Graham,

I think typos are part and parcel of posting. Thanks for the clarification.

The Australian National University has published a very comprehensive and quantitative report that goes a long way to explain why younger Australians have a gripe.

This paper shows that the tax and transfer system has become more generous to older Australians in recent decades. Government expenditure targeting older Australians – such as the age pension, aged care and health care – has increased significantly in real, per-person terms over this period. In contrast, net expenditure targeting younger households remains relatively constant.

Trends have significantly changed the nature of the Australian tax and transfer system and the age profile of the final (after taxes and transfers) income distribution. In the first 10 years of the study (1993/94 to 2002/03), Australians aged over 60 had private income equal to 41% of the income of Australians aged 18-60 and average final income equal to 61% of the income of Australians aged 18-60. In the final ten years of the study, the pre-tax income of Australians aged over 60 was 65% of the population aged 18-60, and post-tax income is equal to 95% of their income. This trend is even more notable when Australians over the age of 60 are compared to those aged 18-30.

It's very hard to argue that there is not intergenerational unfairness after consideration of this data.

mhaze,

Your painting of the Roundtable as “cover for tax grabs,” oversimplifies what actually came out of it.

Yes, some revenue ideas were floated, but the most concrete signals were supply-side: pausing new building-code changes that were pushing up construction costs, streamlining approvals to speed up delivery, and drawing in more institutional capital for housing.

That is productivity reform, not just a raid.

The Productivity Commission has been warning for years that Australia’s housing productivity has been going backwards, with fewer completions per worker and longer build times, and urged precisely these kinds of regulatory changes.

“Intergenerational fairness” isn’t just a slogan either. It reflects hard realities:

- home ownership among under-40s has collapsed compared to their parents at the same age;
- student debts ballooned enough to force changes to HELP indexation;
- and younger workers are far more exposed to insecure employment.

These are measurable structural shifts, not political inventions.

Immigration has certainly added pressure - last year’s record intake tightened rental markets sharply - but it’s not the sole driver of unaffordability. Tax concessions like negative gearing and the capital gains discount tilt demand towards investors; cheap credit has repeatedly inflated asset values; and planning bottlenecks keep supply lagging behind demand.

Even if migration were halved, those pressures would still be there.

Nor does the “just get married” line address the economics. Two incomes can help service a mortgage, but they don’t alter the underlying price-to-income ratio that has blown out across all household types.

You can’t marry your way past land scarcity or investor tax breaks.

If you want to criticise the Roundtable, the fair question is whether the government will actually act on the Productivity Commission’s agenda and take on politically sensitive distortions like negative gearing and super concessions.

That would be genuine reform.

What we see instead is every mention of fairness being instantly weaponised as a “raid” or “age war.” As I said before, those headlines keep bold reform buried under word salads.

Got a link for that paper WTF? My suspicion is that they are counting drawing down assets from super as income, which it isn't, but I don't want to jump the gun.

Graham,

Try this link: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/content-centre/research/measuring-changing-size-intergenerational-transfers-australian-tax-and

Certainly higher capital income and superannuation are classified as income for this study and the opportunity to tax that is identified.

A deep dive into this paper would make for an interesting topic in its own right. One of their insights is "To achieve a fiscally sustainable budget over the coming decades, Australia must choose between increasing taxes and reducing government expenses. The consequences of this adjustment should be borne, at least in part, by older Australians. Achieving budget sustainability solely by increasing taxes on Australians of working age (mostly by growing personal income tax revenue through bracket creep) will worsen generational imbalance in the tax and transfer system".

One thing I have considered before is mentioned: "Individuals don’t know how long they are going to live and in the absence of a government pension, would be forced to ‘over save’ to cover expenses in case they live to a very old age. Government funded services targeting older groups (age pension, aged care and health care) is a form of insurance against this longevity risk".

Thanks GY for the thread. Kudos.

“It’s been a very productive three days,” Bran Black, the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, said".
Let's ask him about that in twelve months !