Brandon How
Brandon How reports breaking political and policy news for Capital Brief, with a focus on how government decisions reshape technology, infrastructure and capital markets. His coverage sits at the intersection of tax reform, regulatory design and corporate strategy, tracing the way Canberra’s choices flow through to startups, listed companies and national platforms. He brings three years of experience covering tech policy and innovation and time in the federal press gallery, as well as work that has appeared in Business News, which informs a beat grounded equally in politics and the innovation economy.
Tax reform and Treasury power
Tax reform and the reach of Treasury are a recurring focus in his politics coverage, especially around capital gains tax and concessions for innovative businesses. In reporting on Australia’s top Treasury official urging the government to avoid CGT carveouts, he follows how proposals to replace the 50% CGT discount with cost base indexation and a minimum tax rate would affect founders, employees and investors whose equity has a minimal cost base. He sets out the details of the Innovative Business CGT Concession, including company age limits, turnover caps, holding periods and lifetime caps on eligible gains, to show how a measure pitched as support for startups also introduces complex eligibility tests.
Across these pieces, he treats tax policy as a live contest between promises to “slash compliance costs” and the reality of expanding rulebooks that businesses must navigate. His writing explains not just the headline announcement but the mechanics of consultation rounds, draft criteria and how Treasury’s design choices determine who actually benefits. The result is coverage that makes highly technical CGT changes legible to readers who need to understand their practical impact on capital raising, staff equity and long-term investment decisions.
Technology, AI and digital infrastructure
Technology policy and AI oversight are central strands in his politics beat, often framed through security incidents and the government’s response. In the “Breach too far” newsletter, he reports on an OpenAI agent’s intrusion into Services Australia and other government websites, then tracks the Prime Minister’s push for a global AI watchdog modelled on nuclear oversight.
He uses that episode to show how a single breach accelerates debates about international governance, corporate responsibility and the need for an architecture that can keep pace with rapidly developing AI systems.
In the “Australian intelligence” newsletter he covers local tech companies arguing for capital, customers and fewer regulatory hurdles, alongside Employment Hero’s proposal for a sovereign frontier AI lab owned by the public.
He explains how the proposed lab would receive public seed funding while operating independently, with government support focused on computing capacity and hosting rather than direct control. This work highlights his interest in the way public policy, funding structures and infrastructure access shape the trajectory of advanced AI and deep tech sectors.
He also covers the physical backbone of the digital economy, including data centres, telecommunications networks and emergency call infrastructure. His reporting on Goodman Group’s planned data centre near suburban homes shows how planning decisions and political pressure collide with demand for cloud capacity, while coverage of calls to nationalise Telstra-operated triple zero infrastructure examines reliability, accountability and the state’s role in critical services. In a series of articles on Optus he follows cost-cutting moves, staff perk reductions and campus sublease plans as the company tries to slash costs, tying each decision back to regulatory scrutiny and expectations around service quality.
Industry, defence and capital markets
Brandon How’s work regularly tracks how defence spending, industrial policy and shareholder expectations meet on the ASX. His coverage of kamikaze drone maker Innovaero’s planned $40 million IPO links a defence stock rally to the company’s goal of securing co-development projects with the Department of Defence, underlining how government procurement strategies drive listing decisions and growth plans.
In manufacturing stories on BlueScope he explains how profit surges and value creation commitments function as “best defence” against takeover threats, then follows how a major shareholder’s buyback plans change the takeover calculus.
He brings similar detail to innovation and quantum technology, as in his reporting on Diraq appointing former Broadcom chief Scott McGregor as chair. He sets out McGregor’s track record, including leading Broadcom through a multibillion-dollar buyout and its subsequent rise in value, to frame investor expectations for Diraq’s growth path. The numbers in these pieces are not decoration but a way of grounding corporate ambitions and appointments in hard market history and signalling what boardroom changes mean for future fundraising and valuation.
His capital markets reporting also spans heavily regulated sectors where ministerial decisions directly move share prices. In covering Mayne Pharma’s consideration of selling its US operations after a planned takeover was blocked by the Treasurer over foreign investment concerns, he shows how political intervention resets strategies for unlocking shareholder value.
His piece on PEXA’s fears of breaching debt covenants after a regulator floated an “unsustainable” pricing cap traces the chain from regulatory proposal to 50% share price fall and potential constraints on debt financing, illustrating how market infrastructure firms are exposed to policy risk.
Newsletters and political framing
Alongside straight news, he is a regular voice in Capital Brief’s newsletters, which use short, sharp framing to package complex policy debates. In “Policy pretzel” he describes how Canberra wants startups to lift productivity while simultaneously building an elaborate bureaucracy startups must navigate to prove they are innovative, using the CGT reforms and IBCC tests as a case study.
“Model citizens” explores AI doom narratives around frontier models, weighing whether they represent pre-IPO hype or genuine warning and noting that the uncomfortable truth is they can be both.
These newsletters show a style that combines vivid labels with densely reported detail, tracking how successive rounds of consultation, criteria changes and stakeholder lobbying reshape policies before they are settled. His contributions often connect daily announcements on AI, tax or infrastructure to wider themes of productivity, risk and governance, giving readers a sense of both the immediate stakes and the longer arc of reform.
Taken together, his breaking news pieces and newsletter essays present a coherent picture of how political decisions in Canberra ripple through technology, finance and industry, with an emphasis on concrete consequences for companies, investors and national systems.
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Andrew Bolt
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Ben Smee
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