When Jim Chalmers stood up on budget night and announced the end of negative gearing on established properties, he assured Australians it was worth breaking a promise for “right and justifiable reasons.”

Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, said something remarkably similar in March 2021 when he broke his own promise not to extend the bright-line test on property. Robertson called his earlier commitment “too definitive.” A New Zealand Herald columnist observed that this sounded a lot like “too honest.”

New Zealanders know how this story ends.

To read the article on The Australian website, click here.