Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Transcript

Doorstop – Birtinya, Queensland

Topics: small businesses; cost of living; housing; infrastructure; Sunshine Coast.

E&OE……………………..

Andrew Wallace: Well, firstly, thanks everybody for coming out today. It's great to have Tim Wilson in the electorate, the Coalition Shadow Treasurer. It's been a busy morning so far. We've had a breakfast with local business people at the fantastic Alexander Headland Surf Life Saving Club. We've been to Six Zero Pickleball, which is a local business which is actually importing $15 million worth of pickleball rackets around the world right out of the main road here in Kawana. And we've also had a round table with accountants, financial planners, people who are trying to explain these tax changes to their clients, and the professionals who are paid to give that advice are struggling to keep up with the myriad of changes that this government is trying to bring in. I described it as like trying to build a 747 as it's rolling down the runway. But I'll throw to Tim Wilson shortly. But the Sunshine Coast is the small business capital of the country. We all know that. So many people are employed by small businesses and everywhere I go, every single business person, to a tee, is telling me how difficult these conditions are. We're seeing 40 businesses across the country closing down every single day because of the economic conditions, because of the settings of this government. Now, housing is also very, very important to the Sunshine Coast. We have one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, and we know from the budget paper's number one that it is a stated intention. It is government policy to reduce the value of homes. So, for around 10 million Australians, we are seeing those 10 million Australians around 20,000 dollars poorer because of this stated intention of this government to reduce house prices. But unfortunately, that's not resulting in young people being able to get in and buy more homes because of their changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing. So, this concept of intergenerational equity that the government bangs on about is not resulting in young people being able to get into their own homes. And those that have, under this 5% deposit scheme, are now facing a situation where we've got around 43,000 young people who are now in negative equity around the country. So, Tim, I'll leave you to talk a little bit more about the intricacies of all of this. But it's great to have you on the Sunshine Coast. You're in God's country where it's beautiful weather all day, every day.

Tim Wilson: Well, thank you Andrew, so much for that kind introduction. And it really is a privilege to be here on the Sunny Coast and to be in the Federal Electorate of Fisher. Today, we've heard directly from the small businesses of the country about the impacts Labor's budget is having on Australian households, small businesses, and confidence. And the key message that's coming through is that people, and Australians, don't know how to plan for their future. They're living with the consequences of rapid change in the budget on the back of broken promises, and they don't know how to invest, not just for their small business to get ahead, but to go on and employ the next generation of Australians. We've heard from mortgage brokers, from financial backers, from investors, that we've now hit the perfect storm, the trifecta of fewer homes, higher rents, and smashed confidence in the housing market. And that's doing nothing to grow the economy or to back in young Australians to be able to buy their own home or to be able to rent affordably. What we need is economic change and a sense of hope with the Australian community. Instead, we've got a sledgehammer, and that's been confirmed in data yesterday that shows that Australians are spending more on essentials than they were on discretionary spending. And that's hitting small businesses again. We've seen it today, today again, in new ABS data, which shows that the cost of living for households has increased by 24% under the Labor government. At every point when Australians are turning around and asking their government to back them, not just to get ahead, but frankly, in many cases, just to keep their head above financial water, what they're hearing is a government that's trying to pull them down or wish them failure so that they can increase their tax revenue. We need a government that is on the side of the Australian people. That's why with our plan, we're very clearly focused on making sure that we back the energy, the enthusiasm, and the hope Australians need right now. Because we know that whether it's in Fisher, whether it's in Goldstein, whether it's in the communities across our nation, what matters is confidence and Australians to be able to look to the horizon with hope and optimism. And unfortunately, the government is always encouraging Australians to look to survival rather than to build a better future for all of us.

Journalist: I guess being here on the Sunshine Coast, why did you feel it was important to talk to small businesses here?

Tim Wilson: We've spoken to small businesses all across the country, but I will tell you the story has been consistent in the same. You know, Sunny Coast, the Federal Electorate of Fisher is one of the bright spots of small business in the country, where people with their energy, enthusiasm, and focus are backing themselves. But they're looking at the decisions being made out of Canberra, and particularly by the Albanese government, and shaking their head because they don't understand how the decisions in the budget and those that are followed are backing them. What the small businesses in the Sunny Coast want is a government that's going to be their champion, their voice. And so we're not just listening to the impact of Labor's budget, but we're also listening directly at the decisions that we could be making as an alternative government to make sure that small business has a champion in Canberra, in government. And of course, Andrew Wallace will be an essential part of that story.

Journalist: What were some of those like key issues that people brought to you?

Tim Wilson: What small businesses have said is that they're falling behind. They're getting punished by the Australian Taxation Office. But there's just a broader economic environment where consumer confidence is low. That means that people aren't spending and they're not investing because there's uncertainty. The government has laid tax landmines all throughout the economy in their budget, and now the government is trying to figure out how to diffuse a lot of them while they're blowing up all over the place. You've seen this in just the past 24 hours. The government announced in their budget changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing. They then found out afterwards that it was specifically targeting and penalising widows, grieving widows, when there's a change because their spouses have passed away. They've now released legislation to try and fix it, but the problem is that the impact on confidence has already happened. Australians are already living the consequences of this budget, and they're trying to figure out how it is they're going to fix it in hindsight because they didn't understand the budget they were introducing. They didn't understand the impact it was going to have on the ecosystem of investors and small businesses. But more than anything, they didn't understand how much it was going to sap confidence and growth from the Australian economy.

