The introduction of capital gains tax discounts for individuals and funds as part of the 1999 Ralph business tax reforms has received a lot of bad press, but much of this commentary is ill-informed. Many journalists claim that the discounts have come at a multi-billion dollar cost to the revenue. This is based on a misunderstanding of the Treasury’s annual Tax Expenditures Statements. These statements attempt to measure the benefits to taxpayers from tax concessions. They do not measure revenue forgone, a very different concept. The Treasury’s approach makes no allowance for changes in behaviour on the part of taxpayers in response to CGT or other tax concessions. To avoid double-counting, the Treasury also includes the value of other CGT concessions in its estimates of the tax expenditures on the Ralph CGT discounts. This overstates the value of tax expenditures on the discounts, while understating the value of other CGT concessions.

A new Australian Medical Association (AMA) report says a lack of purpose in Aboriginal men’s lives has had a profound impact on their health and well-being—not to mention the lives of their women and children. This finding is far from surprising. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to work out that sitting around doing nothing leads to despondency and despair.

There’s nothing like an old-fashioned battle between working mums and their stay-at-home sisters, especially when a glamorous and high profile mother like the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, weighs in.