If the PM Anthony Albanese was a popular leader, well ahead in the preferred Prime Minister polls, he could have seriously looked at the rules around negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. However, his popularity is on the slide, so politically, negative gearing changes could be as useful for winning votes as bringing up the idea of death taxes or taxes on the family home whenever it gets sold!

The PM well remembers the impact on Bill Shorten when he talked about negative gearing changes, capital gains discount reductions and the reduction of franking credits. When this happened, he lost an ‘unlosable’ election to Scott Morrison and now Bill is set to resign from politics to take the top job at the University of Canberra!

The news today is that the Prime Minister is doing a Colonel Kink from the TV show Hogan’s Heroes, who’d say “I know nothing!” Yesterday Albo said he knew nothing about Treasury’s look at changing the negative gearing rules. And he’s dodging questions about his buddy, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, being aware of Treasury’s interest in collecting more taxes by making negative gearing less attractive to investors.

The official word today is that Labor has “no plans” to tweak negative gearing and the related capital gains tax but news outlets can see the smoke and presume there’s a fire burning somewhere!

The Australian reports that “Mr Albanese said he had not directed anyone in the public ­service to undertake modelling on possible changes to negative gearing and the CGT”.

The problem is the Government might need the Greens to retain power after the 2025 election and these guys and gals want change in the taxing of property owned by landlords.

The Australian tell us: “Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said it was clear ‘we need some movement on those tax handouts’, ­reiterating that his party would be willing to help Labor pass its key pieces of housing legislation should it make changes to negative gearing or CGT concessions.”

Whether they want to admit it or not, the smart word is that the Albanese Government is modelling changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing concessions to help boost tax collections to help reduce future budget deficits.

They also want to improve access to properties for sale for non-investors. Making property taxes less charitable would be a way to do that. Of course, adding to the supply of homes would be better but governments are hopeless on that front!

This is a policy headache for Labor as it would love to make changes to reduce investors bidding at auctions and raising house prices, but lots of Labor voters (including nurses, teachers and cops) are landlords!

Why? Because tax rates are so high that a negatively geared property has made perfect money sense!

This will be a hot political news story, but I will be surprised if Labor comes up with a tough policy option that will raise a lot of tax revenue and kill votes.

Why? Because Albo and his team need to win a lot of votes with interest rate cuts looking like they might not turn up to next year!