Thursday, 8 October 2026

Topics: ATO credit card ban; Government ministers’ diverging opinions; surcharges; small business; High Court coal mine decision.

E&OE……………………..

Kieran Gilbert: The Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson, is with me. Clare O'Neil seemed to make a lot of sense, Tim Wilson today when she was saying how small business need credit cards for cash flow. She's seen it herself through her own personal family experience with small business, and then Andrew Charlton is on saying, no, we back the ATO. What's, what's happening? Will there be a backflip or not?

Tim Wilson: Well, what we know is the Prime Minister is losing confidence in his Treasurer as the Australian community is. I think what we're seeing is an audition for who his replacement is going to be between Clare O'Neil and Andrew Charlton over this. But the reality is small businesses are doing it really tough right now. We have record small business insolvencies, we have even more people leaving just because they can't make a buck out of it. We've seen declines in profitability and the response of the government is to chuck more costs on them. Your point, Kieran, just then, is bang on right. One of the problems we have is an inconsistency where the government is turning around to small business and saying, you've got to cop the extra costs that are being passed on by the banks, but we, the government, won't, and it's the double standards that are really enraging people.

Kieran Gilbert: Yeah, and reading the statement from the tax commissioner late last week, Tim Wilson, I know it enraged a lot of small businesses as well that have been in touch with me too, because they read it and they think, well, so he outlines that these other options that can be used, BPay, debit card, other transfers, the Australia Post, but all of that requires cash flow now. The whole point just to reiterate to the commissioner, the whole point of using a card is that they get 50, 55 days leeway.

Tim Wilson: Yeah, well, there's the problem of the ATO only giving 8 hours’ notice of the ban. Then you've got a lot of people in small business and they're financing lots of debts and lots of costs for their business, including of course, their tax liabilities through credit cards, and of course, personally they're doing the same thing, and there's lots of reasons historically they might, but it's part of a financing structure, and what the ATO has done has turned around in one moment and said, this payment pathway no longer applies for us, and so you can imagine a lot of small businesses between GST, between, that and of course things like income tax, suddenly turn around, they're getting smashed, and remember, this isn't the first time the government has turned around to small businesses and said, you've got to constrain your financing options. They recently changed superannuation from quarterly to monthly or fortnightly costs, and so small businesses is getting targeted by this government in every single direction, and this is just the latest compounding effect.

Kieran Gilbert: I spoke to one small-businesswoman, Tasha Watkins from a small building firm in Western Australia, called Protec. She was quite emotional and said that the idea that they give them two months on this, just before Christmas too, is just unfair, and particularly Tim, when a lot of the small businesses will put something on their Amex or their Visa, to help pay their employees, to make sure that they can make payroll.

Tim Wilson: 100%, and so this is where you’re getting the crunch from both directions because of the decisions of the Albanese government and by extension, the Australian Taxation Office, and it's not a conversation about, you know, just finding a bit of cash. This is the lifeline of small business, Clare O'Neil, to her credit, is right about this. I grew up in small businesses too. Cash flow is king, and when you crunch those small businesses, they actually have no way easily to restructure. We've been running a petition at standwithsmall.org and we've had huge number of signatories from people in small business who are just desperate to see an overturn of this surcharge ban through the ATO and their credit card payment decision. But in addition to that it really highlights why we do need a Small Business Act to protect small business from governments that won't even consult, won't even listen, and won't even engage, and frankly, doesn't understand them.

Kieran Gilbert: The language and the message from Anne Aly and Clare O'Neil both seem to suggest they want the ATO to have a rethink. Do you think that that is where we're headed, and can I ask you about this principle, because it was also raised during the week and Andrew Charlton actually was making this point that we shouldn't have some businesspeople and some taxpayers subsidising those that might use a credit card, but doesn't that miss the fact that in a progressive system, we have many, many instances, you know, millions where taxpayers, through the amount of tax, subsidise and help other Australians. So, it's a fundamental pillar of our system.

Tim Wilson: We can have a bigger conversation about tax and how we have progressive systems. But it's the double standard where the government says to small business, you've got to absorb these costs, but when it comes to payment systems to us, we're not going to absorb those costs. This just really highlights how poorly the government thought through its surcharge ban in the first place, and the impact that's now having on cash flow on small business. It's one of the reasons why we've explicitly proposed a Small Business Act so that government is actually forced to listen to small business as part of consideration of the impact of policy. Because it's not just this, it's payday super, it's to do with the broader financing structures and frankly, you saw this in the last Federal Budget, where they propose a series of taxes that will smash small business, and they still don't know how they're going to impact and how they're going to design the legislation, because the objective was revenue, not how to back Australians to grow the economy.

Kieran Gilbert: This High Court ruling on the Mount Pleasant mine, how much of a concern is it? Or should we take a deep breath as the Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, wanted to reiterate saying that this is not federal law, it's a state statute, if it needs to be dealt with, it should be dealt with by the state.

Tim Wilson: I think we need to realistically look at this decision and say what do we need to do to clear the pathway with federal and state law. We can't have courts making decisions that should be made by democratically elected governments. Whether or not the mine should proceed or not should be a decision of governments, it should not be one by courts. And I think it's actually really worrying when we see the capacity for courts to be able to make these sorts of decisions that should be decided by accountable, democratically elected bodies.

Kieran Gilbert: Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson, appreciate your time.

Tim Wilson: Thank you.

[ENDS]