Bill Kelty’s tax reform comments cast a harsh light on Labor’s lack of ambition

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty (pictured in 2019) told a parliamentary committee that he supported scaling back the 50% capital gains tax discount for investors – but that this needed to be part of a broader package of economic reform. Photograph: Kelly Barnes/AAP

The first day of the Greens’ parliamentary inquiry into the capital gains tax was dominated by a bloke in his late 70s imploring parliamentarians to show “unequivocally that they’re on the side of young people”.

Not just any bloke, of course, but Bill Kelty: union legend, co-architect of the economic reforms of the 1980s and 90s, former Reserve Bank board member, and self-proclaimed rich guy.