Tim Wilson
Goldstein · Liberal Party · Australia
“Now, we see even more immoral leadership as the Prime Minister and his ministers refuse to audit whether federal money has found its way into the hands of organised crime through the CFMEU Labor cartel.”
“The silence that we heard from our prime minister and our national leaders every step of the way led to horrific incidents like, on 10 November, the protests at the front of Central Shule in Caulfield South in the Goldstein electorate. It led eventually to the most horrific terrorist incident on our most famous national beach.”
“The idea that you would put the social solidarity of the most marginalised section of our community on a ballot paper knowing it would fail is an abrogation of leadership and responsibility and something I do not think this prime minister will ever be able to shake.”
“I've recently been spending a lot of time thinking about what moral government is and what type of government seeks to divide citizens, feed corruption and break trust within the community. The short and sharp of it is that it's an immoral government.”
“But to engage in citizenship stacking, where they deliberately went around and targeted electorates and got people to become Australian citizens on the eve of a national poll, is absolutely disgraceful.”
“There is hope. We can have a moral government again that's focused on uniting Australians and building trust and taking Australia forward together. But the only way we can do that is by seeing a change of government and the end of the Albanese government.”
The complete record
Every one of 1,081 lines we hold for Tim Wilson, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 22.
“But, to have the Treasurer standing on the other side of the dispatch box, mocking hairdressers, ridiculing brickies and attacking people who earn a decent living and who are trying to get ahead to support themselves and their families, it makes one wonder what sort of government this is. Their only solution is to attack Australians, tax Australians and inflate Australians out of a better future. They ridicule those people who want to get ahead, all because of the arrogance of this government. They think they know how to live people's lives and decide their fortunes better than the people do. There's a reason Australians are so angry. They fundamentally believe that they should be in control of their own lives. Australians fundamentally believe that hard work should pay off.”
“Hang on, they're directly assaulting our business, our opportunity and our capacity to employ Australians too.' In a rushed scurry at the last minute, the Treasurer inserted a footnote in the budget saying: 'We'll do some sort of consultation. Don't come after us; it's okay.' What's been revealed, step after step, just like the small businesses of the nation, is that they have been on Labor's hit list too. Now we have a consultation paper out there trying to describe what an innovative business is. Yesterday, we heard from the Treasurer mocking disdain of businesses that innovate in incremental ways, no matter what their history. This is one of the most disgraceful things I think I've ever seen a Treasurer do. Let's face it, there's a fair list of them at the moment.”
“The Australian people and their aspiration are just collateral damage in the process, and it hasn't ended. The tax measures—the tax hikes—that were introduced in this budget may have been glaringly obvious to the Australian people on budget night, but, as detail continues to be revealed, there is no-one off this government's hitlist. You see the consultation paper they've now issued is like a footnote because they clearly didn't understand the economic consequences of their budget. It was a footnote. At the last minute, as people slowly realise that the measures—the tax hikes—being taken in the budget were not just going to be targeted to property, all of a sudden, the people are involved in venture capital, startups and those building new businesses to grow out the economic opportunity said: 'Hang on, I think this applies to us.”
“Now, we know that the Treasurer loves to wax lyrical and pretend that he's the modern-age Keating, but what we actually watch, not just in question time but when we go out of the chamber and to anywhere else, is a Treasurer who doesn't even have the courage to stand up and make the case for the reforms or the introduction of the measures that they've put in this budget and refuse to take to the Australian people. Paul Keating would have the courage to take those measures to an election, make the case at the election and make the case afterwards. Instead, what we have is a prime minister and a treasurer who say one thing before an election then do the exact opposite after because they think they can sneak it past the Australian people and get away with it.”
“They want to educate themselves, they want to be able to get ahead, they want to save for a better future or for a rainy day and, most importantly, they one day want retirement security so that, in the latter stage of life, when they're vulnerable, they don't have to worry about their future or their financial security. At every single stage of life, the Albanese government has targeted Australians directly on their financial security, so they won't be able to put themselves in the best position to be able to decide how to live their best lives. It's now incredibly clear that this is the worst budget in Australian history, and that takes an incredible mark of achievement. Think about it—think about all the wreckage that was left behind by the Whitlam government in years past.”
“And just when the Australian people thought, 'Time's up; maybe they'll stop coming after us, assaulting us and targeting us with higher taxes,' the government has today struck a dangerous, dishonest and dirty deal with the Australian Greens in the Senate and is now targeting Australia's retirees. Well, Australians are sick of it. They're saying very clearly that the Albanese government does not have the best interests of Australians at heart. And this is what is so shocking and distressing: Australians wake up every morning, working hard to get ahead to make sure they can afford food and they can afford what they're putting in their red basket or their trolley. Australians wake up and they work hard so they can go on and do things like pay their mortgage.”
“It's quite clear now, and we see the consequences starkly in the consumer confidence data: record low consumer confidence across Australia and, in the small-business confidence data, record small-business confidence in this nation's history. And we have another metric: record small-business insolvencies. That is the lived reality Australians are having to experience under this government. They are living with the biggest deterioration that we have ever seen in our economic circumstances and our economic confidence, and it's all perpetuated by the Albanese government.”
