People with direct personal financial stakes in Labor’s tax reforms are among the loudest voices opposing the changes.
Labor’s efforts to amend the tax discount awarded for profits on the sale of assets, or capital gains, have attracted criticism from real estate and investment funds.
Some opponents have a history of opposing Labor. One is a long-term Labor insider.
Here’s what you need to know about some of the people leading the charge:
Real estate and mortgage industry
Among the loudest voices against the tax changes are people who make their money on real estate and mortgages.
Billboards reading “Stop the Ambition Tax” were plastered across Canberra on Sunday. Joseph Daoud, a Sydney mortgage broker, paid for and starred in the ads.
Asked if he was motivated by the reforms’ possible impact on his income, Daoud said he wanted to stop Australia from discouraging small business.
To run the campaign, Daoud hired Patrick Blacker, who provided communications services for New South Wales Liberal frontbenchers for nearly five years.
Blacker said the campaign idea and social media content was all Daoud’s and denied any funding, logistical support or planning conversations with any politicians or staffers.
Daoud was not the only property market professional decrying the reforms. The Property Investment Professionals, Housing Industry, Master Builders and Real Estate Buyers Agents associations and the Real Estate Institute of Australia have all come out against the reforms.
Ray White, the country’s biggest real estate agency, warned on budget night: “It is a policy that will make the housing crisis worse, and Australia’s most vulnerable renters will pay the price.”
Property companies also reached the biggest audiences with post-budget advertising, not all of it critical, Meta Ad Library data shows. Real estate-related companies accounted for 10 of the 13 highest-rating ads on Meta mentioning “CGT”, excluding politicians and media outlets.
The 47% equity meme’s creators
Business owners’ AI-generated selfie memes, saying Anthony Albanese has taken over 47% of their business, boomed in popularity, flooding the internet.
The idea for the meme came from Julian Fayad, the founder of loan comparison platform LoanOptions.ai and a former candidate for Clive Palmer’s United Australia party in 2022.
Fayad told Guardian Australia he had been a consistent advocate for small businesses, with his “very short” political career motivated by the cost of lockdowns. He said he did not plan for the meme to gain the traction that it did, or coordinate with Tim Wilson, the shadow treasurer, who reposted the meme.
“This is not a campaign,” Fayad said. “This public viral reaction was purely organic. The hate from the Australian people and small business is real.”
Frank Greeff, who founded Realbase, promoted Fayad’s meme with his own version but has acknowledged its message is inaccurate.
“Not all businesses are going to be taxed at 47%, that’s correct, but it said up to 47%,” Greeff told the ABC. “The truth of social media and attention is like, unfortunately, the more nuance you have, the quicker someone will scroll past.”
After a roundtable attended by Wilson, Fayad, Daoud and others, Greeff argued against the tax reforms by saying they would cost young Australians, including those who took share options when they joined a company.
“Having a side hustle, joining a startup that can have employee equity schemes, all of these moments can help them build and ultimately get that fairness,” Greeff said.
Share options are common in tech startups.
Greeff did not extend share options to his employees at his real estate marketing company, Realbase, as first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Greeff sold Realbase to Domain for $180m in 2022. He has said publicly that the company had up to 400 employees but just 10 people owned shares during the sale, suggesting the vast majority of employees did not get a share of the $180m payout.
Greeff now owns a calendar AI app and told the Herald 10 of its 11 employees were shareholders. Greeff was contacted for comment.
Venture capitalists set to lose tax breaks on their bonuses
Early opposition to the tax reforms came from partners at venture capital companies, who are more exposed to capital gains tax than the typical high-earner.
Private sector bonuses are typically taxed as income but heads of venture capital funds, called partners, are paid bonuses which are taxed as capital gains, not income. Under the old discount, partners get half of those “carried interest” bonuses tax-free. The reforms could mean much less of their bonus is tax-free.
Paul Bassat, a partner at Square Peg, has been in the media opposing capital gains tax reform since before the budget was handed down. He declined to comment when asked whether his criticism was motivated by the prospect of higher taxes on his bonuses.
Ben Grabiner, a partner at Side Stage, has also reportedly led a group of 20 tech founders to oppose the tax changes. Grabiner did not respond when asked whether his criticism was motivated by the prospect of higher taxes on his bonuses.
Leigh Jasper, a partner at Glitch Capital, has cheered on criticism of the taxes online from people he described as “members of the Glitch Capital community”: his fellow partner Sam Kroonenburg; Thomas Kelly, who founded AI health app Heidi, backed by Glitch; and Glitch limited partner Kim Teo, the founder of menu app me&u.
Kelly said he had been engaging directly with the offices of Andrew Charlton and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers.
