Thanks for all this help Benny. I think it’s starting to make some sense.
I’ve got a clarification question which might finalize the issue for me (or not….)
I’d be most grateful for any help.

Reading I’ve done in other corners of the web has lead to me to the idea that the 6 year rule can somehow become a ‘factor’ that is applied to the capital gain in the same way as the 50% discount. That is to say if you have vacated for greater than 6 years,lets say 10 years and then sell, you can discount the gain by 6/10 (in this case) since the property was (is) your PPOR. Is this true?

Refreshing on the scenario from above:

We purchased property a in 1999 and loved there until 2003.
We had a valuation done at the time we moved out.
Property A has been rented since we moved out.

We purchased property B in 2003 and have lived there over various periods since (we have lived interstate and overseas) but never bought another property.

We sold property A in late 2017 (October).
We sold Property B in early 2018 (March).

My accountant insists we can not claim the 6 year exemption on property A since it’s been more than 6 years since we lived in it. My hope is that we can allocate a discount of 6 / 14 against the gain on property A and then assign the 50% CGT discount to the residual. I read a forum post (another site) that discussed how this was acceptable to the ATO (wish I could find it again!!). We would then pay the full CGT bill for property B.

Can anyone offer any thoughts?