Thursday, 3 September 2026

Topics: tobacco excise; vapes; housing; inflation; interest rates; social media algorithms.

E&OE……………………..

Laura Jayes: I want to bring in Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson now. Tim, do you agree that Angus Taylor needs to be stronger and he needs more cut-through?

Tim Wilson: We absolutely need to be strong because Australia's future is at stake. That's why today we've announced policies like the cut in tobacco excise because we've got to stop the organised crime that's fuelling the danger on our streets, that's leading to collapsing government revenue from tobacco and we need to be very clear-eyed about the type of Australia we want to build: one backed by families, communities, and small business as the foundation for our national success.

Laura Jayes: Tanya Plibersek was on the programme, don't wish to verbal her, but she said your tobacco excise cut will effectively kill people or get more people hooked on smoking.

Tim Wilson: Last night, there were firebombings in Melton in Melbourne where people have been rushed off to hospital. This government has too close a relationship with incentives for organised crime. We saw this with the CFMEU-Labor cartel and writing cheques to public projects knowing it would end up in the hands of organised crime. We know with tobacco they continue to put incentives on the table to encourage organised crime to reign terror on our streets. We know that the profits from this organised crime and the sale of illegal tobacco is ending up funding things like terrorism. So, politely we will not be taking lectures from Tanya Plibersek on this topic. They have created that problem, we are seeking to stop it, and we are seeking to make sure that there is legal product sold before more people get hurt and die as Tanya Plibersek has outlined.

Laura Jayes: Well, what's your KPI? What does success look like here?

Tim Wilson: Well, it's to smash the black market in illegal tobacco.

Laura Jayes: Eradicate it, though?

Tim Wilson: Well we absolutely want to get as close to zero as possible. We want to smash it because what we've seen is where there's illegal tobacco we're increasingly seeing other illicit products moved into the Australian community from illicit alcohol, guns and the like, we want to see that model smashed. We're on the side of community safety for Australians. We're on the side of legitimate businesses being sustained and ending the firebombings that are ravaging our retail streets.

Laura Jayes: Let's talk about housing now because this is going to be a big fixture in Parliament today. The big bank economists are before a committee. We've got the deadline for Bathla as well, today. Payroll is due and there are thousands upon thousands of homes in the pipeline there. Just on the supply issue and getting homes built, isn't Bathla the canary in the coal mine here? The feasibility for building homes across Sydney suburbs and similar areas right around the country, it just doesn't stack up for private companies.

Tim Wilson: It's not the canary in the coal mine, the canary has been in the coal mine now for years as the government has made it harder for Australians to make a buck out of housing. In the last federal budget, the government has deliberately made it an unviable pathway for people to store wealth, and now we have an active inflation agenda that is outstripping wealth and wages of Australians. So, it's certainly another canary in the coal mine, I'll agree with that, but this is now a warning sign to Australians that if the government keeps punishing the most people who build housing and that's what they've been doing, if they keep making it unviable to make a buck, there won't be new housing, and so the price of housing will actually rise with rents, and that's what we're seeing as a consequence of the government's Budget. Rising rents, an increase in first home buyer's prices while we're seeing a drop at the higher end of the housing market and Australia's wealth position going backwards in line with declines in wages.

Laura Jayes: But what about the taxes that contribute? There are some 50% state and federal government taxes that go into the cost of building a home. So, is it your position this morning, Tim Wilson, that you will reverse these negative gearing changes? You will reverse the CGT changes, but what other taxes are you going to cut?

Tim Wilson: Absolutely, we're going to be reversing those measures. We said so from Budget Reply night, and really from Budget night as well. But we need state governments to take responsibility too, because state governments have continued to increase, particularly here in my home state in Victoria, we've seen higher taxes on property which has discouraged people from investing. You can talk to any property developer in Melbourne and they'll tell you, you can't make a buck out of housing in Victoria, so we're just going to go elsewhere. Things like the vacant residency tax, obviously increases in land tax. These are big problems now for the Australian community, for getting investment into housing because if people can't make a buck out of housing, they're not going to invest in it, they're not going to build in it and they're going to send their money elsewhere. And what's even more concerning is of course we know that the Reserve Bank off the back of the Albanese active inflation agenda is proposing potentially interest rate hikes when Australian households are struggling to pay their existing mortgages.

Laura Jayes: Government spending is a big problem. How would you turn that ship around?

Tim Wilson: Well, the first thing you do is actually target the corruption that sits within the system. We know that there's still corruption in the National Disability Insurance Agency, 10% through the NDIS scheme. We know that we're seeing similar things in home aged care packages, we're seeing the same thing in the enrolment of phantom children in childcare. The government keeps opening these big funds and then letting anybody go in and harvest from them, and so you get government spending or taxpayer-funded spending, it then goes to stoke inflation and too often, it ends up in the hands of organised crime. We have to break the business model and the economic model that the Albanese government is running, which actively stokes inflation, which means higher prices at the supermarket, and of course in interest rates.

Laura Jayes: I want to ask you one last but very important question about social media algorithms, how they're feeding misogynistic material. We heard from Chanel Contos, Tanya Plibersek, the government is actively considering how these algorithms work, whether they're opt-in, opt-out. What is your view on these things, is this a priority for you, Tim?

Tim Wilson: Well, as Shadow Treasurer, my focus is on how we make sure Australian wages actually improve and not just outstripped by inflation and we make sure the government pulls its belt in before it turns to the Australian people and asks them to do that. But of course, a key part of social safety is online safety as well as physical safety. Today we've made an announcement around how we're going to stop the illegal tobacco trade and particularly improving physical safety for the Australian community, but we're of course always open to the conversation about what we need to do online for safety, particularly for children.

Laura Jayes: Tim Wilson, great to see you. Thanks so much.

Tim Wilson: Thank you.

[ENDS]