John Kehoe

John Kehoe is economics editor at the Australian Financial Review, focusing on national economic policy, tax and the intersection of politics, business and the budget. His coverage centres on how government decisions flow through the economy, public institutions and households, using official data and independent analysis to test political narratives. He writes as a policy insider who has worked in Treasury and covered federal politics and banking, bringing a long view of structural reforms rather than short-term market moves.

Fiscal policy and budget blowouts

Kehoe’s core run is federal fiscal policy, especially the size and shape of budget deficits and the credibility of government costings.

He reports from Parliament House on major budget decisions and austerity measures, such as sweeping cuts to the public service, and explains how these flow through to service delivery and the broader economy. His budget pieces typically foreground the numbers first, drawing on Parliamentary Budget Office work, Treasury projections and economists’ models to identify how much of any deterioration is driven by new spending commitments versus cyclical factors.

That approach distinguishes his coverage from routine budget reporting by turning fiscal debates into quantifiable questions that can be tested rather than repeated.

Kehoe is often a reference point for commentary in other outlets when fiscal issues flare, with his calculations on blowouts and structural deficits cited as a benchmark in broader debates about trust in the treasurer’s narrative. He treats fiscal policy as a political economy story, connecting the line items of the budget to questions of credibility, institutional discipline and long-term sustainability. For organisations affected by public spending changes, his work focuses less on partisan positioning and more on whether the underlying numbers and assumptions stack up.

Tax reform, capital gains and investment

Tax policy is the other major strand of Kehoe’s coverage, with repeated attention to income tax cuts, capital gains tax settings and their impact on investment decisions. He writes explainers on major reforms such as stage three income tax changes, setting out in plain language what proposed shifts mean for pay packets and incentives from a fixed future date.

In his reporting on capital gains tax, he follows the consequences into the real economy, profiling cases such as a technology start-up weighing a move overseas in response to CGT changes.[anchor] These pieces link the technical detail of tax design to concrete business choices about location, hiring and growth.

Kehoe’s tax writing is driven by distribution and incentives, not just headline rates. He looks at who gains and who pays, how proposals alter work and investment behaviour, and how they fit into the long arc of previous tax debates he has covered on banking and federal politics.

That combination of policy explanation and behavioural detail makes his tax stories useful for players across the system, from listed companies watching investor sentiment to founders assessing whether the domestic regime still rewards risk.

Intergenerational wealth and productivity

Kehoe brings a consistent intergenerational lens to his economics coverage, asking what current settings mean for younger cohorts’ future living standards. In work such as his piece on why young Australians are at risk of a poorer future, he examines the combined effect of slow productivity growth, housing costs, tax concessions and public debt on the prospects of younger workers.

He treats this as a structural challenge rather than a lifestyle story, framing it in terms of wealth transfers, productivity and the limits of the existing policy toolkit.

These intergenerational articles often cut across his other beats, pulling together budget decisions, tax concessions and labour market dynamics into a single narrative about future opportunity. The tone is analytical rather than emotive: he sets out the pressures on younger households and the trade-offs facing policymakers, without drifting into anecdotal human-interest reporting. That focus on long-horizon outcomes marks a distinct point of view compared with day-to-day finance reporting that centres on immediate price or rate movements.

Banking, federal politics and global context

Kehoe’s economics role builds on years covering banking, tax and federal politics, which gives his current work depth on how policy interacts with financial institutions and markets. He has reported on the banking sector’s relationship with government, including episodes where treasurers seek to push back against banks and economists who challenge the official economic story. This history informs his treatment of big financial institutions not just as market actors but as political players whose behaviour shapes, and is shaped by, regulation and public trust.

His earlier stint as a Washington correspondent, reporting on the Obama and Trump presidencies, adds a comparative dimension to his coverage of domestic economic policy.

He is comfortable threading global developments into local stories, using experience of US tax and budget debates to highlight differences in institutional design and political strategy. Across print and broadcast commentary, he works at the point where policy, politics and markets meet, making him a specialist for stories that sit inside the machinery of government as much as in the balance sheets of business.