Tuesday, 16 September 2025

E&OE

Oly Peterson Tim Wilson has just walked straight into the studios. It's lovely to meet you face to face.

Tim Wilson Lovely to meet you guys too. Boom, straight away.

Oly Peterson Here we go. What's brought you across the Nullarbor?

Tim Wilson Well, apart from the fact that I actually love the West, and it's great to be able to talk to people exposed to the future economy of Australia. Look, it's quite straightforward. Small business community making sure they've got feedback directly into the conversation in Canberra, because it feels like there's a massive disconnect from where I sit. That the current federal government just isn't interested in the issues out west and more importantly how they're impacting people on the ground and not just small business but even larger industries like of course mining, which is central to the WA economy.

Oly Peterson So how long are you in Perth for on this visit, Tim?

Tim Wilson Oh, it's a short one, being three days, but it will be the first of many because We've met with a bunch of industry groups and small businesses already. And the one feedback we got was, we don't want it to be the first. And that's, we said, that's good. That's not going to be, the first, there's going to be multiples because we want to make sure that there is that direct feedback line into the nation's capital.

Oly Peterson So you're going on a bit of a listening tour by the sounds of things, you've only been back in the parliament yourself for a matter of months.

Tim Wilson Did you miss me?

Oly Peterson Well, Tim, I think your party probably needs you at the moment.

Tim Wilson Yes, I think they'd accept that as well, but that's the thing is...You know, you want to govern this country, you've actually got to bring all of it together. All of it has to have a say and more importantly, when we're developing policy, I know that won't excite people, but it needs to be as part of a vision to build out the future strength of Australia. And that doesn't matter whether it's from Port Hedland all the way to Portsea in Melbourne or whether you're going up to Brisbane, you got to have all those voices in it to drive the conversation.

Oly Peterson Can you wait though? Can your party wait? On this listening tour, it just seems as though there's at the moment infighting day after day. The Jacinta Price saga last week, Andrew Hastie's comments in the last 24 hours about Net Zero. It just appears as though you're ripping yourselves apart from the outside. I know you're going through a grieving process so you're going on a listening tour, but Tim it must hurt.

Tim Wilson Look, whenever you're seeing these conversations splashed across the paper, you're not going to say that they're always the best days, but sometimes one, it's necessary, two, you want to land in a position which unites people, and more importantly, if you want a robust policy conversation about building Australia's future, you've got to enable people to have their say, and so I'm not one for shutting down voices. Because my primary objective is Make sure when you're doing it, it's constructive. Make sure, when you doing it you're helping the cause because there's one, well not just one opponent, but one opponent of good governance in this country and it's ultimately the Labor Party. And that's what you want to get back to, obviously prosecute. Well, that's certainly my view. And if you read my outstanding article in the West Australian today, of course, it talks specifically about the human consequences of what happens when we let them off. We've currently got WA, across the country, a cartelish operation between state governments, unions, industry super funds, where increasingly your tax dollars and the price you're paying is directly being funnelled into sort of cartel-ish interests at your expense and through higher costs that everybody is paying. And so we've got to clamp down on this behaviour because it's the root of corruption.

Oly Peterson What do you do about net zero? What does the Liberal Party do about that net zero because Andrew Hastie is flagging demotion or resignation should the Liberals not abandon this.

Tim Wilson Well, I think the solution for us has always been the same. We want net zero price increases in energy. That's actually what we want. We want net zero outages. We want reliable power. And people are quite relaxed about having net zero emissions if you get the first two. The problem is we've got a Labour government who is allowing emissions to dictate energy policy, and they don't care how much the community pays on energy prices or whether or not the power goes out. So I think we need to get the hierarchy right. Net zero price increases, net zero outages, and then we can have a conversation about emissions. And I think we just need to be creative, because sitting behind energy is a conversation that our economic sovereignty, sitting behind that is whether we can have the industrial base to re-industrialise our country, which is what everybody's screaming out for and we desperately need.

Oly Peterson Obviously fracturing the coalition though, because your National Party counterparts, when you know, this new term of opposition obviously was coming together, they're not coming together. It was fractured for a little while, you're all sitting around the table for now. But how quickly do you need to land on some sort of a position and be on the same page Tim?

Tim Wilson We always want to be on the same page, but sometimes it takes a while to get everybody sitting around the table and singing from the same hymn sheet, I'm sure you'd understand. And so that will take as long as it takes. But if you go in with the attitude, which is the objective is to get to the right place. If we have the right framing in terms of what we're trying to achieve, which you know, Andrew has made and I think very clearly the point. That we want to have a focus on cheaper and reliable power. And he has a slightly different way of expressing it than me, but I've said net zero price increases, net zero outages, then we can have a conversation about net zero emissions.

Oly Peterson Do you think you and Andrew are almost on the same page?

Tim Wilson We have different ways of approaching it, but we both have a deep concern that price is rising, energy is becoming less reliable, and nobody's going to go off then and invest in the future of the country. So I think it's of incredible importance. I'm deeply concerned about emissions that are both rising under a Labor government, despite their claim otherwise. And so I just think we need to get everything in order and make sure that the policy environment is right.

Oly Peterson How quickly do you need to get that in order though because this week your leader Sussan Ley has led the coalition to the worst ever share of primary vote.

