The Albanese government is preparing to unveil a budget that will recast housing as shelter – rather than a financial tool – in changes that have already sparked heated warnings that rents will rocket and housing supply will be curtailed.

Those warnings are best ignored.

It is now clear that Labor will usher in changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax designed to make property less attractive to new investors.

The government will have ample protection for existing property investors, known as grandfather provisions, which will give it some protection from a political backlash as it transitions Australia away from an unfair system without burning it to the ground.

To be clear, if the anticipated changed settings – a clampdown on negative gearing for future purchases and a less generous CGT discount – means a property is no longer attractive to prospective investors, that’s not a bad thing.

Course correction

Since 2020, investors have increased their share of new home loans from less than 30% to more than 40%, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, while owner-occupier levels have fallen.

This is part of a long-term trend, given that the proportion of housing stock owned by investors has been rising for decades.

Traditionally, investors pursued different types of properties to owner-occupiers, but the tax incentives – including the Howard era 50% CGT discount – have been so good that the distinction has narrowed.

That has pitted investors against owner-occupiers across the country.

Michael Fotheringham, the managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, puts it this way: “It has become easier to buy a second, third or fourth home than it is to buy your first home – that’s a problematic policy setting.”

The favourable arrangements have allowed investors to overpay for properties in the knowledge they’ll use negative gearing to their advantage, before richly profiting upon sale, backed by a generous CGT discount.

This rewards poor decision-making by allowing the investor to recoup their overspend through tax deductions, insulating them from the consequences of paying too much for something.

While Australia’s housing crunch has been exacerbated by housing shortages and poor planning by a string of state and federal governments, the favourable tax settings for investors has made it worse.

Predictions of a market collapse or explosion in rents stemming from the budget reforms rely on an assumption that there will be a mass exodus of investors.

In reality, any divestment – if indeed the new policies cause divestment – simply means the properties will be put up for sale and bought by another investor or an owner-occupier.

There is no loss of housing stock, and one more renter may just find a permanent home.

Given new-built properties acquired after budget night are set to be exempt from the tax changes, any warnings about impacts on supply are largely moot. If anything, investors may be more enthused to support new builds than they were previously.

Labor’s anticipated changes are not a panacea, and more supply is critical, however the reforms will gently push Australia on to a more equitable trajectory.

Unfounded fears

Political reforms are usually met with dire warnings that do not come to pass, with Victoria a prime example.

In 2023, Daniel Andrews lumped the state’s 860,000 property investors with an extra $1,300 a year of land tax, on average, for Victoria’s Covid debt repayment plan.

Landlords complained and the Property Council of Australia warned rental supply could fall and push rents up.

Victoria’s rental stock fell about 3%, from 680,000 in June 2023 to 661,000 in December 2024, with the decline concentrated in the cities. It’s hovered at that point ever since.

Rents did not spike, with price growth slowing from mid-2023 to mid-2025 in Melbourne, according to Cotality data. Today, rents are rising at an annual pace of 5% or more in most Australian cities, but not in Melbourne.

With fewer rental properties available, rents might have been expected to pick up, but the loss of supply was balanced by easing demand. More renters began buying homes.

Victoria already had more first home buyer loans than other states and has seen its lead grow since September 2023, ABS data shows.

Other states have seen first home buyer numbers stay flat.

Melbourne’s home prices have also been slower to rise than other cities. Its steady supply of new homes has helped but ABS data shows it also hasn’t seen the investor boom that has hit Brisbane and Perth.

The taxes have not killed off property investment. The number of investor home loans in Victoria rose 10% from 2023 to 2024, then another 20% in 2025. Loan Market data suggests there have been even more investor loans in 2026 up to April than in the same period last year.

Higher investor taxes seem to have helped Victorians enter the housing market without pushing up their rents.

There’s no reason more Australians won’t enjoy the same benefits.

Theatre streaming services and cinema screenings of stage performances are not a threat to “in-person” attendance and are making audiences more adventurous, according to new research commissioned by the National Theatre.

Introducing the findings on Monday, the NT’s director, Indhu Rubasingham, said that the boom in filmed theatre had raised major questions including the concern that popular initiatives such as NT Live and NT at Home would have a negative impact on live attendance. The organisation commissioned research by the agency Indigo to learn more about audiences’ attitudes to filmed theatre.

When asked about the specific benefits of watching theatre at home, the second most popular response to Indigo’s survey was “I can discover new performances I hadn’t considered before”. The most appealing benefit was “I can watch at my own convenience” – including the ability to pause a performance and return to it later. Other popular benefits were the ability to rewatch a show that the viewer had already enjoyed live in the theatre and the chance to watch more performances than you could manage in person.

Respondents highlighted that watching at home “is a lower risk way to try something new” and that financial pressure was a key reason that they attended in-person theatre less often than they would like. Indigo’s report states that “there is very little evidence that filmed theatre reduces in-person attendance of theatre overall” and that 93% of survey respondents who saw at least one filmed theatre production in the cinema or via streaming also attended a performance in person.

Kerry Radden, associate director at Indigo, said: “Our sector has been worrying about what filmed theatre means since the pandemic threw a spotlight on it. What our research discovered is that filmed theatre has the potential to grow audiences rather than being a threat to the live experience. The vast majority of people watching are also committed, frequent theatregoers.”

As part of the research, an online audience survey ran for 11 days and gathered roughly 5,500 responses from people based in the UK. The research revealed what Indigo call a hierarchy of choice in how to watch theatre, with in-person performance remaining the clear preference at 89%. The report states that “filmed theatre skews younger than in-person – streaming markedly so, with over half of under-35s streaming theatre in the last 12 months”. Streaming was also shown to increase access, as 20% of those who watch filmed theatre at home are disabled compared with 15% of in-person audiences.