“We genuinely believe there is still time to ensure startups and innovation are not an unintended casualty of broader tax reform,” Kelly said.
Jasper, Kroonenburg and Teo did not respond to questions.
An ex-Labor adviser and friends
Lachlan Harris, a former adviser to Kevin Rudd, has been leading the charge, urging business to resist the reforms and lobbying government ministers to change course.
Harris, press secretary to the former prime minister, told Guardian Australia he had been urging entrepreneurs to rise up against the changes.
“I’ve spoken to a few people in the government this week – MPs, ministers, staffers – and said to all of them privately exactly what I said in the paper publicly: these reforms are bad for every young kid who has a dream of starting a business,” Harris said.
Harris’s parents founded supermarket chain Harris Farm, now run by his brothers. He founded and sold the Budgy Smuggler swimwear brand and now owns RevTech Media, which owns consumer deal businesses One Big Switch and FiftyUp.
Harris first spoke up in the Nine newspapers on 19 May. An open letter from 40 founders under 40 against the changes went public on 20 May, then a joint statement from 10 female founders went public on 21 May.
On 22 May, Charlton became one of the first federal Labor frontbenchers to echo startups’ concerns the reforms could erase their tax discount.
“It’s a valid point because that new regime doesn’t interact well if you have a really low capital base because you’ve got nothing to inflate off,” Charlton told Channel Nine on Friday.
Harris and Charlton became friends while both worked in Rudd’s prime ministerial office. Charlton was the PM’s senior economics adviser during the GFC. Harris did not directly answer when asked if they had discussed the budget’s tax reforms and Charlton declined to comment.
Asked on Sunday about Harris’s opposition to the reforms, Charlton told Sky News: “A range of people will have different views out there. My job is to explain to people why I think these changes address real challenges in the Australian economy.”
David Liston, the founder of GTM Partners media agency, organised the 40 under 40 letter. He said he had spoken to Harris about the issue but his campaign came from concerns held by “everyone in small business”.
Genevieve Taubman, the founder of The Mint Partners communications agency, led the female founders letter. Asked whether she had discussed her campaign with Harris, Taubman said the letter was her initiative.
Longtime opponents of Labor tax reform
Well-funded opponents of Labor’s past tax reform proposals have also rallied efforts to push back.
Geoff Wilson, a fund manager and founder at Wilson Asset Management, led public criticism of the changes before they were announced and has sought his fund’s 130,000 investors’ support for a petition against the reforms.
Wilson is worth an estimated $891m and is a distant relative of the shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson. The pair were among the most vocal opponents of Labor’s proposed reforms to franking credits in 2019 and its 2025 efforts to tax unrealised gains in superannuation.
Albanese in May described Geoff Wilson as a “political participant”. Wilson told Guardian Australia he had always been bipartisan, supporting and criticising both Labor and Coalition proposals.
“The prime minister’s comments say more about him than they do about me,” Wilson said.
He said his team had met the Greens, the teal independents and the Coalition and requested to meet the treasurer and prime minister to discuss the reforms.
“This campaign is only just beginning,” Wilson said. “Unfortunately, the current government [is] introducing policies that discourage investment, entrepreneurship and long-term wealth creation.”
A far wealthier opponent of Labor’s reforms, Gina Rinehart, has also spoken out against the changes to capital gains tax.
Rinehart has previously campaigned against tax reform. She routinely criticises the Albanese government and has donated millions of dollars’ worth of support to One Nation, which declared on Wednesday it would oppose the tax changes.
Rinehart’s spokesperson said her focus was on the potential negative impact of the changes on everyday Australians and the economy.
The country’s richest person told The Australian newspaper the CGT changes would discourage mining and job creation and force investment to move overseas. She singled out the US and Saudi Arabia – places where her company, Hancock Prospecting, has made significant investments.
“Canberra needs to realise that other countries have resources like we do, and other countries make themselves welcoming to investment,” Rinehart said.
Labor has stood firm against criticism, saying the old CGT system pushed money into housing and away from productive business and entrepreneurs.
Even some critics of the reforms argue the blowback has been excessive, including the venture capital partner David Petre, speaking to the Australian Financial Review.
“I’m just so over rich people who’ve made money complaining about tax rates,” Petre said.
“I call complete bullshit that founders or employees are saying they are going to move overseas because of tax.”
Paul Keating has condemned the Albanese government’s foreign policy and pursuit of the Aukus defence pact but has backed its tax reforms, speaking to Guardian Australia.
“The shift in capital taxation under the new arrangements is so marginal that no entrepreneurial initiative is likely to be thwarted by it,” he said.