Tim Wilson You're equating two things to the same thing. There's going to be a natural process post an election, where people are going to go, well, what's the point of them? They're focused on the government and what they're doing. But you're not focused on the Government. Well, the Australian people might be, but the opposition's not. You focus on yourselves. Well, I can assure you, I am definitely focused on the Labor Government holding them to account. And that's why, that's part of the reason why I'm out West and look forward to coming out again because... These voices need to be heard in the national conversation. But yes, we need to get onto it because it's of critical importance. There's no time to waste in politics. The timeframes for the next election might for a lot of people seem a way out, but nothing in politics is overnight. There's no silver bullets. It's iterative. You've got to work away and chip away at it because people are going to see our policy. They've got believe in it and they've got see us fighting for them. And they're right in wanting that.

Oly Peterson Well, you spent three years out of office fighting to get back. You're the only Liberal who got back in a teal seat. You knocked off Zoe Daniel. That's a remarkable achievement, Tim. So obviously you've got a little bit of magic dust and energy that you want to bring to the party yourself.

Tim Wilson I'll sprinkle my pixie dust on Perth and the WA Libs, but yeah, it's a singular-minded focus because it's not about having people having careers or anything else. This is actually about the future of the country. That's why I'm in politics. The future of the country is on the line. Serious and substantial decisions are going to be made in the next three years, and who is in government is going to matter. We're in the situation we on now. But every day I want Australians and people in my electorate to look at me and say, is he fighting for us, for the future of the country and for future, how to build the future of the county. And if they can't answer yes, then they have a legitimate question to say, what are they up to?

Oly Peterson Was that your approach? To knock off Zoe Daniel? To win your seat back?

Tim Wilson It was a bit more complicated than that, but it was absolutely that people felt it was connected to the community, engaged, you know, and, and regularly active. But more than that, you're fighting for them and standing up for the issues that mattered to them when their predecessor or my predecessor perhaps was not.

Oly Peterson The news poll, which I know you won't want to talk about because pollies don't like looking at the polls, but you would have one eye on that One Nation vote surging ahead of obviously the Greens. Now, there's a fair bit of frustration, a fair bit of a frustration amongst obviously the broad Church of the Liberal Party, particularly the Conservatives, over the Jacinta Price saga again, I'll say that over the last week or so, and that's reflected probably in that poll. How urgently do you need to address all of that, Tim, to appeal to, I suppose, a wider base of Australians.

Tim Wilson Australia is a unique country in its electoral system. We have to get, because of a compulsory preferential system, we basically have to 50% of the country to like us to get into government. So you got to make sure it's not just one section, it's all different sections of the community to see their lives and their success live through our value proposition. And clearly at the moment, they don't. Let's not pretend otherwise, at least based on that opinion poll. So is that task real? Yep. Is that a task urgent? Yep, it is. And we need people to want to see what we're building. You think about something like migration, I can't think of a single person who doesn't think that the role of migration is a pathway for people to come to this country to invest in its future who want to integrate and to be full participants in the Australian way of life and to build Australia's future. That's what we want migration. I don't really see that as in contests. There's always going to be a debate about, well, how many people can we take and how successfully are we doing that and I've been open about the fact that I don't think we've done that fully successfully in the past.

Oly Peterson And I think it's a fair debate to have at the moment because your experience around Australia, particularly Perth, hospitals are at breaking point, schools are bursting at the seams, you can't put a roof over your head.

Tim Wilson But it's economic participation. It's also about taking the rest of the community with us. And this is one of the big problems, you know, we've been inheritor of a legacy where during particularly the Howard government years, the public felt that the government had migration managed to Australia's national interest. What's happened particularly post-COVID in the past few years is they feel that Labor has lost control of migration. It's not working in our national interest, our job is to get it back on track. But you do that by being responsible, having measured conversations because what we want is every person who comes to this country who has chosen to be Australian to become full participants in the Australian way of life, and to be part of it of building our future.

Oly Peterson Eddie says if the Libs put forward policies that were optimistic and exciting he thinks you'd romp it in because Labour, the Teals, the Greens are miserable scolds lecturing us about what is wrong with us. Is it that larger piece in conversation about getting back to a lot of your values Tim and the Liberal Party? It's an aspirational society and country we live in.

Tim Wilson I couldn't agree more. And Eddie, I couldn't agree with you more. Liberalism by its nature as a worldview is optimistic. And too often there are people who have turned to negativity when liberalism is about raising your head, looking further into the distance and being optimistic that we can build something better. A party of aspiration can only ever really be on the side of the aspiring and that's always going to be the next generation and new Australians as part of continuing to build a better future for all of us. So I'm with you and that is what I'm seeking to do.

Oly Peterson Alright, so you're looking ahead. Can you be competitive? Can the Liberal Party be back in the game in the next month or two?

Tim Wilson Well, people said after the 2022 election, when I lost, there's no chance Goldstein is gone for 20 years. There's no way he's going to win. And what's he wasting his time running again. And I said, watch me. So all I'm going to say is watch us.

Oly Peterson There you go. Good to have you in the studios today. We look forward to seeing you back here in Perth soon.

Tim Wilson Thanks Oliver, take care.

Oly Peterson My pleasure. He is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Employment and Small Business. Tim Wilson.

ENDS