Originally published by Eli Greenblat of The Australian.
10.06.2026
Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott has savaged the Albanese government’s budget, saying its tax and investment settings are anti-aspirational, do nothing to ease the housing crisis, and will leave future generations worse off.
In a blistering attack on Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers’ tax heist around capital gains tax, negative gearing and family trusts, Mr Scott says it wasn’t a surprise that there had been “fairly widespread negativity towards the budget” and warned it could crush the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit.
He said the next generation of Australians would pay the price for the tax and investment changes, and while he didn’t have a major problem with the government “tinkering” with capital gains tax and negative gearing, the budget didn’t “fundamentally address the housing supply issue”.
“My greatest concern is that Australia is a less competitive place to invest and these policies ultimately will hurt the very people they are designed to protect because they are anti-aspirational,” Mr Scott told The Australian on Wednesday as he delivered the company’s strategy day to investors and analysts.
The Wesfarmers strategy day, which placed productivity and harnessing AI as central pillars in driving profits – no matter the broader economic settings or cycle – got a better reception from investors than voters gave Labor government’s budget.
Shares in Wesfarmers rallied 4.25 per cent to $83.39 on the back of the four-hour presentation led by Mr Scott and his divisional chiefs.
The political comments from Mr Scott, one of the most powerful CEOs in the country and whose conglomerate owns Bunnings, Kmart, Target and Officeworks, are among a wave of criticism from business leaders and small business owners over the tax grab at the centre of Dr Chalmers’ budget, which will raise the tax rate for capital gains on asset sales, while also cracking down on negative gearing and family trusts.
“Australians are aspirational and the budget in many ways works against that. So, you can’t have a strong economy without supporting aspiration, the two go hand-in-hand and in recent years changes to tax – particularly broadening the higher capital gains tax rate … across the board – and additional regulations have eroded the incentive for Australians to invest and work harder to be entrepreneurial.
“So this is very concerning because it will be the next generation that pays the price for these changes.”
Mr Scott said the range of new tax measures in the budget could impact offshore investment in key resource assets such as developing the Pilbara, as well gold, lithium, oil and gas resources.
“I’m probably most concerned about second-order implications. If you think about our businesses and our country, we are a real beneficiary of some very strong and significant resources companies. I do worry that a number of those companies, be they Australian companies or international companies that invest in resources or oil and gas, will be more encouraged to invest offshore by virtue of the less hospitable tax settings and regulatory settings within Australia.”
At his strategy briefing, Mr Scott unveiled a big bet on productivity to power the conglomerate’s next growth phase, ordering every division to embrace artificial intelligence and digitisation regardless of where the economy sits in the cycle.
He pledged to investors that Wesfarmers would advance the responsible use of AI to drive long-term sales and earnings growth as well as lowering operating costs.
He added Wesfarmers would be responsible when investing in AI, using a disciplined approach that squarely focused on delivering returns on funds invested.
“We are really leveraging the core Wesfarmers commercial and financial discipline in how we are investing in AI, so you need to be very mindful of the costs of implementing new projects … so we have good line of sight of that and we will be very commercial in terms of our focus,” he said.
“Early days are that a lot of these initiatives should be self funding and should deliver good returns to shareholders.”
In her presentation, Kmart Group boss Aleks Spaseska revealed new growth objectives for the retailer’s highly successful Anko private label brand. The Anko brand, which makes clothes, toys, homewares and appliances sold in Kmart and Target, currently has five stand-alone stores in the Philippines and will open an additional five stores by the end of fiscal 2027.
Meanwhile, Bunnings, which delivers the bulk of sales and profits for Wesfarmers, has upped its addressable market it believes it can capture to $113.5bn as the business looks across home, lifestyle, outdoor living and new areas such as pets and cleaning products to grow.
The addressable market for Bunnings has grown considerably since 2007 when it was estimated to be around $39bn.
