Updated May 13, 2026 — 12:19pm, first published May 12, 2026 — 7:40pm
This budget is a Labor dream come true. It will redistribute income from investors to workers.
It will redistribute real estate opportunity from the prosperous old to the aspirational young.
The budget takes from mum and dad and gives to the kids. Cathy Wilcox And, because it’s a Labor dream, it’ll be attacked by the Coalition as a nightmare. Which is exactly what the Albanese government is hoping for.
By fighting to protect investors and older people, the Coalition will defend a dying demographic. And alienate the fast-growing younger. Already, voters under the age of 45 – Millennials and Gen Zs – constitute the majority of the electorate.
And, by the next election, there will be 700,000 more Gen Z voters on the electoral rolls than there were at the last. Among these, only one in five consider themselves Coalition voters, according to Kos Samaras of RedBridge, “and that’s on a good day”.
“We are giving hope to younger generations,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters. “That’s what this budget is all about.”
Labor’s hope is that the Coalition, by trying to take the hope away, will deal the political deathblow to itself.
If the Coalition is true to its recent punch-drunk form, it will oblige.
Is the government breaking its word
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