Thursday, 19 February 2026

Topics: tax system 

Paul Murray: Tim, the fundamentals, and congratulations on your appointment, I think you're going to be great because you are fearless in going anywhere to state your case, and you've got receipts from your work, not just getting back into the parliament, but also what you did in 2019. So again, congratulations.

Tim Wilson MP: Thanks, Paul, and it's nice to have your vote of confidence, but it's not about having titles. It's what you do with the job that counts.

Paul Murray: That's what we like, OK, so let's deal with this in a couple of different parts right. Now the government tries to pretend, 'oh, we've saved a lot here,' but we know that for every dollar spent, they've spent two somewhere else. The reality of the Australian federal budget is despite the fact that they get more tax than ever, ever, ever before, they are spending even more than the money that comes in. What does it say to you that even with more people working than ever before, businesses are paying their share and people are paying through the GST, that we're looking at 10 years or maybe even 40 years of the government being in deficit?

Tim Wilson MP: Well, what it says is that, firstly, Jim Chalmers is a passenger in his portfolio. He's simply not prepared to confront the real challenges Australia faces, and I've said already that I'm open to unconventional thinking to arrest these problems. But the first place we've got to start is with the known corruption that exists in our federal budget, particularly things like $15 billion being handed to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel. I don't think that should be controversial. That should be cut. We know there's corruption in the NDIS, some estimate it to be as high as 10%. We need to tackle that aggressively. But frankly, there's a lot of fraud, I think, of a lot federal government programmes. This government just doesn't have the ticker it needs to adjust the economic settings to grow the economy but concurrently address the budget problems that we need. I'm open and keen for unconventional thinking. I have some very unconventional ideas coming because I think these challenges can be confronted. But they require courage and they require a laser-like discipline to focus on how we're going to build the future of this nation.

Paul Murray: Something that annoys me is the trick that certainly this government is perfecting, and that's not a kind way of saying it, which is they're in deficit in the numbers that we see, but they've got billions of dollars, and nay, it'd be hundreds of billions of dollars potentially, that's off-budget right now. Perfect example is, as soon as you say it's an investment, shunk, it's not going to appear in the budget. Perfect example, potentially high-speed rail, $90 billion. What effort can you put into to giving us an idea. Obviously not tonight, but in the next little while, about starting to pull together the known and the secret amount of money that we owe the rest of the world?

Tim Wilson MP: Well, and this is the thing. It's not just an issue of numbers. It is all funded by debt. And it's debt that's being poured onto the inflation fire we already have. So every time you hear a new announcement or a new off-budget measure, that's more debt petrol poured on the inflation fire. That's why interest rates in Australia are going up while they're going down in the rest of the world. So, yes, we need to aggregate what those total costs are. Yes, we needed to bring it into the light so that we have clarity about the real budget position we face. But then it also means that, as a nation, we need make tough choices. You know, one of the things about getting elected to Parliament, Paul, is you get elected to take responsibility. And we've had a generation of politicians, in my view who have got used to the discussion of whether they hand out $1 billion or $2 billion rather than making tough choices. And it's going to be your kids that are going to pay the consequences of this into the future. Now is the time for leadership. Now is a time to have an adult conversation and to stand up.

Paul Murray: Yeah, Tim, sadly, we have got to cut it short because of the breaking news scenario. So let's back, we'll have a long conversation, but can I set a little bit of homework for our next conversation, which is the division of taxation, right? Now, again, I don't want to back you into quick answers on TV that smart-ass Chalmers will use as questions in the parliament, right. Yeah, but you know, I ain't going to play that, right, personal income tax in Australia, $357 billion, company tax, $144 billion and the GST, $95 billion. Put simply in a bumper sticker, is it fair that it is that heavily balanced, that it is the worker more than a company, more than consumption, is the one that's holding up a government that is spending that and even more?

Tim Wilson MP: The short answer is no. We have more than 50 per cent of the tax take just coming from income tax. That is not sustainable. We should be aligning the tax system to incentivise the things we want. Work is definitely something that we want, and currently the tax system punishes that.

Paul Murray: Thank you very much, mate, I do appreciate it. Thank you, Tim Wilson.

ENDS