to think about it is Anthony Albanesey,

is the Bob Carr of federal politics. I've thought of that before, actually. Yeah, it's, um, so without the voice. Yeah. Without the new, the very big media voice. So Bob Carr was Premier of New South Wales for about nine years. Exactly 10 years. He left exactly where he would think.

Yeah. And in that time did nothing, did absolutely nothing. And as a result, the next 20 years after that, Sydney's traffic got really bad. He had no investment in. roads, no investment in public transport. He cut a lot of funding around education. It left the hospitals in a state of incredible queuing and stuff like that.

And I suppose, and also, and then what he gave was this sort of government that then became incredibly corrupt, right? It is true that after Carr left, the remaining New South Wales government MPs, including a certain relative one of ours. Yes. And she was not involved in this, by the way. but the number of resignations for various scales, it was quite extraordinary. At one point, my sister.

The Honourable Verity Firth, Professor Verity, Feth. We were doing about it and like literally half the cabinet members were either in jail or had been a judge corrupt. And it wasn't all corruption. I mean, I don't want to be able to look back on that government. It was also some really disturbing sexual offences as well. That's right. So, you know, there were a range of.

Yes, it wasn't it. You're right. People were in jail for sexual offenses as well. Yeah, there was some really terrible. Oh, yes. But until Bob Carr left, he did an amazing job of the major task of any leader, which is media management. Bob Carr developed the culture of announceables every single day. He or someone from his team was in the media with a bit of information, with an info drop.

And so for a government that you've just said did nothing in 10 years very much, although there were a lot of national parks because he likes national parks. There was an announceable every day, Charles, something they were going to do. But the point is that Albanese has taken that 10. played where the point of being in government is to be in government and applied it on a national scale, which means you don't actually need to do anything. Now, sure, it's going to lead to 20 years of Australia being under-invested in and had this sort of lack of refamist that sort of, because what he does, I think a really good word to think about Anthony Albanese is he smothers things. Like, for the left, he smothered the hope that actually getting

in a Labour left, supposedly progressive government could actually achieve any change. But he's also smothered, like he smothered the idea that, because he's very good at the machine. Like Bob Carr, he's extremely good at the machine politics, right? So he's not like Scott Morrison. He doesn't run roughshod, does he? He works with the team. So Scott Morrison had the problem of not doing anything, didn't lift a hose or anything

like that. But he didn't, but Scott Morrison didn't have control of his party, which meant that it just felt like a shambles the whole time. Whereas Anthony Albanesey feels like vaguely confident because he maintains extraordinary party discipline. Nobody's actually complaining about him, at least publicly. And then he also doesn't do anything. Well, the new poll out, Charles, this is a Redbridge and Accent Research poll. I think Redbridge are Labor affiliated on, they hence the Red.

But the two-party preferred vote, 54 to 46 against the coalition, if it is the coalition, which is improved. Albanese's favourability's gone up eight points. So whatever he's done in the past week has been working. And you've got to remember that the thing that Albanese risks doing, Charles, and we'll get into this with the budget proposals, is that when he won the landslide last year, it was simply because he wasn't Peter Dunn. And the things that Peter Dunn wanted to do could be avoided by voting for Albo and so people did.

What his particular proposals were, was sort of by the buy. Yes. But then earlier in that term, he had tried to do something. It spent a lot of political capital on the voice. Yes. whatever that was. I think that was the issue, if I recall. But then, people didn't like that.

So he reverted to no major ambitious goals. He got very gun-shyed. And he realized. And he won with a landslide. That's what the Australian people wanted. But what he realized was he has no capacity to create a narrative. And the one thing that you need to do as a government, especially at a federal level, is create a narrative about why you're doing what you're doing.

And without the ability, like he literally, like he's kind of. up through, I've seen him at party conferences. He's very good at the quip. He's very good at shitting on people and bullying them and getting them to vote in back rooms and stuff like that and yelling at people. What he's not good at is coming up with a story about why he's doing what he's doing. Well, this is the Hawking and the Keating, the narrative, the big picture. Even Kevin Wright, though it was a very convoluted language used, but there was a sense

of a movement. And that's not Alba's thing. Can I suggest, though, a narrative that they could run that would actually fit into their whole intergenerational problem. Put that on hold for a moment. I want to get to that. But what we need to acknowledge is that, look, from Labor's perspective, there is a long list of things that they say that they've done that are progressive, some of which things like changes to childcare and making Medicare cheaper and things like that. Certainly people have noticed that to some degree. And I think you have to credit them with, they have more belief that

government can actually achieve things, which actually means that they believe in a sort of basic level of competence, which I think the Morrison government, it didn't give you the sense that they really, you know, they threw cash around and they believed in governing, but no, they didn't feel like, they didn't feel like, they threw cash around to huge consultant bills and like, it just felt very sort of rough shot. Medicare, urgent care clinics, something that point you. So there's things, you sort of moderate improvements in process delivery and so on. Yeah.

