Budget measures a total racket, says Joseph Daoud
Activist mortgage broker Joseph Daoud is taking prime minister Anthony Albanese to the tennis court for a one-on-one battle, but there will be more than tennis balls lobbed between the opponents.
Daoud won the opportunity after spending $16,500 in a charity auction. The prize? Tennis at the Lodge with the prime minister.
Daoud intends to use the opportunity to grill the prime minister over Labor’s highly controversial changes to capital gains tax (CGT) and negative gearing.
“When we're on the court, there's no staffers, there's no backbench. There's no media publicists or PR person to guide the prime minister on what to say,” Daoud told MPA. “Just him, me, a couple tennis rackets and a ball. So I'm able to ask him every single question with his blood pressure raised and running all over the court.”
He’s hoping to get some clear answers on how Albanese expects his budget to help first home buyers. “As an individual who has been working with first home buyers for the last eight years, including my time in Macquarie Bank, I'm of the genuine consensus that this does not help first home buyers,” said Daoud.
The stunt even made its way to parliament this week, when Liberal MP Ben Small asked Albanese if he intends to tell “Aussie legend” Daoud “why his word on negative gearing and capital gains taxes was broken”.
Albanese replied: “If it’s a choice between someone who’s in the sector somewhere and who’s got enough money to buy billboards and spend all this, or first-home buyers struggling to get into a home, I’m for the first-home buyers.”
Daoud previously spent $17,000 worth of billboard advertising inside and around Canberra Airport to lash out at what he calls “ambition taxes”.
Shifting into pun mode, Albanese said: “The more they go down this road, the more aces we serve up”.
While Daoud is hoping the sparring match goes ahead, he has yet to be contacted by Albanese’s team. Either way, it sounds like there will be no love lost between the two parties.
