Tuesday 12 May 2026

Transcript - Interview with Channel 9 News, Budget program

Topics: Federal budget

E&OE...

Charles Croucher: Thank you, Pete. Tim Wilson, your first budget as Shadow Treasurer—firstly, congratulations on the position.

Tim Wilson: Thank you. Good to be here.

Croucher: Let’s start small: the Working Australians Tax Offset—$250 a few years down the road, it’s permanent. Do you support that?

Wilson: We support it, but we need to be realistic. Every time the government has offered a tax cut in the past, it’s been wiped out by Jim Chalmers’ active inflation agenda. The tax cuts at the last election in May? They were gone by December. Measures they’re introducing now will mostly be gone by December this year. So, we’ve got to be realistic about what it’s actually going to do, because it’s not really going to help Australians as long as Jim Chalmers keeps stoking inflation.

Croucher: Those tax cuts are permanently baked in, this will be as well—a lot of the inflation has come from Iran as well. Are you—

Wilson: Well, actually, that’s politely, Charles, that’s not right. We had inflation increases before, off the back of data from the end of last year; we had interest rate rises off the back of last year. No one’s disputing Iran has a compounding effect, but it all started with domestic inflation pressure.

Croucher: The thing is, these offsets will be permanent, so when inflation comes down, you’re still going to see them—it’s going to cost money in the budget. Are you supporting them?

Wilson: We’re supporting them, but we’re just being caveat and saying that we need to be realistic about what they’re going to do for the Australian community. If people think it’s going to be this salve to the problems of inflation that the government is stoking, I’m afraid to disappoint them. And this is the problem with many aspects of the budget, which is structurally it doesn’t seek to reduce the amount of public spending that’s driving inflation—in fact, this is the highest taxing government in Australian history and it’s going to keep spending.

Croucher: There’s big revenue downturns in what’s being spent on things like the NDIS, there are some savings being made elsewhere. Have they gone far enough?

Wilson: Well, the spending announcements—whether they’re actually delivered remains very much a big question. And, you know, only today after us for months and months and months saying NDIS fraud, childcare fraud, aged care fraud for home care packages is out of control, they’ve finally at least acknowledged that that’s part of the problem. But so often we’ve seen the government bank saves, which often means higher taxes, and then they’ve gone off and spent the money and actually stoked inflation.

Croucher: I’ve seen people do that on both sides in the past. Is there a way, or is there an item that you can see in the budget now that could be scrapped and tomorrow if parliament passed it, it could start bringing inflation down?

Wilson: Well, there are certainly measures that we’ve put forward before already around, you know, corporate welfare or green-targeted corporate welfare around the Green Hydrogen Scheme, which is part of the aggregate spend and is only going to increase pressure on inflation and actually isn’t building out the industry Australia needs right now. So we’ve gone through those measures before, and we’ll have more to announce in Angus Taylor’s budget reply on Thursday night. But the key thing is the government needs to stop its spending addiction because they’re insistent on continuing to stoke it.

Croucher: From what I can see, the big fight that is coming is on Capital Gains and negative gearing. Do you support those changes? Will you support the changes in the parliament, and will you support those changes at the next election?

Wilson: It’s very hard to support these changes, and we’ve already said we don’t, because firstly they were built on a house of broken trust. The government and the Prime Minister was clear about this fifty times over—red hot with rage saying how dare anyone suggest he was doing this before the last election. Now they’ve broken this promise, but let’s be very clear about the consequences. The government’s own budget papers show it will lead to 35,000 fewer homes being built and rents increasing. Now, I don’t know about you, Charles, but if the objective is to get young Australians into a home, building fewer houses and increasing rents and then adding a tax if you invest your house deposit to get ahead doesn’t seem like the way you get there.

Croucher: You’ve said this is built on a house of broken trust. I think back to my first budget in this building—I don't think you were in parliament yet, you were certainly around the place—was Joe Hockey’s budget. Effectively lots of broken promises—it was a first-term government. Within a few years he was gone, the Prime Minister was gone. What does it say about the Opposition if you can’t deal the same punishment to the government for breaking similar promises?

Wilson: Well, this is why we’re being resolute and clear about we’re opposing these measures, because these measures go to the heart of the trust people have in the government—the Treasurer himself—because they went to the last election saying they wouldn’t do precisely these things. But more importantly, it won’t even deliver the outcome that they’re claiming. How can you introduce new taxes that are going to hit small businesses, that are going to hit young Australians who are saving and investing their first home deposit, and increasing rents, and also building fewer houses? This government has developed a narrative around their budget, then they’ve tried to retrofit the data, and they’ve even themselves admitted they can’t make the numbers stack up.

Croucher: That’s the challenge from there. Really quickly, because we have to wrap: what’s the coalition’s policy economically moving forward? Got to cast adrift there for three years and it wasn’t clear if it was higher taxes, lower taxes, bigger government, smaller government—where do you stand, and are your colleagues behind you on where you stand?

Wilson: Well, we’ve always been a party of making sure there are lower taxes, but more importantly the taxes are aligned to encouraging people to work, to invest their capital and get ahead, and to be in a position to be building out the future growth of this country. We want a growth and opportunity budget; this is one that is simply managing decline and built on a house of broken trust.

Croucher: A big fight ahead. Tim, thank you.

[ENDS]