Something that got buried in the budget noise [last] week deserves a lot more attention than it is getting.

On May 12 Jim Chalmers handed down what he called the most important and ambitious budget in decades.

For farming families across regional Australia it may turn out to be one of the most damaging.

These are announced budget measures. They are not yet legislated. But they were confirmed by the Treasurer on budget night and the government has committed to them.

Here is what has changed.

From July 1 2027 the existing 50 per cent capital gains tax discount gets scrapped. It will be replaced with an inflation indexed system and a minimum 30 per cent tax on real capital gains.

That applies to individuals, trusts and partnerships.

Farming families were given a carve out for primary production income in discretionary trusts. But there is no carve out for CGT on the land itself. The land is still in the gun.

The one that will really hurt older farming families is this.

Assets bought before 1985 have always been exempt from CGT. That exemption is now gone.

From July 1 2027 those pre 1985 assets get reset and any gain in value after that date becomes taxable.

A major law firm described this as one of the more surprising announcements in the budget.

Many farming families have held land for generations on the understanding it would never be subject to capital gains tax. That understanding is now wrong.

Think about what that means in practice. Mum and dad retire into town. They lease the farm back to their kids through a family trust. That rental income funds their retirement.

Under these changes they could be paying significantly more tax on that income stream.

They either wear it or they pull the whole succession plan apart and start again. After years of work getting it right.

From July 2028 a separate 30 per cent minimum tax hits discretionary trusts on their taxable income.

Land holding trusts, which farmers use specifically to separate the farm business from the land asset for protection purposes, are squarely in the frame.

And here is the question nobody in Canberra seems able to answer. What does any of this have to do with housing affordability?

That was supposed to be the justification for the whole package.

RSM Australia agribusiness expert Ross Paterson put it plainly.

He understood the negative gearing and CGT changes as housing measures. He could not understand why they moved on trusts.

It has nothing to do with increasing housing supply.

What it does do is make it harder to keep farms in families, harder to retire off the land with any certainty, and harder to plan for the next generation.

Chalmers broke clear election promises to announce this.

Albanese promised before the 2025 election that he would not touch negative gearing or CGT settings.

He reversed that on budget night.

For a government that claims to support regional Australia this budget has just made life significantly harder for the people who feed the country.

Billy Edwards, Tullamore

Brisbane Australia's fastest growing port

It is unbelievable that Catherine King, the Federal Minister for Transport etc says that scrapping the Inland Rail means that freight can go from Melbourne to Perth via Parkes, rather than Melbourne to Brisbane.

Brisbane at present moves almost twice the tonnage (mainly to Asia) of Fremantle (which provides little service to Asia), and is Australia's fastest growing port.

The reason that so much of the Newell Highway freight is in refrigerated trucks is to minimise the time taken for perishable foods to move from producing areas in Victoria to consumers in Asia.

Everald Compton's original vision for the Inland Rail route was to connect to Darwin, but the route was changed to Brisbane because it provided a quicker and more efficient connection between the horticultural areas and their overseas markets.

Melbourne to Freemantle via Parkes? Tell her she's dreaming!

Barry Garment, Parkes

A big thank you

How fortunate we are to be in Parkes!

I recently spent a few days in our hospital, first in emergency and then as an inpatient.

I cannot fault the care and treatment I received. All staff were capable, caring and kind, even though they are so short of numbers that they had to do everything on the double.

We are also lucky that patients' meals are cooked on site, unlike many larger public hospitals, and the kitchen staff take pride in serving tasty, good meals.

Full marks and a great big thank you to them all.

Pam Nankivell, Parkes