Friday, 28 August 2026

Topics: migration; humanitarian migration program; Coalition’s Migration and Housing Pledge; One Nation’s various migration targets; inflation; superannuation.

E&OE……………………..

Laura Jayes: Let's go to the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson, now and carry on that conversation around migration. Do you believe One Nation, Tim, has got it right when it comes to 130,000? Is it believable or do you think those figures are still rubbery?

Tim Wilson: Which policy are we referring to? I think I'm up to four different One Nation policies now on migration. We had the 130,000 figure, then we were told that was wrong, it was about another 100,000 on top of that, then we were told by Pauline that that was wrong and that it's actually 130,000 again and now we've been told it's back to 230,000 or thereabouts. What I think they're facing the problem of is what happens when you make policy on the run rather than understanding what's in Australia's national interest. Australia's national interest is to have strong borders, is to have control of its borders and decide the priority in which we bring people into our country and that's how we're approaching it, that's why we're looking specifically at migration and its link to housing.

Laura Jayes: Would you cut the humanitarian intake or leave it as Anthony Albanese wants to at around 20,000 a year?

Tim Wilson: I'm not taking that off the table. I mean, I think that Australia needs to make positions on its migration program based on what's in Australia's national interest. There's no perfect number for the humanitarian program, some want to go up, some want to go down. It was 13,750 when we were last in government, I don't believe that was a low number for a country as generous as us, and it's based on the extent that we can integrate people successfully into the Australian way of life.

Laura Jayes: So, you’re saying that lower than 20,000 is preferable. If you need to get the numbers down, that's not a quarantined program.

Tim Wilson: We're developing our own migration policy based on what we believe is in Australia's national interest and we'll be looking at every part of the migration program, and I believe that that will include the humanitarian program. Where we end up has not been announced yet, but I don't think we should rule that out.

Laura Jayes: Okay, let's talk about the RBA and inflation because economists are predicting the next move could be up sooner rather than later. The RBA also says inflation reflects domestic capacity pressures, international energy costs, so it's not all down to government spending, is it?

Tim Wilson: A very large chunk of it actually is down to government spending. Before the Iran crisis, we had an inflation problem. During the Iran crisis, we had an underlying inflation problem plus a headline inflation problem. When there was a temporary pause in Iran, we had a problem with underlying inflation, and we will continue to because the government continues to stoke private demand through the way it approaches its economic model. Its economic model is to stoke inflation, tax the inflation, then spend the inflation in a vicious cycle. Until you get costs down, you make the economy more productive and get cheaper inputs, we're not going to see a change in the inflation pressure, and as economists are now highlighting, that's a very real risk of having interest rate increases.

Laura Jayes: Well, productivity is one of our biggest problems. I mean, how are you going to improve productivity when a government keeps on ignoring the Productivity Commission and reports that have been commissioned? Would you do the same?

Tim Wilson: Well, we certainly wouldn't ignore the productivity commission, but they've still got to make the case for policy based on what's actually going to grow the economy and we should be having incentives in place that actually encourage businesses to invest. The government is doing the complete opposite of that. We should be having tax policy that's focused on how does it increase the economic pie. The government wants Australians to turn on each other and fight over a diminishing share of resources, and we need to empower people with a sense of hope. Australians need hope now more than ever, particularly the small business community who have been completely left behind because every time you turn, all you find is another increase in taxes put forward by the Treasurer.

Laura Jayes: Okay, you've attacked the government as well for creating another super tax by stealth. Can you explain exactly what the government has done here?

Tim Wilson: Well, the government, whether it's by design or by accident, is essentially stripping from managed investment trusts issues around capital losses, so essentially imposing tax increases without reflecting any capital losses and this is going to cost Australians billions. The government has clearly gone on a direct assault on the superannuation of Australians. They keep saying that it's a friend, but they've now designed a tax that's designed to be targeting specifically superannuation funds and Australians' retirement savings and let's be clear, the Labor Party sees superannuation as their money, not the Australian people's money, it's their money. The Prime Minister himself has called it a national asset, well, the Treasurer has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Laura Jayes: But do you see this as an unintended consequence, though? Isn't there an easy fix here? The government has always explicitly said its CGT changes won't affect super, so it's unintended or intentional?

Tim Wilson: Have they said it 50 times yet, Laura, or is it just once?

Laura Jayes: Fair enough.

Tim Wilson: This is the problem. You simply cannot believe a single thing the Prime Minister or the Treasurer says anymore on tax. They said 50 times before the last election they weren't going to increase taxes on capital gains and the like, they went and did exactly that. They have, now, three taxes that have been revealed through consideration of their budget which they didn't announce on budget night that has been exposed to the Australian community. What it increasingly looks like is the Treasurer has got his hand caught in the superannuation cookie jar, every time he chucks it in there, he gets a slap back from the Australian people, but there isn't the volume of scrutiny that there needs to be on just how dishonest this government is and how much they want to get a hold of your retirement savings.

Laura Jayes: Okay, so what you're saying is the government has created a distortion here whereby two Australians can have exactly the same exposure and the same investment, one pays more tax because their super fund holds it through a managed investment trust rather than directly. Is that what you're saying?

Tim Wilson: Once again, superannuation gets extremely complicated, but yes, you can have different tax structures and how people make investments and whether they're able to count capital losses against capital gains and where they go on and pay tax. But this is also a reflection frankly of a budget that was designed to maximize revenue that doesn't understand the economy. The Treasurer is clearly out of his depth in understanding how Australians set up their structures for small business, for their investments and of course for their super to be able to save for the future. So, they put in ham-fisted legislation, but in the process, it ends up targeting Australians' family savings and that's why there's so much criticism that continues to be directed now months after the budget was introduced.

Laura Jayes: Sure, I get that. There's a lot of unintended consequences here and it shouldn't have been rushed through the parliamentary process at all, but you've said today...

Tim Wilson: Two days of hearings, two days of hearings.

Laura Jayes: I agree. Yep, absolutely, but you said this will add $372 billion worth of new taxes to Australia's retirement savings. That's not right, is it? Because the $372 billion in value of the assets potentially affected, the estimated additional tax is only about $55 million. So you're kind of massively overstating it here, aren't you?

Tim Wilson: It's about the volume of assets that's being captured by the problem of this super tax and this is the problem, no one really knows what the impact of this budget is ultimately going to be because the government hasn't done the work, didn't consult the Australian people, didn't tell the truth before the last election, has introduced legislation that they don't understand and now the Treasurer has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar of the superannuation of the nation.

Laura Jayes: Sure, but Tim, if it's only really $55 million a year in this multi-billion-dollar scheme, that would tell me that it's an unintended consequence rather than a deliberate tax grab.

Tim Wilson: Why, on what basis do you make that claim?

Laura Jayes: You wouldn't do this by stealth, surely, if it was going to raise that little amount of money.

Tim Wilson: Well, the government cannot stop its spending addiction, it cannot stop itself from finding new ways to stoke inflation. Every dollar that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister can get their hands on, they immediately send out the door as we know we recently crossed over the trillion-dollar debt threshold. So, I just don't buy that just because a tax may not be as proportionally large as the size of the system that it isn't intended, or if it's true, then the Treasurer simply is out of his depth and doesn't understand what he's doing. But, I'm sorry, the government keeps introducing taxes they never took to the Australian people, they keep targeting people's superannuation investments, small businesses and family savings and we're not going to be afraid to call it out.

Laura Jayes: Tim Wilson, always good to talk to you, especially on a Friday. We'll see you soon.

Tim Wilson: Thank you, Laura.

[ENDS]