A lot of Australians aren’t expecting to become rich. They just want to feel like working hard, saving money and planning ahead still means something. That’s why budgets hit differently now. People can handle pressure. What wears them down is feeling like the rules keep changing while everyday life gets harder anyway.

A 30% minimum tax should mean 30%. That sounds fairly straightforward. But under Treasury’s proposed discretionary trust rules, the same income could potentially be taxed once at the trust level, again when distributed to a company, and again when it eventually reaches the shareholder. Wilson Asset Management’s submission models one example where a supposed 30% minimum tax produces an effective end-to-end tax rate of almost 70%. That is not a minimum tax. That is double taxation with a better marketing department. The policy objective is understandable. Governments are entitled to address aggressive income splitting and tax avoidance. But good tax policy should target the actual problem without creating a much larger one. Thousands of Australians established trusts under long-standing laws, often for legitimate business, succession, asset protection and investment purposes. Many of those trusts will eventually vest anyway. Forcing families to restructure, obtain legal and accounting advice, transfer assets, potentially deal with state duties and then wind the trust up does not magically make the tax system fairer. It mainly makes it more expensive and complicated. A sensible approach would be to grandfather existing trusts from Budget night, while applying the new rules to structures created afterwards. At the very least, any rollover period should begin only after the legislation is enacted and proper ATO guidance is available. People should not be expected to make irreversible financial decisions based on rules that have not yet been written. The objective may be arguable. Some of the proposed outcomes are not. They are simply poor policy design.

Deloitte isn't exactly known for alarmism. When one of the world's largest consulting firms warns Australia faces its weakest growth outlook since the early 1990s, we should probably stop pretending everything is fine. Weak productivity. Weak investment. Falling living standards. We need policies that create wealth, not just redistribute it.

Soon you'll need to show your driver's licence to steal a car, shoot someone and evade police in a video game. Australia really does have a gift for unintended comedy. news.com.au/technology/motor…

Whatever your view of One Nation, nearly 57,000 Australians voluntarily donating an average of around $60 is a remarkable signal. The story was never the money. The story is how many people felt strongly enough to reach for their wallet.

For years voters who left the major parties were treated like they'd eventually come back. This suggests parts of the Coalition no longer believe that. That's the real story.afr.com/politics/federal/ton…

Funny how there's never a shortage of money for the next government program. The people who wore the uniform always seem to be told to wait.

Most technological revolutions look obvious in hindsight. Most investment manias do too.

Either tax settings influence investment decisions or they don't. If they don't, why change them?

The goal should be helping more Australians build wealth, not arguing about who already has it.

One thing missing from this debate is how many self-funded retirees structured their lives around modest trust income specifically to avoid relying on other income before super access. They planned around progressive tax brackets and tax-free thresholds like everyone else. They’re not all sitting on yachts in Mosman.

A lot of Australian policy quietly assumes asset prices will keep rising forever. That feels like a very dangerous assumption to build an entire tax base around. livewiremarkets.com/wires/en…

Australia keeps saying it wants more productive investment while making the payoff from productive risk less attractive than owning property and harvesting yield. Then everyone wonders why the country keeps financially behaving like a landlord. afr.com/policy/economy/the-s…

This is where the policy starts getting genuinely messy. If the structure pushes ordinary investors away from direct ownership and toward managed structures just for tax efficiency, people will adapt accordingly. Capital always moves. The question is whether the system is rewarding productive behaviour or just rewarding whoever can navigate complexity best.

The government thought they were targeting the “rich rich.” What they may have actually hit is the “wrong rich” - the self-funded, small-business, middle-Australia layer that spent decades trying to build assets slowly enough to stay independent of government. In Canberra, a discretionary trust sounds like a Cayman Islands loophole. In much of Australia it’s: a tradie business, a farm, a husband-and-wife consultancy, a medical practice, or a family trying to manage succession and asset protection. The genuine surprise from parts of the political class probably reveals how disconnected modern policymaking has become from how ordinary Australian enterprise is actually structured. theage.com.au/money/saving/w…

The bigger issue might end up being behavioural, not just fiscal. People pause investment when they stop trusting the rules won’t keep changing underneath them.

The frustrating part isn’t even the tax. It’s watching years of tightening trust rules, compliance crackdowns and ATO scrutiny… then still hearing ordinary professionals and family businesses talked about like the system is some free-for-all. At some point the gap between the political narrative and reality just starts sounding ridiculous. afr.com/politics/federal/ato…

You can tell a lot about a government by the things it decides are “too expensive”. Not infrastructure blowouts. Not consultants. Not endless new bureaucracy. But helping the parents of a fallen VC recipient attend events honouring their son.

Feels like a lot of Australians are becoming more cautious lately. Not just spending less. Hesitating more. Delaying decisions. Second guessing big commitments. Like people no longer fully trust where the country is heading.