(Image: Zennie/Private Media)
(Image: Zennie/Private Media)

Lord, what I would give to be “not rich” in the eyes of The Australian Financial Review.

After Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Wednesday that Victoria would impose a 7.5% levy on revenue from Airbnbs and other short-stay accommodation, the AFR’s next-day cover story featured Leanne Taylor, a “single mum of two teenagers who uses Airbnb to help her stay ahead of rising interest rates, higher energy bills and more expensive groceries”.

Taylor told the AFR she owns three properties she leases on Airbnb. Nonetheless, she claimed: “I’m not rich. If I was rich, I wouldn’t have to rent my properties out.” The article framed her as a victim of government overreach, rather than precisely the kind of person Andrews is incentivising to sell or lease their properties for longer terms.

Her claim of ordinariness, and thus victimhood, is ludicrous. Credit Suisse recently put the average net wealth of Australian individuals at $778,353. Even in the worst-case scenario, with all her properties heavily mortgaged, Taylor would be worth at least twice or three times that. And Airbnb revealed in 2021 that the average Melburnian host earns approximately $2,178 a month from the site, and Taylor has more properties listed than most.

Furthermore, Taylor’s AirBnb profile (listed on her website) lists seven properties, not three. Taylor told Crikey: “I do own three properties as stated. I also manage properties for clients who do not wish to do this themselves … It provides a small income stream in management fees for me.

On a recent episode of the Property Diaries podcast, Taylor notes she has leased at least one property from a friend, then sublet it on Airbnb. Using this strategy, she claimed, “in most cases you will double your income [that you invested in the lease]”.

Taylor is also an owner and director of Lux Linen Service (also listed on her website), a commercial laundry that services Airbnbs, holiday rentals and other businesses. These additional financial interests in the short-stay accommodation sector were not disclosed in the AFR story.

Despite having scant claim to relatability, Taylor’s foray set the tone for the ensuing backlash. Patrick Durkin, author of the first AFR piece, penned a subsequent op-ed claiming Andrews’ Airbnb “stinker […] will hit aspiring Victorians”. At a subsequent press conference, a journalist asked Andrews why he had not met with representatives of “mum and dad Victorians who want to rent out a property”. It’s not clear what Airbnb hosts’ hopes, dreams or procreation status bear on their relative privilege, nor the regulation of a lucrative industry they voluntarily invest in.

One could dismiss this incident if it didn’t typify a broad and growing genre of media coverage that presents objectively affluent individuals as just “ordinary” knockabout folk, skewing our perceptions of relative privilege and undermining reasonable policy changes that may inconvenience them. Some coverage has also omitted relevant details about the interviewees’ interests in legislative change.

Take, for instance, The Sydney Morning Herald piece from July on Fiona Martin, a “rent-vestor” with an investment property in Kew, Melbourne, (median price $2.8 million). A correction was issued after publication when it came to light that Martin wasn’t just a “typical landlord” but a committee member of the Australian Landlords Association.

“The fact that most of Australia’s landlords are working families, or middle-income earners doesn’t fit the political narrative that the ‘top end of town’ runs most of the rental market,” wrote the SMH’s Nigel Gladstone.

But one can still earn a middling income while owning lucrative assets. The piece also frequently invoked “taxable income” as a measure of investors’ middle-classness, despite later acknowledging it is calculated after deductions such as negative gearing, and is artificially low for retirees whose super withdrawals aren’t subject to income tax.

Individuals like Taylor and Martin, or hypothetical equivalents, are frequently invoked whenever governments consider taxing assets, often by obscenely wealthy individuals who can’t even pretend to be middle class. Such examples are usually unrepresentative, misleading, richer than they think, or all of the above.

When the Albanese government imposed a soft cap on superannuation accounts above $3 million, the AFR relayed concerns from the Self Managed Super Fund Association that such accounts “were not necessarily held by billionaires and Rich Listers”. Yet individuals with more than $3 million in super represent approximately 0.25-0.5% of Australians, and they collectively hold as much superannuation wealth as the 66% of account holders with balances below $100,000.

Beneficiaries of negative gearing similarly claimed to be “by no means […] wealthy” back when Labor had the concession in its crosshairs. And let’s not even start on the barrage of dubious “crying poor” from recipients of franking credits.

This is representative of a profound national confusion — most Aussies underestimate what qualifies one as well off. Last week a survey of 50,000 Australians by news.com.au asked respondents how much one needed to earn each year to be rich. The average response was $303,000. This wouldn’t just make you rich — it’d put you comfortably in the top 1% of taxpayers.

It might be fair enough for the public to get this wrong, but journalists shouldn’t. They ought to present stories which educate the public, not exacerbate their misapprehensions, let alone sow infertile soil for even the most modest tax changes.

Someone who is 1.9 metres tall might not be an Olympic basketballer, but they’re tall. And it matters little whether they think they’re 1.6 metres in spirit, aspire to grow even taller, or have children. The media claiming otherwise is, frankly, a bit rich.

What do you think of Dan Andrews’ 7.5% levy on short-stays? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.