Tuesday 5 August 2025

E&OE............................

Peter Stefanovic: 

This week, the Victorian State Government unveiled plans to enshrine work from home arrangements into law. That would give Victorian public servants and private sector employees the right to work from home at least two days a week. This is obviously a touchy topic for the Liberals at a federal level, but the Shadow Industrial Relations Minister Tim Wilson has the job of trying to steer the course for the party in this space over the next few years. Hello to you, Tim Wilson, out of Melbourne. So yeah, tricky territory for the Libs post-election here on work from home, but does this make doing business in Victoria more or less appealing?

Tim Wilson: 

Well, it's not tricky at all. We believe fundamentally in employers and employees coming up with mutually beneficial outcomes. That's the basis in which you get productivity gains. And if work-from-home arrangements work for people, then more the power to them. I support fundamentally working-from home arrangements as part of what works for people. But what the state government is doing is doing a stunt over substance. They made an announcement that they were going to essentially try and guarantee an outcome. Since then, lawyers have said, actually, you can't do that for private sector workers. That's covered by federal law. And, of course, what has been obvious to everybody is that teachers, nurses, tradies, retail workers, they're not going to get the benefit from it. So what we have is the Premier gaslighting Victorian employees, but in the process, putting serious risk at jobs in Victoria, as employers are starting to say, do we really want to continue operating here anymore?

Peter Stefanovic: 

Right so your view would be that yeah work from home but you don't need to put it into law just work it out between employer and employee.

Tim Wilson: 

I mean the extraordinary thing is that's basically the Prime Minister's view. And so of course the Prime Minster, the Federal Minister for Industrial Relations, Amanda Rishworth, they've all gone to ground. They won't say whether they back in Jacinta Allan's plan because they know she's gaslighting the Victorian public. They know that what she's doing won't be constitutional. They don't want to be out there criticising it. But really it's absurd that we have a Victorian Premier gaslighted nurses, tradies, teachers, retail workers. And not actually taking workplace arrangements seriously because she thinks she can get some political benefit from a stunt rather than actually doing things that will drive up wages, standards of living and better working conditions for Victorians and Australians.

Peter Stefanovic: 

So do you think that makes doing business tougher in Victoria, and if so, does that make doing business in other states more appealing?

Tim Wilson: 

It doesn't really matter what I think. It's what Victorian employers are saying. And they're saying explicitly that if we're going to enshrine these things in law, it's just another nail in the coffin of the Victorian business community where people are making choices about where they invest, where they make decisions to set up businesses, and they're looking at other states and saying, they're more attractive than this state. As a proud Victorian, I see this as a tragic outcome. I mean... we already know from public data, the Australian Industry Group released yesterday, that all of the growth in employment in the Australian economy right now is basically off the back of public expenditure. It's not from wealth-creating or private sector jobs growth. And we need to be realistic that that means the economy is feeding off itself. It's not actually growing the pie. We're fighting over a diminishing share of a diminishing pie.

Peter Stefanovic: 

All right, so on to productivity and growth more broadly, and as one of the Liberal Party's key economic minds. So this roundtable is now a tax reform roundtable, not a productivity roundtable. So there's been a shift there. Does that give you hope that there will be reform that's going to happen?

Tim Wilson: 

Well for reform to occur what you actually need to see is proposals put forward that are going to grow the economic pie, they're going to lift the standards of living for Australians and actually improve the economic environment for everybody. So far, all we've had is proposals for tax hikes. It's a tax hike summit from Treasurer Jim Chalmers. You know, initially it was a productivity one, it's now ended up being a tax hike summit.

Peter Stefanovic: 

But that's how you raise money, right? And make cuts elsewhere.

Tim Wilson: 

Well, let's wait and see then what the offsets are. I've heard lots of proposals to raise taxes. I haven't heard many proposals about how they plan to cut taxes and drive productivity growth and improvements in the economy. And this is the problem with the approach the current government has.

Peter Stefanovic: 

So one of the ideas, and this has been gaged by the Productivity Commission, is to expand the GST to help pay for company tax cuts. So that's according to the modelling that's been done for the Productively Commission. Is that an option? Would you entertain that? An increase to the GST which would pay for tax cuts at the corporate level?

Tim Wilson: 

I'm not going to get into every single proposal that people are putting forward, what I want to respond to is what the government is actually going to adopt in terms of its policy platform and since the election they have put forward new taxes, their family savings tax on unrealised capital gains, which will be a death knell for investment in the future.

Peter Stefanovic: 

Well, Lindsay Fox with a big call on that this morning, Tim.

Tim Wilson: 

He did. He did, Lindsay Fox, the ACTU, Paul Keating, Bill Kelty. Literally everybody is against this tax, except one group, which is the federal Labor Party, particularly Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese. This is the tax that Australians didn't vote for. And since the election, all we've had is more proposals being put on the table for taxes Australians didn't vote for, that's why this is a tax hike summit. And that is the basis in which I'm certainly questioning... its merit until we see proposals from the government where they start to say this is the proposal of reform we're going to drive forward.

Peter Stefanovic: 

Alright, we'll leave it there. Tim Wilson, good to see you.

ENDS