The May 2026 Budget has confirmed what many suspected: Labor’s election promises are merely temporary placeholders for a more predatory fiscal agenda.
Having been elected on the clearest possible promise that it would not increase the Capital Gains Tax or dismantle the lawful right of taxpayers to claim deductions against such income as they decide, the Albanese government has dramatically broken its word.
And then, in a manoeuvre of breathtaking cynicism, they have utilised ‘grandfathering’ to protect everyone except the young. By exempting existing holdings, Labor has shielded a privileged class while the ‘forgotten people’ are left to foot the bill for the new regime.
The Labor pattern is now unmistakable: if this government declares it will not change a tax, that is the definitive in-house signal to Labor investors that it intends to do exactly that.
The Australian public must now look to the horizon with grim realism. If Labor is returned at the next election, the reintroduction of Death and Estate Duties is no longer a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. We are witnessing a return to the punitive era that was only ended when Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen initiated the abolition of death duties in 1977. At that historical peak, the ‘double blow’ of state and federal duties meant that on a suburban house worth $1 million today, the government would take over half the value. Based on the highest historical rates of approximately 27.9 per cent for estate duty and 33 per cent for death duties, a million-dollar legacy would be gutted by a combined tax hit of more than half its value, roughly $560,000.
Labor has chosen to ignore the honourable course for a politician who feels a promise must be changed. That standard was set by John Howard in 1998, when he decided that a GST was necessary despite his previous ‘never ever’ pledge. Crucially, Howard did not sneak the tax through in a mid-term budget; he went to an election to seek a new mandate from the people. In contrast, the Albanese government has acted like a communist ‘thief in the night’, snatching the future wealth of Australian families to cover the tracks of their own staggering incompetence.
The billions seized through these broken promises will not be used to build the nation; they will be poured into the abyss of administrative failure.
How may Net Zero or climate projects have blown their budgets and become taxpayer black holes? This ongoing monumental waste serves no environmental purpose and will not affect the climate in any measurable way. Instead, in my opinion, these projects enrich the ‘climate capitalists’ and, ultimately, the interests of the communists in Beijing who dominate the supply chains for these grand, failed experiments. As Australia drifts toward becoming the ‘Argentina of the south seas’ it is clear that we do not have a revenue problem – we have a management problem.
If the government cannot be trusted with its promises, it cannot be trusted with our children’s inheritance.
