Topics: $7.4 billion public service wages black hole; Labor’s economic mismanagement; tax reform; high speed rail link project

 

E&OE   

 

JAMES WILLIS:

Now I mentioned this earlier and it's worth spending a moment on because there is a staggering story today about a $7.4 billion black hole in the federal budget. And to give you an idea of that dollar figure, it's roughly the same amount that Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, announced yesterday for the major highway upgrade in Queensland. This is a lot of money, and this is money that has not been budgeted for, for the public service and their pay deals. There's 185,000 public servants. Under their contract, they never, ever have to go back to the office. They can request that, and their boss is required to favour the request. So, Canberra, and I saw this recently, Canberra on some days is a ghost town around senior government agencies. But Labor hasn't budgeted for this money. They've all got a pay rise. We've had tens of thousands of new public servants come on board and the money hasn't been put aside. Angus Taylor is the Shadow Treasurer. He's on the line. Angus, good morning to you.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Good morning, James. Good to be with you.

 

JAMES WILLIS:

Is this really right? $7.4 billion and they actually haven't budgeted for it.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, it seems that way and it's pretty extraordinary. They're in the process of adding 36,000 Canberra-based public servants right now but they haven't even budgeted properly for the public servants that are already there. They've done the pay deal, but the outcome of that pay deal is not in the budget, it seems. The government hasn't made any appropriate response to this, and it seems to me that it's just another black hole in a big-spending Labor government. And let's put it in the perspective, James, this is the highest spending government in history. This is a government that says it's fighting inflation, but we know the number one thing you have to do to fight the inflation is to manage the growth in government spending. We learnt that in the 70s and 80s. This is not new, there's no rocket science here. And we know the small businesses are out there struggling right now, including in my hometown of Goulburn and right now finding workers is incredibly difficult. Well, one of the reasons is that the government is spending so much money, it's crowding out the private sector. So, this is an economic disaster we're facing right now and here is a really good example of a black hole of extraordinary magnitude, as you rightly just pointed out, that has not properly been accounted for by the government.

 

JAMES WILLIS:

And of course, if it wasn't for this record spending and programs like the NDIS, which has been scaled back a little bit but probably not enough and was just ballooning out of control, the energy rebates the government spending, the real picture of the economy would be exposed and that is the people struggling with living standards at the grassroots.

 

Hey, just one before you go, and if you do win the next election, I'd just be keen to know broadly, is there anything in terms of tax reform on the table? Like we've learnt this week that income tax receipts will make up 52% of total tax. People talk to us all the time about the taxes that small businesses have to pay. Is the Coalition, and are you legitimately interested in fundamental tax reform and if so, what is it?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Absolutely and in particular we've already announced, and we announced some time back that we'd scale up accelerated depreciation for small business. We want to see our businesses investing. That's one of the ways out of the economic crisis we have right now, and we know one of the best ways to do that is to give an incentive for small to medium-sized businesses to invest and right at the heart of that is accelerating the depreciation. So, to put that in practical terms what that means is they can make an investment and get a tax write-off from that investment. They'll obviously pay tax when they make money from whatever they've invested in down the track but it's a way to encourage small business to get out there and invest and so we've said we'll make that a permanent part of the tax system. We'll scale it up and that way we'll get small businesses going and investing. They're struggling at the moment. Levels of insolvency is a record. We need to get small business up and running.

 

JAMES WILLIS:

Just lastly, your electorate is in Goulburn, I mentioned earlier that the New South Wales government, the former Coalition, had priced a high-speed rail line between Sydney and the Central Coast at $32 billion. The longer plan, many years in the future would be to connect most of the East Coast. Will we ever see this? Is this something the Coalition could ever entertain? Is it part of your plan moving forward or is it simply in the too hard basket?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, let's be clear, Albanese has put half a billion dollars into this and all we’ve seen is a shop front in Newcastle and a few holes being dug and really it was just an election ploy at the last election to try and win seats on the Central Coast. We are waiting to see what that half a billion dollars is delivering in terms of the business case. We'll look at that very carefully, obviously. But right now, what we've got is nothing. That's kind of what we're starting to, what we've been expecting to get from this government when it looks at issues like this. But it's interesting it's come up now, it always seems to come up at election time, doesn't it?

 

JAMES WILLIS:

Angus, really appreciate your time.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Good to be with you, James. Angus Taylor, the Shadow Treasurer.

 

ENDS.