Wednesday, 30 September 2026

Topics: inflation; interest rates; spending.

E&OE……………………..

Stephen Cenatiempo: Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson joins us now. Tim, good morning.

Tim Wilson: Good morning.

Stephen Cenatiempo: The Treasurer seems to be the only person that can't get his head around this spending issue.

Tim Wilson: That's right. He is basically addicted to the stuff, but the problem we've got is we've got it spending running much faster than tax revenue. That means we're borrowing from the future to pay for today. Every time that happens, we put upward pressure on inflation, upward pressure on interest rates, and of course when Australians go to the supermarket, they're putting the same amount in the supermarket trolley, but paying more for it.

Stephen Cenatiempo: Tim, I guess the question has to be asked though and obviously it's going to be 2028, more likely, before you even get a chance to have a crack at this is where do we cut the spending? We saw the government talk a big game on trying to rein in the NDIS, but we know that it's not just federal government spending that is impacting inflation. State and territory governments are responsible too, and all we've done is shift the cost from the federal government to the states with the NDIS.

Tim Wilson: Well, and that's a big part of the problem. What we need to make sure is there's integrity around how this government money is spent, or taxpayers’ money, more correctly, is being spent by the government. The NDIS is part of the story, but we've already announced, you know, when it comes to housing bureaucracy that doesn't build homes, with net zero bureaucracy that doesn't cut emissions, our focus is going to be getting value for taxpayer's buck and making sure that we don't see this needless waste. We don't need to spend more money, what we need is prudent management of the nation's finances. We need to make sure the economy is growing faster than inflation, which isn't what's happening now, which is why real wages are going backwards.

Stephen Cenatiempo: Surely, you've got to take on the scare campaign around the public service. I mean that was one of the largest, or one of the big issues you had at the last election was the calls to cut the public service. It is our least productive sector by its very nature. This government seems to be using that as a bit of a Ponzi scheme to keep uh unemployment low and keep the spending rolling on.

Tim Wilson: Well, what we know is the government has employed 28 people per day and of course we're not seeing the same kind of level of activity in the private economy proportionate to that. You know, there's nothing specifically problematic about having public servants. They play an important role in the economy, but the idea that we can just keep adding more people onto prop up jobs numbers to hide what's actually happening in the real economy is completely bunkum economics. What we need is a bit more Ozempic economics where we're trimming the waistline because the government should not be turning to the Australian people and saying they need to pull their belt in when the government isn’t prepared to do the same. We have the currently the highest spending in 40 years outside of a pandemic or a crisis by the government. It's time to slim down.

Stephen Cenatiempo: I want to talk about the spending for a moment though because the government clearly is addicted to spending and it's all about buying votes. How do you actually manage that, because you've got to deal with the electoral realities as well?

Tim Wilson: Well, we've seen the consequences of this strategy in Victoria, where this has been the model that Dan Andrews has used and it's frankly brought my state to its knees. Anthony Albanese has picked up that model and taken it to Canberra, but in Victoria we've seen the real consequences where people get slowly poorer, costs rise and people go backwards in their wages, in their savings, and frankly, in their confidence and their hope. What we need to do is offer Australians a bold compelling vision that we can build a better country if we work together, if we're united as a population and we actually get back to building things as part of the strength of our country. At the moment, the most productive thing we seem to be at is increasing the volume of regulation, which is strangling particularly small business and undermining their success.

Stephen Cenatiempo: Now Tim, the Treasurer is partly right that the war in Iran is causing part of this inflationary issue with petrol prices going up. Now the government did talk a big game at the beginning of the war about trying to create fuel sovereignty here in Australia. We haven't seen any more of that, but how do we mitigate that? Because this thing in Iran seems like it's going to go on for quite some time now. There doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. We need to be able to some somehow inoculate our economy, don't we?

Tim Wilson: Well, you need to be prudent and what we're facing is the challenges of the 21st century. A lot of the truths that we thought would hold for um the late 20th century just aren't holding anymore. We need to be more resilient in our supply chains, we need to rebuild our sovereign capacity. All of this requires a productive economy, and it requires investment in our economy. Instead, what we saw at the last budget was the government target investment, target the productive side of the economy because it can't manage or can't pull its belt in. They've got the whole economic model wrong for the world we're going into. That's why we need a reset, a focus back on growth, on investment, on attracting capital and talent and building up the strength of this country.

Stephen Cenatiempo: As the Shadow Treasurer, it's easy for you to have these conversations because this is your portfolio, but more broadly is your team talking about this kind of stuff enough rather than talking about other parties?

Tim Wilson: We absolutely want to focus on the Australian people and what we need to do to build the country. I mean, the next election is going to be a referendum on the future of this country and its economic strength. Are we going to be as a nation strong enough to confront the challenges ahead of us yet nimble and flexible enough to adapt into changing circumstances? At the moment, we're going in the complete opposite direction that we should be going in. We need to completely change our mindset. That's only going to come with a change of government.

Stephen Cenatiempo: Tim, thanks for your time this morning.

Tim Wilson: Thanks for having me.

[ENDS]