“The government goes on and deceives and says to the Australian people that, through their higher taxes, they're somehow going to lower the price of housing, yet concurrently they go around and in their own budget papers clearly articulate—while they overshoot their migration target by 90,000 over the next two years—that, under this budget, the Australian government is going to be responsible for building fewer homes. Since that budget night, Australians have read story after story of how they're directly assaulted by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister's budget measures—higher taxes, higher costs—making it harder for them to get ahead.”
“Instead, they saw a direct assault on the aspiration and ambition of Australians. What they witnessed was a treasurer and a prime minister whose focus was on how they could raid the piggy banks of the nation, targeting young Australians saving for a home deposit and doubling the tax rate. To those who rent simply to be able to put a roof on top of their head, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have turned around and said in their own budget papers that there are going to be increases to the costs of rent.”
“Another day, another question time of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer continuing and perpetuating the myths that they took to the last election—they're somehow honouring the policies that they took to the Australian people. The brutal reality is, around the country right now, the self-starters of Australia, the small businesses, the family businesses, those who are seeking hard to get ahead, the investors, those who are backing themselves through their hard work and sacrifice and now the retirees of Australia are wondering 'what is the government going to do to attack us next?' On budget night of this year, there were so many Australians who tuned in thinking that they were simply going to be watching another budget handed down about the finances of the nation.”
“My question is to the Treasurer. To ram through Labor's toxic taxes, the Treasurer has changed his position again and done a dangerous deal with the Greens. In May last year the Treasurer said the government had 'no intention of bowing to Greens demands to restrict self-managed superannuation funds investing in property'. How can Australian people believe or ever trust another thing the Treasurer says?”
“Let's not forget, Speaker, that we currently have record small-business insolvencies in Australia under this government, and I see you nodding your head. It's very disappointing.”
“And yet that's not what Australians are living. Despite there being more fuel in Australia right now and despite there being cheaper prices at distribution in Singapore, it's not flowing through to the bowser in Australia. Despite the fact there's more fuel in Australia right now, we're still having to offer tax relief to address the consequences of a shortage of fuel. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make any sense to me. But this is the consequence of how the Albanese government has approached this crisis and the consequences of its decision-making. We absolutely believe that Australians should be able to go about their lives and be able to afford fuel to engage in the normal activities of life—such as drop families off at Saturday sport. But it's not just impacting families; it's also impacting small businesses.”
“We made recommendations, around $2.9 billion, and now they're offering further fuel excise relief in the vicinity of $400 million. We know the trade off from this downstream is going to be more stoking of the inflation pressure and more debt petrol on the inflation fire. We don't even understand why it's necessary. When you come into this parliament, we hear so often from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy that there's more fuel in Australia now than there was at the start of the crisis. Remember that, Member for Gippsland? So many times he has come into this chamber and said, 'There's more fuel in Australia now than at the start of the crisis.' There's so much fuel that he could reenact that scene in Zoolander where they pull out the petrol bowser and spray it upon themselves. That's how much fuel there is in this country.”
“They've attacked and assaulted those employee share ownership schemes, directly assaulted those who build businesses, directly assaulted those who have startups and directly assaulted those who own investment property. The list keeps going and going about the number of people they've directly assaulted. They don't understand economics, but they also don't understand the consequences of their policy and how it flows through to the Australian people. So here we are now, and we're a few months into the crisis in Iran. In light of that, the government—in addition to the first three months of fuel excise relief—is now offering a further month, but they still have not offered a single inflation offset as a trade-off to make sure that they protect the financial best interests of Australians from the decisions that they've made.”
“We have to make sure that Australian households are protected from the consequences of these international events.' But the Albanese government in their usual—I don't know what you'd say—arrogant, dismissive, uneconomic and ignorant way decided they would continue on with the fuel excise relief without paying any heed or attention to standard economics or understanding the consequences of what they're doing. Of course, we've seen this now in many different ways. It's not just in the fuel excise relief. We've seen it in their federal budget, where they have directly assaulted the livelihoods of Australians. They've directly assaulted the investment strategies that young Australians and older Australians—that every Australian seeks to employ.”
“We understood that, if you just increase access and reduce excise, it has is an inflationary effect on Australian households where the government seemingly gives with one hand but, later down the track, takes with the other. This is the entire economic model of the Albanese government. They offer an incentive on one hand, and, through the political process, argue that they're somehow giving this great relief to Australians, but they're using it by enabling a pathway to spend, which stokes inflation. They then come along and tax inflation, and then, of course, they spend the inflation again in a vicious cycle of slowly taking the wealth and standards of living of Australians. We offered inflation offsets to say: 'There is a limit.”
“It rationally looked at the challenges and said to the Australian people, 'We need to make sure that these price rises aren't being needlessly passed on to you when we're already living through the greatest cost-of-living crisis in recent years.' The response from the government was to dismiss and say it wasn't necessary and for the Treasurer, in his usual dismissive and mocking way, to attack anybody who put a proposition forward. But eventually they buckled. As another example of this government buckling and being humiliated again, eventually they accepted that perhaps Australians needed excise relief. The difference was, when we put forward a proposal to relieve Australian households of the pressures of excise when the prices of petrol and diesel were going up, we offered inflation offsets.”
