I gift is not returnable a loan is.

So say you loan it to the trust and then you go bankrupt, that money is still yours, it is just being held by the trust. So the money loaned would be available to creditors.

If you gift it is much safer – but gifts can be reversed under the bankrupcty Act under a few circumstances such as if it was done with the aim of defeating creditors etc.

There are also tax consequences. claiming of interest etc

You are crazy running a partnership. Best to run your business through a company so that if something goes wrong it is the company that is sued. Shareholders of a company have no liability. Directors can sometimes go down with a company if they have done something illegal, but even they are usually safe if the company is sued. it is best to have one director though as some times personal guarantees are requested in business (as they know suing a company may not be worth anything).

So run your business through a company for starters. But get some advice as, depending on your business, there may be CGT and stamp duty issues to transfer over. There may be also opportunities to save tax too.

Then look at protecting your assets from non-business litigation or other potential problems. you can do this by using discretionary trusts to hold future assets.
For existing assets it may cost too much to transfer, such as stamp duty and CGT, and there are other ways to protect them, so best to get some advice there too.

All loans should be interest only. A separate loan should be added on the first one to access any equity. Not so efficient to use redraws. try to borrow the 20% deposit and costs from the 2nd loan an then get a stand alone loan for the remaining 80%.

Yes, it probably is a breach of the mortgage agreement. Technically you may require the written consent of the lender to lease the property. You cannot do anything without breaching!

Interest deductibility depends on what the borrowed funds are used for. In your case they were used to purchase a property which is now being rented so you should be ok. Original intention doesn't matter in this case.

You could borrow up to 90% of both properties. So (add up the value of the current one and the future one) x 90%, then minus the existing loan and that is the extra amount you could borrow – subject to serviceability.

Some banks may allow existing customers to got o 95% too.

I had a mate who had one or 2 ATMs in his shop, think he was getting around $180pw for them. So it can add a bit to the income received – but you will need somewhere to put them, good location etc.

Holding costs is a problem. You will be paying interest and rates etc but not getting any income in. This all adds up.

With the lending side, normally the banks lend to the legal owner of the property and there is no other party involved. But here you will have the legal owner as one or more trustee – this may be a company or you or two or more people. You want need the loans in a different name to the legal owner. Banks don't like doing this probably because it is more risky for them. If things go – they must take back a property that the borrower doesn't own.

If you do find a bank that can do it (St G used to be one) the bank will take the property as security and then lend the money to the borrowers. Your accountant will arrange things so that the people are borrowing the money to buy the units. The bank doesn't really look at it as lending to buy the units, they see it as lending to buy the property.

I think it would depend on the figures. Selling and then buying again will cost around 6% of the value of the property – plus you will have CGT too. THis is a lot of money gone.

Another option, similar to your second one, is to set up a LOC and borrow to pay the interest on your investment properties and free up cash to pay down your PPOR loan quicker. It will convert bad debt into good debt. You will need a good accountant to look over this idea and maybe get a private ruling from the ATO – I know of one that already has a ruling, so it is all legal if done correctly.