Journalist: When I hear you've been on a bit of tour to a few businesses today and we're at one right now, what do you think of some of the businesses you've seen?

Tim Wilson: Whenever I go into small business across Australia, it fills me with excitement because every small business is an act of economic hope where Australians are backing themselves to get ahead. They're giving often kids their first job as they enter the employment market, and they're looking to the horizon with hope, believing that they can build a better future, which is why it's so devastating that you have a government in Canberra whose only answer is a tax sledgehammer on those small businesses. You talk to them and they're trying to get on with what they want to do while they have a government that is not on their side. We heard before, we were down at a company making pickle ball boards, and how their part of exporting to the world, innovative, dynamic solutions, and it's frankly just energizing to the extent that they're helping people get ahead. We've had a round table with mortgage brokers and financial advisers who normally are surrounded by small businesses who are trying to build better futures for themselves and their communities and the people they employ. And they're just shaking their head at a government whose only focus is how to hit them with higher taxes, higher regulation, because the government can't pull its belt in while it expects Australians to pull their belt in.

Journalist: As a Melburnian, are you concerned that AFP is investigating that an attack on the Victorian defence manufacturer as a possibly terrorist attack? And I guess are you confident authorities are doing enough to counteract this kind of thing?

Tim Wilson: Of course, Melbourne, I'm always concerned about any such risks or threats. The focus has to be the government giving confidence and taking the action they need to weed out a lot of these extremist groups. But this is the problem we now have, a government that has had its focus distracted elsewhere. They're not focused on what we need to secure our nation. And we can see now that they're directly undermining economic confidence. What we've seen in Melbourne, in particular, is we've seen a ballooning in illegal activity where our state government has handed large chunks of the state over to organized crime. They have been used the the benefits of that to finance terrorist activities uh and uh and undermine the very security that Victorians are living with. Now is a time when we need change and only Jess Wilson will offer the fresh start Victorian needs.

Journalist: Just back to small businesses, Labor says more new businesses were created in July after the budget than in any other month on record, and insolvency rates are almost half what they were under the Howard government.

Tim Wilson: Well, we saw a lot of small businesses restructuring after Labor's budget because the government has taken a sledgehammer to the small businesses of the community. So, it's kind of the boasted the thief to say how happy they are to see so many new entities being created, but no new wealth, no new growth, no new economic opportunity is being created by Labor's budget. And so, the boast of a thief is not a boast that anybody should take seriously.

Journalist: Legislation for changes to instant asset write-off and loss carry-back has been introduced to the House of Representatives to help those small businesses. Will you vote to support that legislation?

Tim Wilson: Of course we support the instant asset write-off, we wanted to go further. $20,000 and make it permanent is good. $50,000 under our plan and make it permanent is better. We need to back small business, which is very different from what the government's currently doing, which is taking a sledgehammer to the small businesses of Australia.

Journalist: Just a local one if I can. There's been a lot of activity here on the coast infrastructure-wise with the wave starting to be built. The federal government hasn't yet chipped in any money for stages two and three of that. How important is that federal funding to get those projects completed in time?

Andrew Wallace: Well, I was part of the team that got the initial funding that started the wave with Ted O'Brien. The initial $1.6 billion dollars which kicked off the initial discussions about bringing rail from Beerwah into Caloundra into the hospital and ultimately up from the busway up to the airport. This is a very, very important project, not just for the Olympics, but to be able to move people around on the Sunshine Coast. Now, the Sunshine Coast is about to see, in fact, Southeast Queensland is going to see an electoral redistribution because of the number of people who are moving here. The federal electorates here are significantly oversubscribed. So, we will see um uh another federal electorate opening up somewhere around here. So, we have a lot of people moving to the Sunshine Coast, and we simply cannot have people just driving on our roads. Anybody who commutes in that daytime commute would know just how blocked our roads are. Our drive with Tim, one of the reasons, other reasons why I bring so many of my federal uh colleagues here to the Sunshine Coast is that hopefully they'll get stuck in a traffic jam so that they can see what we have to live with day in, day out. I'm disappointed that the federal government at this stage is not funding anything beyond the construction of the wave to Caloundra. There's a lot more work to be done, but what we've seen under Catherine King is cuts. Both Ted O'Brien and myself, we were successful in getting federal government funding for projects like the Mooloolah River Interchange. I got funding for the Third Avenue access into Caloundra. Those two programs were cut entirely by Catherine King and the Labor government. So the Labor government does not believe in the importance of the Sunshine Coast. The Labor Federal government continues to cut funding for the Sunshine Coast, and if it wasn't for the Crisafulli LNP government, we would be in all sorts of strife from an infrastructure perspective here. Now, I did neglect in my opening to acknowledge and thank Dean Good, who's the CEO at Kilcoy Global, who's hosting us here today. Kilcoy Global are a terrific company, one of the many companies that you couldn't describe as a small business. They have five plants around the country, but they have decided to headquarter themselves here on the Sunshine Coast. And whether it be Kilcoy Global Foods, whether it be Youi, whether it be Auto and General, these are large businesses that have decided to give a vote of confidence in the Sunshine Coast economy. Not just because the Olympics are coming here, but this is a great place to do business. Whether you're big or small or somewhere in between, it's a great place to do business, but this government is making it harder and harder for businesses to operate.

[ENDS]