Dave Stewart

Wasn’t Friday predictable? The sun rose, Simeon Browne misrepresented a tax poll, and a landlord went into bat for landlord entitlement.

Keith Melville has been a solid trouper for the taxpayer-funded welfare scheme where you borrow money to buy a house, get someone else to pay for it, write off the all the expenses (and some) as a tax deduction and then sell it at a massive capital gains and pay no tax.

In the landlord world it’s called “a business like any other business”.

What an insult to hard-working, taxpaying business owners.

When I wrote about how landlordism wasn’t a business like any other business in the Beacon Friday, October 10 2025, landlords throughout the district didn’t vote for me the next day in the local body election.

A couple of days later I bumped into Keith at our favourite coffee shop and we had a great discussion about interest deductibility and a capital gains tax.

Keith and I both agreed if landlords wanted to be treated “like any other business” they could have one, but not both.

But as I read Keith’s letter on Friday on Labour’s flip flop I couldn’t help but notice his flip flop.

It’s clear Labour is gifting landlords that borrowed $3 billion tax break and introducing a capital gains tax.

In 2025, Keith saw that as fair, but on Friday he called it a flip flop by Labour.

But it’s also a flop flop by him.

To me, and everyone who isn’t a landlord, it’s pretty simple.

If you want to be treated “like any other business” you pay your taxes “like any other business”. You would think someone who doesn’t have to pay back the $3 billion of taxpayer money they weren’t entitled to would be happy.

But that just means you don’t understand how entitled landlords have become as they ride the gravy train our taxes are funding.

Thanks to landlords and their letters that help us understand that a little bit more about entitlement each week.