But so that, Charles, the point is. The sort of state government style. Yeah. This is the stuff that you will find extraordinary. is that they are planning to, and we don't know exactly what it means, but they're clearly preparing the ground and quite explicitly so for a budget night where they do something about negative gearing and they do something about CGT. And so these have been the sort of Bill Shortness, third rails.

That's a housing policy right there, isn't it? And doing something about it intergenerational wealth. And Charles, there's a couple of, some of the analyses that I've read about this said, well, this seems quite brave. And then the second wave has been, we'll actually know the demographics is such that, to be really blunt, we're at a point where we've lost enough boomers. They've died. And there are huge numbers of young people now who are going to be eligible to vote next time. There's a sort of wave of new people that it probably won't be a disaster the way it was when Bill Shorton tried it.

It might not be that risky, but also the booms. We've had seven years of extra debt. We have. But also the boomers that are still with us have grandkids who can't find a place to live. And the boomers in their fairly large houses with spare rooms that they could do something with, probably starting just to go, oh, maybe my grand. Maybe actually the dusting is getting up. I don't know that I want to pay more tax or whatever, but my grandchild should be able to have a nice place to do it without me having to pay for it.

They probably crunch the numbers that actually the people who own multiple properties are in their tens of thousands and they all live anyway. And a lot of them are actually in the Labor government. Yeah. A lot of houses are actually members of the Albanese cabinet. The Chaser Report, less news, more often. I think the other, yeah, okay, so can I, because my worry is that they do all this sort of amazing stuff, but they then don't come up with a narrative that explains why they're doing what they're doing, except they have this sort of intergenerational thing, but essentially

they get scared of it because they can't really place it in a wider context. Can I give you my pitch for what that narrative should be? Okay, I'll just give you before you do it. Just a couple of quick little stuff. I was looking at headlines on this. So this is how they're preparing the ground. And you've got to admire the media mastery. PM talking to the financial review saying there's changes in need for social cohesion.

Charmer's talking to the Oz. It won't raise that much revenue. The coalition is saying we might not even get rid of this stuff because we needed to fund our promises. So it does seem as though this isn't going to be a giant shit fight. So they've all looked at the numbers and gone, oh, fuck, we can actually do it. We can actually do it. We can actually make a change. It's not, and maybe it's just that the sort of radical policy changes that people have wanted for a long time.

Oh, wouldn't you be? Max Chandler, Mather and so on. Wouldn't you be pissed off being Max Chandler, Mather? And just going. Seeing your entire agenda. Finally, it's safe enough for Albo to just do it. So they're going to talk. It probably actually is made safer by the fact that Max Chandler Mesa is not there.

No, no, no. So Albo can suddenly take all these policies and just do them anyway. But they're talking about intergenerational fairness. That's the line that's being used. But the interesting thing is going to be, Charles, will One Nation oppose it? because one nation is as much of a threat as the coalition now, you'd have to say. Yeah. Is it going to be a curious little wedge where Pauline Hanson is going to find herself arguing against housing for the grandkids?

Well, look, I did talk to Paul and Hanson just the other day. I thought you would. It's a red-headed thing. Well, we were on the private jet together. Is that how you got through? Okay. So for people who haven't been paying attention, Paul Enhancing got gifted a private jet the other day. No, not jet. It's just copious flights. I don't think she has her own jet.

Didn't she? No, I think she got given a jet. She effectively had a lot of use of a jet, right, yeah. And she took some expensive taxpayer fund flights to meet the jet, as you do. So the whole point is that, so who's she actually representing? Well, Houdoners probably don't like reforms on capital gains tax. You would have to think, because it's really, we're talking to very rich people who capital gains tax perform is going to think. So I think she'll be wedged into the position where she has to, just from a purely practical perspective,

you've come out against these changes. But also coming out against the changes allows her to blame the one group of people who she wants to blame everything on, which is mass immigration. Like if you say the housing problem is not caused by all these tax problems, but it is actually caused by mass immigration, then that's a clearly coherent. Like, you don't want it to be proven that actually, if you change the tax system, you actually get a fairer system. You want to be able to keep maintaining this exact system and pointing to your little, you know, scapegoat. Fact check, quick fact check. And I try and do a bit of the Joe Rogan thing. Yes, she was donated plane.

What? She was only happening. She was quite right. She was given a one million dollar plane. Oh, she's given a plane. Oh, okay. And she's tweeted. She's posted on Instagram. Yes, I've got a new plane, Sarah.

Yes, it was donated. Yes. I'm super happy. Yes, it's fast. Yes, it's amazing. Yes, it's going to annoy the Guardian, which actually, I kind of sympathise with that. Yes, it means I can visit more regional towns across the country more often. Yes, it's a serious G7. Yes, it's sexy. Yes, I have a pilot. No, I won't be doing a welcome to country every time we land. No, it's not battery operated. So there you go. That's what she has to say. It's also quite possible that a guy I went to school with also gave her a million dollars. We'll put a pin in that one. But, um, so yeah, she'll find her out, don't we? But it does seem as though,

it does seem as though, at least from Barnaby Joyce, One Nation is not going to go ahead with this change. Barnaby Joyce has accused them of planning a cash grab. Yeah, yeah. So they may fall into the trap. Yeah, they'll fall into the trap. And then the Libs will be in the weird situation again, under Angus Taylor, of being the high tax, you know, alternative. One Nation will get to inhabit the sort of coalition's traditional ground of being the low-tax populists. And the Liberal Party will be dead by Christmas.

