Monday, 21 September 2026

Topics: 2026 Intergenerational Report; productivity; debt; taxation; superannuation; housing; migration.

E&OE……………………..

Paul Murray: The theme of the night tonight has been the Intergenerational Report. Yes, I know, isn’t it exciting? But the reality is, is that it is both the street directory and the receipt book when it comes to mass migration. It's telling us that is the trajectory and financially why we have to get there. Tim Wilson is the Shadow Treasurer. At some point, it will be his job to have to deal with the Australian economy and its future. He joins us now from beautiful Melbourne. Lovely to see you, Tim. What concerns you most about some of the stuff that's buried deep, deep inside this today that the Treasurer wasn't pointing at?

Tim Wilson: Well, the objective of the Intergenerational Report has always been to set the nation up so that we don't hand a nation on to future generations that will end up being poorer and carrying the cost of today, and instead, what it's projected out is 40 years of deficits into the future. But even more distressingly, if you actually look at the productivity assumptions which are the basis of economic growth in the economy, they've cooked the books. They've used a very rosy assessment which isn't consistent with the Reserve Bank. And if we use the Reserve Bank's numbers, we would basically have a doubling of public debt and nearly a doubling of the liability that Australians will take into the future on, frankly, people who are less likely to be able to afford it.

Paul Murray: Now, bear with me here, but I want people to think about Australia as if it was a pub, right? Now, obviously, you can take the kids to a pub, but they can't walk up and buy anything from the bar. But you know who can? An 18-year-old. Nobody's born an 18-year-old, but mass migration means that when they come to the country, as long as they're over the age of 18, they're an immediate taxpayer. This is part of what I point out to be one of the many structural things that are inside this document, right, that are telling us what the path is and that for us to work, and not even to make a profit, to make a loss every year for the next 40 years, but we can't wait for people to have children, to go through early childhood, to go through school, to go through high school. We need to, according to this document, continue at a start at 18 level. What does that say about the type of society that they want to build? Because we all understand migration, we understand its history and its necessary future. But to me, it screams that the government doesn't want kids; they want 18-year-olds because they pay tax from day one.

Tim Wilson: Well, the problem is the economic model that the government is engaging with, where the only way they can address the tax base problem is to continue to pump people in. It's unsustainable, and it's been unsustainable, frankly, for a while. What we actually need to do is have more Australians working. We need more Australians being financially independent so they're taxpayers, so they're also not dependent on the system. But we also need people to move through stages of life in a graduated way. We need them to save, invest, buy their own home so they can retire with confidence. Instead, the only answer we have at the moment is for the government to pump more people in, that's having an inflationary effect, it's putting more demand on the cost of housing and particularly rents, and it's actually meaning we're not setting ourselves up for a stable and confident future. And in fact, even under the Intergenerational Report, we've got essentially the highest share of income tax that we've ever had, and it's baked in pretty much into the future. So, we're not even getting lower income taxes as the trade-off. Until we pair back government spending, we're not going to see a change because we have too many people dependent on government.

Paul Murray: Yeah, there's also an insight into the future, again, over the next 40 years is okay, people's retirement, it happens around sort of your mid-to-late sixties, but then life expectancy is going to go deep into the 80s for men and touch 90 for women. So, there's a really serious question here that again, I'm not going to ask you to answer right now, but do you see it as a potential question as well? Is there's a long distance between your mid-sixties, let alone your mid-seventies, let alone your mid-80s, let alone 90, about how people are going to pay for their retirement? Because previous generations have been able to buy a house that's worth way more that eventually financial caplunk, that money pays for the back nine. If you are buying a house that either slowly grows and doesn't make that improvement, or you never actually pay it off, what the hell are millions of people going to do from their mid-60s?

Tim Wilson: We saw a report that was released last week from Vanguard which showed a dramatic increase, and this is in today's Intergenerational Report as well, a massive increase in the number of people who are going towards retirement, and they've got a large super balance, but they haven't paid off the house. Logically, what's the first thing they do? They take their super balance, and they pay off their house and then become dependent on the pension. This is why prioritising super over home ownership doesn't make any logical economic sense. But more to the point, we also need to encourage, and or at least allow, older Australians, if they want to work longer, to be able to work longer. Which is why if you are getting the pension, we should be providing more flexibility for people to continue to work. Some people want to, some people won't need to, that's their choice too. But as you say, there's a big gap between your early sixties, or even your mid-sixties, and when you get into your 80s or even early 90s, no one's going to be working into their late 80s or 90s. But if you want to work longer, you want to defer the time you draw down from your super, or frankly, if you just want to stay economically active because you enjoy the social connection, we should provide the flexibility to do so.

Paul Murray: What do you think is the sneaky bit of politics inside the document? Because again, just the way, you know, they can decide to turn up the dials in the 2030s and turn down the dials in the 2040s to help us get where we're going. But I was interested in the way they were presenting things. I mentioned a bit earlier in the show sort of what was a nice clear graph about deficits for the next 40 years, now just looks like sort of visual vomit, hoping that no one will notice. But were there things inside this where you just sort of were taking a mental note going, oh, okay, they're probably going to start heading in this direction to start paying for things? Could you notice anything?

Tim Wilson: The clearest thing was the gap between the number the Reserve Bank uses for productivity, which is 0.7%, and the number that they're using in this report, which is 1.2%. Now that might not sound like that big a deal, but every year it continues to compound, and when you're reflect it in the volume of public debt that we're going to have into the future, it essentially doubles the public debt out to the 2060s. So, Australians won't just have more debt, they'll also be of course paying higher taxes because today's debt is tomorrow's taxes, and it's the compounding effect because they won't fix their spending addiction, their inflation addiction, and that's all going to be pushed on to future generations.

Paul Murray: 100%. Thank you very much, Tim, do appreciate it. We'll talk to you again very soon.

Tim Wilson: Thanks for having me.

[ENDS]