Thursday, 3 September 2026

Transcript - ABC Radio National, Breakfast

E&OE……………………..

Sally Sara: Joining us on Breakfast is the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson. Tim Wilson, welcome back to Breakfast.

Tim Wilson: Thanks for having me, Sally, and congratulations by the way on breaking news with the Treasurer admitting that by design, we're seeing reductions in house prices.

Sally Sara: Let's start with tobacco first, and we'll get to house prices. This proposal by the Coalition, can you break down the numbers for me, how would this increase government revenue?

Tim Wilson: It will increase government revenue by about $2 billion a year because it will stop people buying products from the black market and will lead to them buying it in the real market. The big difference there is of course that the organised crime gangs do not pay tax to the Australian Taxation Office or report their tax to the Australian Taxation Office, whereas when products are sold by legal entities, by supermarkets, by corner shops and the like, they do pay it.

Sally Sara: The decision to legalise vapes would raise money because vapes would be taxed. How much money has the parliamentary budget office told you would get from vapes alone?

Tim Wilson: Those numbers, sorry, I don't have the number immediately in front of me, but we know that it would increase the available revenue because at the moment, most of the funding is going through to illegal operators and to illegal goods which are in the marketplace, where people are going and buying them from dodgy operators and we're not seeing a situation where people are paying tax, but more importantly, we're not getting the revenue we need to offset the cost for the health system.

Sally Sara: Was the Coalition originally considering a 75% cut to the tobacco excise, but increased it after One Nation announced its policy?

Tim Wilson: We've been looking at this policy for a long time, but what we've been looking at is how do you break it down for the different parts of the market so that we can actually break the illegal tobacco trade. The problem we've got is a government that's only focused on law enforcement. We’ve got a One Nation position which is focused solely on tax cuts. What we're looking at is how do we stop the black market both with enforcement and with reduction in the excise so that we actually get the outcome Australians want, which is to break illegal tobacco trade, stop fuelling the fire-bombings of stores, corner stores, and particularly the impact that it’s going to have on small business, and make sure we raise the revenue to deliver a better health outcome.

Sally Sara: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast. My guest is the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson. The National Accounts data has shown Australia has an annual economic growth rate of 2.1%. The Treasurer has called the figures, quote, “a robust result in challenging international circumstances.” What would your description be?

Tim Wilson: My description would be that the wealth of Australians and the real wages of Australians are falling backwards because the government cannot give up on its active inflation agenda. What we're seeing is inflation continue to outstrip economic growth, and as a consequence, Australian households and Australian small businesses are falling further behind. Until we get an adjustment and we get a recognition that inflation continues to be the persistent problem at the heart of the Australian economy, stoked by the government and by government spending, we're not going to see a change.

Sally Sara: Do you think the economy has hit its speed limit?

Tim Wilson: Well, I don't think that's right. I think we can be a more successful and productive economy, but what we can't allow to continue to happen is for the government to stoke inflation because it's their pathway to secretly raise tax revenue. Their active inflation agenda is focused on stoking inflation, then taxing the inflation, then spending the inflation because they know that it's a pathway to sneak more tax from Australian hit pockets into their own revenue.

Sally Sara: One of the things you said when you became Shadow Treasurer was that the Reserve Bank needed to be more focused on fighting inflation and less worried about unemployment. Do you think the unemployment rate needs to be higher before we can be satisfied that inflation has been adequately dealt with?

Tim Wilson: The problem is that the Reserve Bank is focused on how it tries to put a handbrake on inflation. The problem is that the government keeps pressing the accelerator on spending, which is stoking the inflation. So, the real problem we've got is an economy out of whack, actively pushed by the Albanese government because it can't cut, or can't end, its spending addiction, and as a consequence, they're forcing the hand of the Reserve Bank, and as we know, they have flagged the possibility that they will increase interest rates at their next meeting and some people are saying at future meetings.

Sally Sara: Just finally, we're also seeing house prices fall at the moment. If we're seeing this as a correction and the market stabilizes within a couple of years, could that be a good outcome?

Tim Wilson: Well, what we want to do is make sure that young Australians can buy their first home. While we're seeing wealth of Australians decline for those who own their own home, we're seeing the price of first homes increasing as a consequence of tax policy and tax measures and the failure to build new homes. We've seen a smashing in the confidence of the market, but let's remember, this is by design. The federal budget actively focused on how it was going to increase rents, and of course what we've seen is an increase in rents, an increase in the price of a first home, while we've seen a drop at the top end of housing, which doesn't help first-home buyers.

Sally Sara: Tim Wilson, we'll need to leave it there. Thank you for your time this morning.

Tim Wilson: Thank you.

Sally Sara: Tim Wilson is the Shadow Treasurer.

[ENDS]