Although, have you heard, so Farah by-elections this weekend, have you heard the latest thinking around that David Farley guy who's going to clearly win the seat? The one-nation candidate. He's the one-nation candidate. The elderly one-nation candidate. Yeah. Who donated to Labor in 2023. Apparently, the rumouries actually approached the ALP back in like 21 to become the candidate for Labor. Oh.

And he's sort of, he's sort of dilly-dallied around all the parties. I think he was a member of the National Party for a while. He may have even dabbled with the Libbs. But Paul Hanson was a liberal when she started. You know, it's fine. But the Be Joyce. He was a New Zealander at one time. The conspiracy theory, which I really like, is that he...

Oh, please let me guess. Is he a Labor stooge and they didn't do their due diligence? How funny would that be? No, the conspiracy theory is he's actually a National Party stooge. Oh. And you know how it's an open competition because the libs and the Nats are all running for the same seat? What this does is by one nation winning, this is why the Nats are sort of going, oh, yeah, let's let one nation win the seat, is because they reckon they can sweet talk

David Farley back into the fold. Oh, the reverse Barnaby. Straight after the election. Because you know how One Nation candidates tend to defect? Well, they'll start their own party often. Yeah. And the Nats will pick up a whole seat out of that and probably then be able to hold it for a while. Using gold one nation switcher route.

Can he be national? leader, wouldn't that pick? Wouldn't they put that on the table? Oh, it's very interesting time. So anyway, the point is people who've been wanting the government to really get stuck into these tax changes, it looks like it's happening. The softening has been happening. Yes.

But it kind of looks as though it's not going to be a giant stout, which is a huge surprise all these years after Bill Shorten's repeat immolation on that policy. But, yeah, I guess just a sobering realization that a lot of the people who had all that money and all those properties are no longer going to vote in the 2028 federal election. Oh, and the final piece of news, Charles, I don't know that you've caught up with. Albo's running for a third term. Oh, yes. No, I did say that.

Which actually fits, that's the story that he should be telling, right? It's what Bob Carr would do, 10 years. Is that I want to run because I want to be in power because I like being in power. Like, literally it's a sort of circular argument. He did say it's a good job, but I don't want to get to you. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, but now, can you just let me please.

Sorry, before we go, Charles's narrative, Mr Firth, unspull your vision. Which is, I think that the narrative that would actually work across all the Labor Party policies, right, is this idea that Australia actually has great bones. Like, you go around the world and you go, there's so much good going on for Australia. Sure, we've got fucking outrageous cost of living impression and stuff like that. But there's actually, the economy's actually doing not too badly compared to the rest of the world, right? But our incentives are running in all the wrong directions. Like capital gainsack, negative gearing, all that stuff, we've got to start incentivise. We've got to change the incentives around.

What sort of society do we want? How do we get the incentives working better in that sort of thing? Sounds like a really dry narrative. We would actually work in so many areas. Like, there's so much about the Australian economy where you just go, it's serving the old rich people. It's serving the landlords. You know, how do we want our housing policies like that? But it also works for things like education.

Like our education system is not actually serving, you know, education. Australia, it's almost good. Our NDAIS, they're just going to chuck a whole lot of people off the NDAAS rather than going, where are the incentives here? The incentives are all running in terms of these inflationary voucher system sort of things. We can actually change the NDAS so that we fix up the things that actually, you know, What is the cost of the NDIS? Well, the cost is from all these autistic people who need support.

They need support through the school system. Our school system says, maybe actually there's a better way to fix it, which is actually putting some of that money into actual properly, structurally reforming the school system so that it actually supports a wider, across the spectrum style of education. Anyway, the point is they've just got to start fucking, it doesn't matter what it is. Like, they're just got to start telling a story.

Do you know what, Charles? I think in your analysis there, you said two magic words, two words that made my ears prick up. Oh, yeah. And which made me think this is actually something that the government could with the right comms team, sell to Australians. Oh, okay. All Australians. You know what the two words were? What?

Good bones. Good bones. Good bones. Get Scotty Cam on the tools. Yes. Fix it up. Do some renovating West Jamie Jewry. We're going to renovate Australia.

Renovate Australia. She's a fixer upper. She needs a lick of paint. Yes. Maybe a little bit of social equity. around the place but she's got good bones. Love and tender care.

A bit of TLC. There we go. Oh, that's the language that everyone understands. Yeah. Just, you know, it's like your first home that you can now buy if this policy actually works. Except you probably can't. But because the 5% deposit scheme might be inflationary.

We'll see. Anyway, put it in Australia's just, it's a house with potential, potential, potential. And location, location, location. Yeah. Well, yeah. I think you just one elbow is. third term, Charles. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. No. We're part of the iconic class network. Catch you tomorrow.