How workers will be impacted by ‘the biggest shake-up to housing policy in decades’

The largest worker representative body in Australia anticipates that the passage of parliamentary tax changes will provide relief from cost-of-living pressures.

Further to ongoing coverage of workers forced to relocate further from their communities due to cost-of-living pressures, the passing of CGT and negative gearing tax changes has been classed as a “significant win for workers” by Sally McManus, secretary for the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

“Housing will start to come back within reach for more working people, allowing them to live closer to where they work,” she said.

According to the ACTU, the reforms correct an imbalance in the system that favoured investors and professional landlords over working Australians.

The collective also cited past union efforts to change Howard-era tax concessions that reportedly drove house prices up by more than 400 per cent.

“We applaud the federal government for having the guts to make this change and take on vested interests. This is a relatively small number of powerful people in our country who have benefited from these tax breaks at the expense of generations of young people,” McManus said.

“The bill’s passage through the Parliament is a significant win for workers, offering a fairer opportunity of housing stability through tax changes that will start to rebalance the rules.”

The Australian Services Union (ASU), an affiliate of the ACTU, similarly welcomed Albanese’s “bold reforms” to CGT and negative gearing, but noted that more can be done.

In a social media post on 28 May, the ASU said: “We’ve made a submission to call on the government to invest in more public and social housing, strengthen homelessness support, fund community infrastructure, and deliver enforceable rental rights.”

In the same vein, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) federal secretary Annie Butler noted that the reforms are “long overdue and will finally start to increase inter-generational fairness in the housing market”.

A growing number of ANFM members, she said, are “being forced to commute long distances to get to and from work because they can’t afford to live in the communities they serve. Accelerating rents and a lack of affordable housing supply across the country are making it almost impossible for them to save for a deposit.”

“What’s concerning is that this financial pressure is contributing to stress, burnout, and attrition across the health and aged care workforce,” she said.

“As the country’s largest union, the ANFM believes this rebalancing of the tax system is a way of levelling the playing field”.

Citing the Albanese government’s $2 billion investment towards the building of 65,000 new homes, the ACTU also praised the permanent $250 Working Australians Tax Offset as further cost-of-living relief “that is going to help put more money into workers’ pockets at tax time”.

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