CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The 2026 Federal Budget continues to hold the Australian news cycle ransom, as the public are enlightened to new and scary consequences of the Labor Government's most ambitious budget since those scary years when it was still okay for a Prime Minister to call his mates comrade.
As was expected, the vast majority of fear is not coming from the everyday voters who have been white-knuckling a cost of living crisis ever since someone ate a bat in Wuhan, but rather the pages of Australia's financial news publishers.
While the changes to property investor tax loopholes have been widely celebrated by the vast majority of voters who have been indentured into a extortionate rental market that only exists because housing has become a supercharged low-risk investment opportunity for the Howard Battler's - there is still a lot of disgruntled commentators who feel as though these economic reforms are actually a backwards slide.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers is currently at the centre of a media pile-on, as economists, journalists, bankers and real estate agents begin to doubt whether even he has a PHD at all.
But it's not just his education that is being questioned. It seems that the entire Federal Cabinet is also being accused of never spending a day in the real world.
It's not yet certain what constitutes 'the real world' - given that the people making these accusation seem to have even less contact with the general public than even the most professional Labor politician.
But still, Sydney-based banker Clyde Mortimer (55) says the Federal Budget does not pass the 'pub test'.
What kind of pub he's talking about is also uncertain, but it could very well be Ryan's Bar.
"Who are these blokes? They haven't spent a day outside their big fancy offices in Canberra" says Clyde, as he overlooks Sydney Harbour from his big fancy office in Circular Quay.
Clyde appears furious as he rubs together his wraspy hands, calloused from a lifetime of back breaking ski ergos.
"Never broken a sweat either"
"You can just tell Jim Chalmers has never played fringe Super Rugby"
