Monday 22 June 2026

Transcript - Interview on Sky News, AM Agenda

Topics: House prices, Labor’s housing tax, fuel excise

E&OE....

Laura Jayes: Let's get to Canberra now. Joining me now is the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson. Tim, great to see you. This seems to be the big question...

Tim Wilson: Great to see you, Laura.

Laura Jayes: Thank you. How cheery of you this morning! This is the question that I think is the critical one at the moment: do you want house prices to come down? Is that what sustainable house prices actually means?

Tim Wilson: Well, what sustainable house prices means is supply equals demand, which is the market price. So, what do we want? We want incomes to go up. We want incomes to go up so young Australians can get ahead and them to pay the lowest level of tax they can, so they can get ahead so they can afford to buy a house, regardless of whether they go up or down. Truthfully, it's really a silly question. I mean, everybody wants house prices to be lower until they've bought their first home, then they want them to go up. What I want is a sustainable pathway forward for the Australian economy that grows the pie, and of course, part of that is that some of it is going to involve house prices going up because the economy is growing. What we have at the moment is a lack of confidence. We have a lack of confidence where the government is actively undermining incomes, wages, and of course house prices through Jim Chalmers' active inflation agenda.

Laura Jayes: So, does that mean you want to see not a reduction in house prices, but perhaps a reduction in the growth that we see year-on-year? Is that more palatable? Is that more sustainable?

Tim Wilson: Well, there's not one property market. I mean, let's be very realistic about this. There will be different responses in WA, then Queensland versus Victoria. Victorian house prices are going down. So what's happening? You're seeing more people try and enter the market that way and people offloading certain assets at the moment. But what are we also seeing? No new investment in house prices. If people want more houses to be built, you need to be able to make a buck, which means they have to be profitable. If you want people to invest in new property, they need to be profitable. So, I don't want to see a situation where investing in housing is not profitable, because then you get fewer houses, prices will rise unsustainably into the future, and it will absolutely attack the pathway for young Australians to get ahead. I say this very politely, but this constant up-down, up-down, up-down conversation is actually completely misleading on what's actually driving it. You want people to invest in housing.

Laura Jayes: Okay, but we've seen this budget. We've seen that the changes when it comes to housing tax, and then we've seen auction clearance rates near 40%. It's a legitimate conversation to have because I think the questions are being asked because you're not getting honest answers from Canberra. You know, what is it that this budget is trying to do? Is it trying to bring down house prices? And I think this should be challenged. I don't know whether you have an answer to this, Tim, but last week, Anthony Albanese was asked about this very question, and he said that people that are liking his changes are these first home buyers that have been able to get into the market because they're not competing against investors, and that's happened in the four or five weeks since the budget. Is that true? Do we know how many first home buyers have actually got into the market because of these changes, or is it just the interest rate environment?

Tim Wilson: It's cute spin. We know that we have record small business insolvencies, we have record low small business confidence, we have record low consumer confidence. So, it doesn't really surprise me people aren't investing in the future of the Australian economy, they have low confidence. That's why the Prime Minister's spin is cute, but it doesn't reflect what we actually should want. We should want people to be able to make a profit out of housing so that people invest in it and build new housing. Instead, the government has made it less likely to do so. That means we'll get less housing in the long term, that means the price of housing will go up, particularly as they continue to overshoot migration targets, and it'll make it harder for young Australians to get ahead. So, I'm just not buying the Prime Minister's spin. Like Amanda Rishworth, like the Treasurer, he peddles this BS and we need to call it out.

Laura Jayes: Okay, but this is going to sail through this week and there's nothing you can do about it. Is that right?

Tim Wilson: Well, we can obviously raise questions in the Senate and, of course, we can aim to hold Labor accountable in the House. But what we know is that the Labor government has declared war on young Australians, small businesses, and the Greens have seemed to want to come in as reinforcements. You know, at what point and when did it become acceptable that our national leaders could just openly lie to the Australian people? Openly lie about the tax changes they take to an election, openly then lie about what they're going to do afterwards, and everybody just shrugs their shoulders. We'll do everything we can to highlight the disinformation, misinformation, and lies. Remember when the Teals talked about having a bill about truth in political advertising, yet they don't seem to have any issue with the Prime Minister lying? I think there's a point where this is why trust is breaking down in our political system, and it's called Anthony Albanese.

Laura Jayes: Okay, what about the fuel excise cut? A reduced one, but $10 off your price of a tank of fuel at a cost to the budget of $400 million. Is that justified in this environment given, only five weeks from the budget, they've now forgone another $400 million? And these changes to their taxes, well, they've given up another about $500 million worth of revenue. A month out from the budget, we're a billion out.

Tim Wilson: Well, this is why you need to be prudent in your decision-making. You need to manage the budget well because when you need to provide relief or assistance at a critical time, it has to be affordable. I mean, the government's budget is a complete flop as far as most Australians are now concerned. And so, we'll obviously wait and see, we haven’t seen the legislation yet for the excise cut. My instinct is we'll probably end up supporting it. But when we originally floated an excise cut, we offered inflation offsets so that the government didn't give with one hand and take with another. It seems the government's going to ignore that advice again, so any short-term relief will have a long tail.

Laura Jayes: "Fire the liar, drop the flops." Got anything to add to that?

Tim Wilson: Uh, no, I just want to get rid of Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers, and all of his terrible ministers who are seeking to destroy Australia, redistribute growth, feed division, and are making it less capable for Australia to succeed.

Laura Jayes: Less catchy, but I like it. Thanks so much, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Wilson: Also honest.

Laura Jayes: Big week in Parliament. We'll see you soon.

[ENDS]