Yes, young Australians will feel the budget changes more acutely. But the risk is that they don’t go far enough

‘Younger investors, many of whom entered the market during the pandemic, are recalibrating. These concerns are real.’ Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

I bought my first home because I got lucky in the stock market. After holding an ASX investment for a year, the returns – half tax‑free – helped me scrape together a deposit for a one-bedroom apartment in Canberra. But it was a workaround for a deeper problem: a steady salary was not enough to secure a basic need like housing. For a long time, I believed home ownership was out of reach.

Peter Costello would recognise that story. He says the government is slugging investors with a new tax that will “punish young people trying to build wealth” and leave them with “a lifetime of these higher taxes”. And he has a point. The federal budget proposes to wind back the old rule that taxed only half your profits from selling investments, which means more of those gains will now be taxed. For people like me, who leaned on shares to get ahead, this matters.