Wilson: "If you start something, you need to finish it"

0:00Well Tim Wilson is the shadow treasurer and joins me in the studio this morning. Tim Wilson, welcome back to breakfast. Thank you for having me. What do you make of Donald Trump's latest comments telling allies to go and get their own oil? Well of course those comments concern I think every Australian because Australia depends on oil that comes through Asia but from the Middle East through Asia and you know we are all looking at this conflict with incredible concern about its trajectory and the fact that if you start something you need to finish it. What if the US ends this war without reopening the strait? Well that's a big hypothetical and that would have dramatic and substantial consequences for Australia and for the global economy which is the Australian government as based on their public statements were not forewarned about this conflict. Of course there's enormous sympathy with the problems of a regime, a removing a regime that was involved in exporting terrorism around the world but we need to be extremely

1:03mindful that if you start a conflict like this the expectation I think of everybody is that you finish it and there will be huge downstream consequences for our economy, for our society and not just us for global stability. Could Australia send any further military assets to the Middle East for this conflict? Well I don't have enough intelligence to give a guidance on that but my general position is to be extremely cautious in doing so and I've been asked about this previously and why whether it's reasonable that the US demands of us certain resources, my expectation is that the US government would have given us forewarning if that was their expectation and I'll defer to of course the Minister for Defence and the Shadow Minister for Defence but my caution is pretty clear. Last night Parliament passed a bill to halve the fuel excise for the next three months which the government says will give households some relief for cost of living. Would you like to see further cost of living measures right now?

2:06Well not until we see some sort of inflation offsets we put forward a proposal to cut the fuel excise by 50% but we didn't do so until we'd gone through and identified offsets because the biggest risk in these situations is you end up providing relief on one hand but it stokes inflation and you take from households later and the entire economic model of this Albanese government seems to be inflate first then tax the inflation. That is not good for households, it's not sustainable and it doesn't address the root cause of the problem. It's 40 minutes to wait. You're hearing from the Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson. On the weekend Andrew Hastie, your front bench shadow colleagues, he was open to gas windfall tax and that the Liberal Party needs to be open to rethink on negative gearing and capital gains tax. What did you make of your colleague freelancing in your portfolio? Oh look you know people are entitled to their views. There's enormous challenges our country faces. We need big picture thinking. We have three budgets between now and the next

3:10federal or potentially three budgets between now and next federal election and at the current rate that the government continues to stoke inflation and put more pressure on households then go on and tax that inflation. Their economic model is wrong and we don't know what it is. We're going to be left with we have record small business insolvencies in this country right now. Australian small businesses, family businesses and the self-employed are being pushed to the limits. I'm interested in how we actually empower Australians to take control of their lives and we're hard work pays off. That must be our central focus to incentivise that type of behaviour. So do you agree with what Andrew Hastie was saying on Sunday and is it helpful to have him wandering around in your portfolio? Again I'm going to focus on what it is we need to make sure we're incentivising the right behaviour encouraging and supporting small and family businesses and the self-employed. We're not seeing that from the current government and that's my focus because we need Australians to back themselves

4:10but increasingly Australians don't feel like hard work pays off and that's part of obviously what Andrew identified and that's my concern under this government and the economic settings and until we address that we're going to continue to see records, small business insolvencies. So you've outlined clearly their focus and particularly on families and individuals who are trying to move forward in difficult times. Yesterday the opposition decided to change the subject and accused Labour of a secret plan to increase the size of the parliament. It's not government policy. It's an idea that's being considered. When there's so much going on in the economy, was it something that needed to be raised this week? Well we simply asked a question about whether that was the Prime Minister's intention. He seemingly has now ruled that out. He's read the tea leaves in that when households are doing it tough, when it would lead to about I think $600 million of more expenditure and potentially even more tax rises. The Prime Minister seems to have ruled that out because he understands that when you've got records, small business insolvencies,

5:13when you've got massive problems of corruption, $15 billion of public money being hand to organise crime through the CFMU Labour cartel, what Australians want is to see a government that's prudent and responsible, not one that's seeking to enlarge its own members of parliament. The opposition leader Angus Taylor even said that adding politicians to parliament would push up inflation. Is that something that's worrying you? Is the shadow treasurer? The thing that's worrying me about inflation is that this government said this time last year that it had turned the corner. It clearly has turned the corner but in the wrong trajectory, it's going up and that's because we have had and the Reserve Bank Governor identified this in her statements last year. The back end of last year was the reason we've had interest rate hikes this year already. That means, unfortunately, if there's interest rate hikes off the back of conflict in Iran, that is yet to follow through. You know, where it obviously in very challenging times and the government's policy settings is to run the economy down, not build a better future

6:15for Australia. The Reserve Bank has announced it will remove surcharges on debit and credit cards. Is that a good move? Well, of course, nobody wants to pay these fees and, of course, consumers will be happy. But if it just means that all the costs go on to small business and it breaks, small business even further, that's a real problem. I mean, just think about your local pub that's already struggling because households are pulling their belts in. They're finding harder to get ahead or to keep their doors open and costs are just going to go up on them. Meanwhile, you've got big supermarkets who are being given, who get preferential deals, they get scale deals based on the volume of electronic payments. The job of the government has to be to say that the rules that apply for small business have to have to be the same rules. I think that apply to supermarkets because at the moment, small businesses are getting smashed. Tim Wilson, thank you very much for coming in this morning. Good to have you back on the program. Thank you for having me. Tim Wilson is the shadow treasurer.