Tim Wilson MP
Shadow Treasurer

Interview with Tom Elliott on 3AW

Topics: Shadow Treasury, fiscal responsibility, housing policy, CFMEU-Labor corruption.

E&OE

Tom Elliott:  And our very own, I'll say our own, Victorian MP, Member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, is the new Shadow Treasurer, arguably one of the most important jobs in Australia. He joins us now. Tim, good morning.

 

Tim Wilson MP: Good morning, Tom.

 

Tom Elliott: We had a call before asking what your qualifications are. Are they in economics? Then someone sent us an email saying you're about to get a PhD in economics. Is that right?

 

Tim Wilson MP: Well, I'm completing it. Yes, I got mildly interrupted by getting elected to Federal Parliament and now being shadow treasurer, but it is not a topic, that's beyond me at all. I've done a lot of work in economics, international trade, I have a post-grad in that, so very relaxed and comfortable.

 

Tom Elliott: So you know how to draw a demand and supply graph, and where the two lines intersect. That's the price, and all that sort of thing.

 

Tim Wilson MP: I do. I also was the chair of the House of Representatives standing committee on economics, for four years when I was last in parliament. So I'm pretty comfortable with the subject matter.

 

Tom Elliott: Okay. Well, congratulations on your appointment. I mean, it's arguably the most, well second most important job after being the Treasurer. If you're eventually the Treasurer in a couple of years, what would you do differently?

 

Tim Wilson MP: So, we have made it clear and it's the basis that I've accepted the role, that we are going to reorientate a focus on the economy in favour of small and family businesses and the self-employed hard. We have a developed plan on how we're gonna do that and you'll see it in the coming weeks. The also, the key thing I want to do is as a starting point to arrest the ongoing decline of the federal budget, confront the problems of corruption, whether it's the $15 billion that went from the public to organised crime via the CFMEU or the corruption we have in systems like the NDIS, at the moment we're literally borrowing from the future and incurring debt to finance corruption, and that's tomorrow's taxes.

 

Tom Elliott: Well, I read the other day that looking at the NDIS, which is now verging on $50 billion a year and growing, that they reckon 10% of it is fraudulent. So there's $5 billion right there. And the CFMEU amount, the 15 to possibly 30 billion, as a federal MP, is there anything the federal government can do about that?

 

Tim Wilson MP: Absolutely. We asked in parliament only last week, what the federal government has done. Have they done an order of how much federal money has gone into these projects and whether any of it's ended up in the hands of organised crime. The Prime Minister just dismissed the question. They're not interested, they're not engaged, but your children will pay.

 

Tom Elliott: Who federally could investigate? Is it something the federal police could look at or isn't there an anti-corruption sort of federal body? Could they look at it?

 

Tim Wilson MP: They absolutely should and it's scandalous that they won't. But you know, this is, these are elected politicians, a starting point if you know an independent report comes out and says money you're giving to projects is ending up in hands, not at the CFMEU, but in the hands of organised crime via the CFMEU, I think you should as a minister be terrified by this, and demand a immediate investigation.

 

Tom Elliott: Does the minister have to direct the anti-corruption body or can't it, you know, just go and start looking at things itself

 

Tim Wilson MP: It can and it should. Just as in Victoria it should do so because when you've got this systemic and endemic and deliberately designed corruption by the Labor Party that leads taxpayers money to go into the hands of organised crime via the CFMEU, every Australian should be terrified, least of all because the bill on that is being financed by debt and they're going to be picked up by your kids.

 

Tom Elliott: But the reality is, look, we probably could investigate it, and I agree we should, and I think we'll probably end up with the Royal Commission at some stage, but the reality is that money is gone. If it's gone to criminals and corrupt people and whatever, I mean, it's not just sitting there in a box to be snatched back, is it?

 

Tim Wilson MP: No, it isn't just sitting there to be snatched back. In Victoria, of course, Jess Wilson, the Leader of the Opposition said they'll have a royal commission. But like with the NDIS, the corruption that's going on there, it just keeps going because it's part of the patronage system that the federal government has designed and actively incentivises. So that $15 billion can continue to grow unless there's a hard line in the sand that taxpayers should be respected, money should not end up in the hands of the ill-gotten and we need to be making sure that there's prudent spending of public money.

 

Tom Elliott: Do you think it's right that the Labor Party is essentially funded by the union movement? Because I mean, you know, no one ever wants to bite the hand that feeds them. For years, the likes of the CFMEU donated millions and millions of dollars to state and federal Labor, and therefore it's no surprise to me that when the CFMEU does something wrong, everybody wants to look the other way. Is that maybe something we should change?

 

Tim Wilson MP: That will be in somebody else's portfolio, but it does show you that there's this cartel kickback relationship between Labor Party and the unions. And they leverage superannuation funds and all of the instruments of power to keep that cartel kickback circle of life going. So there is an endemic problem of corruption. It needs to be fixed. But more importantly, Australian taxpayers are picking up the bill. And I think about the small and family businesses are working their bums off, the self-employed are working their bumbs off, as well as, of course, all other employees. And that's what they're going to fund and finance while they're struggling to keep their head above water. It contributes to inflation, which means that we're having higher interest rates. The economy is out of whack. It's out of balance. We need to reset and get it back on to encouraging. Incentivising work.

 

Tom Elliott: One of your predecessors, Peter Costello, as treasurer between 1996 and 2007, managed to pay back all federal government debt. I remember in 2006, so it took him 10 years. We had zero government debt, is that something you'll try and do if you become the treasuer?

 

Tim Wilson MP: I'll always work to try and get down debt as much as humanly possible, but we don't have the assets to sell perhaps, in the same way we did back then. The federal government's been very tricky with how they've done their budget where more and more things are moved off book. So we're having off budgets, so there additional costs being incurred that they're not accounting for. We're trying to get a sense of what is the true picture, because every year that we've had a budget. We've continued to have costs explode in excess of it. You had a $57 billion blowout in expenditure this year, which was recently reported by the financial review. So half the challenge is stopping the slide, because we've got to build a better future.

 

Tom Elliott: Will you will you cut taxes if you're elected treasurer?

 

Tim Wilson MP: My preference is always to cut taxes, always. Jim Chalmers is talking or floated the idea of a new housing tax by scrapping the capital gains discount, and we made it very clear that's not on our agenda, because when you've got, you tax things that you don't want to incentivise. We need more homes, more home ownership. Rising rents and rising costs of housing, are contributing to inflation and increasing interest rates for everybody. But so long as I keep increasing taxes, we're going to have the focus in the wrong direction.

 

Tom Elliott: And finally, are you worried about the rapidly rising population of One Nation? Sorry popularity, not population, the population who wants to vote One Nation is rising. Are you worried about that?

 

Tim Wilson MP: I think what people want is clarity in, and conviction in their politicians to stand up to build a better future. Rightly or wrongly they're seeing that in a different direction. I think we need to be providing that because, so many people who run small and family businesses and are self-employed who don't feel like they're being seen or heard have any sense of confidence in the future. We see them, we hear them, and we want to give them hope, because I think they're a central part of our electoral success, but more importantly, they're central to the type of country we should want to be.

 

Tom Elliott: All right, thank you for your time, Tim Wilson there. We'll speak again in the not too distant future. Tim Wilson, newly appointed Shadow Treasurer. Well again, a bit like Jane Hume yesterday. What a motherhood statement.

ENDS