Matt Risley, chief digital officer at the National Theatre, said: “Filmed theatre should never be framed as replacing the magic of a live performance; it’s a complementary offer that can lower barriers, support discovery and keep people connected to theatre over time.”

In a panel discussion at the National Theatre, Tom Powis, executive director of the production company Wessex Grove, said that filmed theatre serves to “boost” the life of productions, which have a “short, finite” run in the theatre. Powis said that the film version of the West End hit Vanya, starring Andrew Scott, had been conceived by the play’s director Sam Yates as “its own artistic piece”. Director Justin Martin, whose productions of Suzie Miller’s legal dramas Prima Facie and Inter Alia both became NT Live hits, agreed that filmed theatre was becoming increasingly sophisticated and that “the more you do it the more you learn the potential of it”. He likened the closeups in the film version of Inter Alia to his own “rehearsal room experience” on the production, “being right there with an actor”.

Martin said that, when one of his productions is filmed and edited for the screen, “you can control rhythm in a different way” and the main bonus “is getting into closeup” so that audiences can see the detail of a performance. When he watched the film of Inter Alia, he said, “I had forgotten the nuance of what Rosamund [Pike, the lead actor] was doing.” Martin said future filmed theatre productions “have to be savvier” and use “more cameras, different angles” to push the new art form further.

Prima Facie has been watched by around 1.5 million people in cinemas since it was first released in 2022. Inter Alia was broadcast live to 50,000 people across the UK, and to date has been seen by more than 450,000 people in cinemas worldwide via NT Live – more than seven times the total in-person audience it reached during its run at the National. It is currently on in the West End and will transfer to Broadway later this year.

After the success of Prima Facie and Inter Alia, Martin and Miller are planning a third play to round off a legal trilogy, resulting in a streamable trilogy of films that would be “an experience you can’t have in the theatre, like a box set”, said Martin.

Rubasingham said that NT at Home and NT Live “aren’t side projects for us”. The initiatives are “part of us meeting audiences where they are” she added, and a way to “extend the life and reach of our performances”.

The Royal Opera House in London has urged Keir Starmer to intervene in the case of Paata Burchuladze, a world-renowned bass singer who has been imprisoned in Georgia since October on a charge of leading a coup against the country’s authoritarian leader.

The 71-year-old has performed at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and collaborated with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. He was arrested after joining a protest outside the presidential palace in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Last week he was given a seven-year jail sentence which Burchuladze suggested to the court was equivalent to a life sentence given his age.

Burchuladze became a rallying figure at nightly demonstrations against the government’s perceived pivot away from the west last autumn. He frequently sang to protesters from the back of a flatbed truck in freezing temperatures, and on 4 October he read out at a declaration claiming “power returns to the people” and calling the government “illegitimate”.

He was subsequently detained with nine others accused of organising violence against the ruling regime, which is in effect led by Georgia’s richest man, the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Ivanishvili is the chair of the ruling party, Georgian Dream, and was hit with sanctions by the US in 2024 for undermining Georgia’s democracy for the benefit of Vladimir Putin and Russia.

In a letter to the British prime minister, the Royal Opera’s director of casting, Peter Katona, claimed that Burchuladze was “being punished as a warning to others who dare oppose the regime”.

He wrote: “I am writing to draw your urgent attention to the situation of the world-renowned Georgian opera singer and our dear friend Paata Burchuladze, who is currently held in pre-trial detention and is under the criminal investigation by the pro-Russian, authoritarian regime in Georgia.

“The charges brought against Mr Burchuladze are entirely fabricated and unlawful. He is being persecuted solely because of his critical stance toward the ruling regime.”

Katona told Starmer that Burchuladze had had a distinguished career at the Royal Opera House and had performed there many times over the years since his debut in 1984. “We are also considering to invite him again, also in the future in more senior roles,” he said.

“Unfortunately, Paata Burchuladze is now among more than 100 political prisoners in Georgia. During recent peaceful demonstrations, more than 500 people were arrested, and more than 300 reported torture and ill treatment.

“Your attention and solidarity would mean a great deal to the people of Georgia, who are striving to preserve freedom, human rights, and their democratic future,” Katona said.

It is understood that the Royal Ballet and Opera has not received a response from Downing Street.

The Foreign Office has said it is monitoring developments closely and will “raise, where appropriate, the importance of safeguarding detainees’ rights, including access to legal representation and family communication”.

Burchuladze, who was born in Tbilisi, has been a high-profile pro-democracy campaigner in Georgia for more than a decade and formed a short-lived political party in 2016. He has also served as a goodwill ambassador for the UN and Unicef.

In a statement made shortly before he was sentenced last week, Burchuladze said: “I am convinced that recognisable figures such as myself, however comfortable our circumstances, must stand at the forefront and set an example in the fight to defend our homeland.”

During a previous court appearance, Burchuladze warned that the Georgian government was building an “iron fence” between Georgia and the west.

The appeal by Britain’s Royal Opera has been echoed by Christina Scheppelmann, the general artistic director at Belgium’s national opera, La Monnaie, in Brussels.

In a letter to the Belgian prime minister, Scheppelmann wrote: “It is evident that Mr Burchuladze cannot receive a fair trial. Like other political detainees, his fundamental rights are being violated and he is being punished as a warning to others who dare oppose the regime.”

Burchuladze is among 114 people in Georgia who have either been sentenced to jail or are being held in detention related to protests. The EU has suspended its negotiations over Georgia’s accession to the bloc as a result of the regime’s democratic backsliding.

Eka Gigauri, from the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, said: “These cases illustrate a clear pattern of punishment aimed at silencing those who oppose the ruling party’s pro-Russian policies and who peacefully defend Georgia’s democratic future in the face of increasing authoritarianism.”