‘Absolute shocker’ for Labor after their budget still receives backlash

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]This week has been an absolute shocker for the government because remember their game, their expectation was announce the budget last week, everyone forgets about it by this week, but here we are the best part of what two weeks after all of it and the bin fire. And what about the spin and the changes of spin? Well, the man who of course has been calling all of that out excellent speech yesterday at the National Press Club is Tim Wilson the shadow treasurer and he's in the man cave. Hello mate.

[00:00:24]It's lovely to be in the man cave first time.

[00:00:26]>> Welcome, welcome.

[00:00:27]>> I'm being did. Correct. No, no, you're in the you're in the house now. So I I love the spin from labor, right? Which has gone from nothing to see here to if you I'm in on the joke, thanks for the memes to if you oppose it, you're part of the right-wing and then today we get Claire O'Neill with the it's just the finance bros that are blowing up. They are they are flailing around. They are, you know, there's that that political index of different strife levels and we're now in battle treasurer, I think is the way to put it. But but it's actually serious because they clearly don't understand how the Australian economy works and more importantly how people are choosing to invest whether they're young or they're old. The the level of sophistication, some of this I agree is very complicated but around how people set up their businesses and engage in commerce and they've just drawn a drawn a budget freight train through the middle of the Australian economy and now they're suddenly scrambling to bank all the pieces work together.

[00:01:27]And the problem is their solution now is well, let's just ram the legislation through. I don't think they understand if they do that how much of a a trail of devastation they're going to leave behind them. Well, but also think about some of these groups who go out of their way to say we're not political, which is sort of code for we probably voted for you, right? But we don't want to upset you, daddy. But you've seen that 40 under 40 group of entrepreneurs, you've seen business women that have come out and if this thing does get rammed through, Yeah. then they're going to make an enemy of these people pretty quickly.

[00:02:05]And while it should have been something we were dealing with in the 2025 election, the same way that the suburban accountant small business became the roving enemy of short and in 19 is what they're going to get between now and 28.

[00:02:18]Yeah, I mean you've got there's obviously the issue of broken trust which has a huge impact in terms of attitudes of Australians and how frankly they receive information. But then as people learn more and more and people go and speak their financial advisor, they speak to their accountant and they're going to get not just the bad news that they read in the headlines confirmed, but then the cost. I mean every time everyone goes to an accountant, I was talking to somebody about an hour ago, it's five grand, it's five grand, it's five grand and all because the government is changing rules that they said they wouldn't. And where everybody's now going to be sitting is well, how do you respond to the incentives to grow your wealth in environment where you can't trust the rules?

[00:02:59]And in addition to that, you're not even sure how everybody else is going to behave. I've spoken to people said, well, now I want to sell my business, but I know that I'm basically selling it into a falling market. So I'm going to pay potentially nearly double the tax in a falling market. People are in and I know and I say this respectfully, they're all over the shop because they don't know how to respond. Yeah, correct. And then also also I was noticing today the treasurer is desperately trying to to to talk about say the negative gearing changes and how this is definitely a win cuz they've made this obvious demographic decision, right?

[00:03:33]Which is under 50 over 50, 77 seats in the parliament have a majority of people in the seats that are under the age of 50. So let's all pretend everything's getting better. Reality is, as we know, the biggest entry and the biggest problem with getting into the housing market is you've got to save tens of thousands of dollars. If you are down to your last 500, well, obviously you know we're on that journey. So, the only other way they're able to say our changes have resulted in what we promised, which was more opportunity for young people, is for the price of homes to fall. And the problem with that is 2/3 of the market that are either paying off a house or bought a house need the house to go up in value because that is our financial kaplunk. That's the only way we can pay for old age. So, they're even spinning the concept of 2/3 of the audience watching right now, your home going down in value. That's true, but we never forget that young Australians, you know, firstly they rent. The budget the budget documents admit that rents are going to go up because of these tax changes because negative gearing at the end of the day is a downward pressure on the cost of financing a rental property. They go up, prices go up. Second part is they're now applying a much bigger CGT, capital gains tax on young people investing their first home deposit. And when we're talking about first home deposits these days, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars. And you know, when I was growing up and you know, I think we're a similar age.

[00:05:04]>> [laughter] >> I just look much older.

[00:05:07]I just haven't got a facial hair, but but when I was growing up, buying shares was the domain of the rich. You actually had very access to very limited information, and of course you had to use a broker. Today, there are platforms digital on your phone that you can buy shares directly, ETFs, crypto. They've got crypto wallets, etc. All those things are going to be hit, and young Australians are looking at it and saying, "Well, that's my house deposit."

[00:05:30]And I've we've had stacks of people through our website notthetax.com.au of telling us these stories of how people have actually been pushed backward. And then the budget documents also admit there's 35,000 fewer homes that are going to be built under these tax changes. So, most young people, as well as the business owners, are looking it saying, "This ain't going to work for us, either." Correct. Last one here. Um a lot of people very energized by this idea when it comes to taxation and bracket creep. Again, explain to people how this would work and how this saves you time over money. Well, at the moment as >> Money over time.

[00:06:04]At the moment, inflation goes up and we know Jim Chalmers has a particularly active inflation agenda. And what happens is people get pushed in They might have a a nominal increase in their income, but it pushes them to higher tax bracket.

[00:06:17]That's what we call bracket creep. And when you go over those thresholds into the higher bracket, you end up paying more tax. And I'll give you an example. If you had the same tax thresholds that were in 2008, indexed for inflation today, it would be close to 206 And from 180,000, the top marginal rate would now be 260-odd thousand today. So, you're talking big numbers when you're paying And that's at the 47% rate. So, it's big. So, what we're saying is we're going to index them from the future. Uh and if inflation goes up, the government doesn't automatically get to come along and take a big chunk of your salary by stealth. Um it will be essentially reimbursed um as inflation goes up because we understand it's your money, you earned it, you took the risk, you worked, you keep it. Correct. Again, I think a lot of people are energized in it.

[00:07:07]Big battle ahead. Enjoy Parliament when you get to rip [laughter] them apart.

[00:07:10]Looking forward to it in in the next week or so as I try to ram it through.

[00:07:15]Tim, good on you, mate. Thanks, Paul.

[00:07:16]Take care.

[00:07:17]>> is the shadow treasurer. Honestly, I think I hope on the side on many issues, particularly on this.