Young Australian Backlash

So got another lesson for our Labour Party if they want to ponder it. Australian Labour has blown their budget. It is hard to overstate the anger and pushback on their tax changes made well over a week ago now. See, budgets in the news cycle sort of come and go. This was different. It was built as generational. It was seen as transformational. It was seen as Albanese having to spend a decent chunk of political capital, given his tax treatment was based on a lie. He said in the election campaign of last year he would not touch tax. Twelve months on he went back on his word. The twist being the blowback came and it hasn't stopped coming. And somewhere in the last couple of days, the concern, followed fairly quickly by panic, started to set in at government level. The anger has not been driven by the rich old coalition blokes whose myriad of investments would end up being taxed more. No. It's been driven by young Australians who buy shares to save for their retirement. Young Australians who start businesses to set up a decent life for themselves and their families, people the Labour government never saw coming. What it shows, and it's an encouraging sign, I think, and one I suspect is as relevant here as it is there, is that a decent chunk of our population are not the moaners you hear on the news every night, not the NGOs bleating about their lot, not the success haters that dominate the news cycle, but rather middle of the road Kiwis and Australians who are quite keen on working hard and getting ahead in life. And all they've ever asked for, to use the vernacular, is a fair suck of the salve. You don't tax success. And that's what Albanese's had a crack at. Why take a risk in starting a business if all there is at the end of it is Jim Chalmers and his tax department looking to extract ever larger amounts of your hard earned? And that's what Labour want to do here. It's always about more tax, isn't it? It's never about more success or larger growth or a bigger pie. Got an issue short of dough, tax somebody. Well, Middle Australia isn't interested, and they've been out in force this week showing it. Maybe Elbow knew that. Maybe that's why he lied to get into power in the first place, so he could do what he's done. And if that's true, then Hipkins and Coe's in real trouble because he hasn't lied. Of course, he's told us this is coming. And if we are like Australia, it is not going down well.