“What do you say of a government that constantly gets wagged by the tail of others? We have a situation where, in the Senate, this government is being wagged by the tail of the Greens, and, when it comes to providing fuel excise, this government has wagged been by the tail of the coalition. Before this government put forward excise relief, the coalition had been calling for it for many weeks. We understood that Australians were doing it tough, that prices were rising at the bowser and, of course, because of global conflicts and conflicts in the Middle East, that there were going to be supply constraints. So what did the coalition do?”
“It was, of course, an incredible celebration of her full life; 59 years in, most of us would be jealous to have achieved that much. And, of course, she's since been posthumously honoured with an Officer of the Order of Australia, which is justly and appropriately awarded. To her family and particularly to her lovely husband, Malcolm, to Monty, Jemima, Arabella and Archie, we just express our most incredible condolences. Fifty-nine—too soon. But vale, Katie Allen.”
“She certainly made her views known. No-one's trying to pretend otherwise. But she was always actively encouraging as well in the contribution that she made in this parliament to others. And for that she'll always have our eternal respect and love. Tragically, just before she passed away towards the end of 2025, I organised with my husband, my dear friend Phil and his partner Susie to be able to catch up with Katie. Unfortunately, diary commitments clashed and meant that I wasn't able to do so, so we rescheduled to catch up early in the year. Tragically, it ended up being the date of her funeral because she passed around Christmas last year. It was a devastating blow for many people because her passing came a lot faster than we and I think she as well initially expected. Her funeral at St Paul's was beautiful.”
“In addition to state blockages and the various restrictions that were imposed, it was a particularly odd term, but it was like it was a term made for Katie. When issues of health rose to national prominence and all of a sudden we needed medical expertise to inform the decision-making of elected representatives, she was certainly on hand to offer her opinion to the government and to then health minister Greg Hunt, who actively used her to work with different medical agencies and to guide discussions and inform decision-making. So she might have only had one term, but I can assure you it was definitely the right term for Katie to serve in the federal parliament. She made an enormous contribution in a very short period of time. There are a lot of personal stories that I have about Katie, but really, when it came down to it, she was spirited.”
“Of course, she and Malcolm lived a very happy and long life together—but, tragically, not long enough. Her lack of success in the state seat of Prahran—backed up by, or armed though, the experience of that, as well as her professional background—led her to this place. I still remember when Kelly O'Dwyer did a public press conference announcing her retirement from parliament. I was driving the car down the Mornington Peninsula, and I immediately picked up the phone to Katie and said, 'I think this might be your chance, Katie, to be able to stand for the federal parliament.' Quick smart, she was in the race. She ended up serving here from 2019 to 2022. That was a very challenging term for any member who was here at that time, as I was. It was essentially the COVID term.”
“Well before I knew her, she was a medical researcher, a paediatrician and a university professor, and she was involved particularly with the Australian Food Allergy Foundation—with which one of my late constituents who I spoke about earlier today, Patricia Ilhan, was actively involved. She always committed herself to advancing the best interests and wellbeing of the Australian people, in her fields of medical discipline. To be blunt, her list of publications is slightly intimidating, I suspect, for every single member of this House. Her professional success was also matched by her private success with her family. While the member for Macarthur mentioned previously that she was a teetotaller, there was a time before that, where she met her husband—and I believe the imbibing of liquids was part of the process—at the Melbourne Cup carnival.”
“I'd also like to rise to pay recognition to the memory of the life of Katie Allen, the former member for Higgins. I first met Katie when she was running for the state seat of Prahran. In that feisty election, she of course put up a valiant fight against the Greens and the Labor Party, having been endorsed as the Liberal candidate for the state seat—one, of course, we were hoping to pick up, but she was not successful. But in doing so, it led to other things—let's put it that way, with respect to the great people of Prahran. She was somebody who had a long history and a lot to contribute to this nation's parliament.”
“Hardship, of course, was a significant part of Patricia's life because she lost her husband at such a young age, leaving her and her children. She carried warmth, courage and a deep commitment to family, friends and the causes she championed. I was privileged to be with her at her second wedding, on the Mornington Peninsula, to her husband, Chris Blackman. To Yasmin, Hannah, Jaida, Aydin and of course Chris, we send our deepest condolences and thoughts at this difficult time. Patricia leaves behind not just the organisations she supported but also her generosity and kindness of spirit. Vale, Patricia, 62 years young. You will be missed by the entire community.”
“Today I rise to pay tribute to the life of Patricia Ilhan, a mother, philanthropist and woman of extraordinary gifts. I first met Trish many years ago when I first ran for parliament. She was a true believer in the Brighton community. After one of her children suffered a serious allergic reaction, she and her late husband, John, established the Ilhan Food Allergy Foundation in 2006, turning a frightening family experience into support, research and advocacy for others. Patricia took personal hardship and used it to make other people safer, more informed and less alone. I witnessed as she worked with others in her community who had suffered from breast cancer and built a group called Breast Friends to turn that difficulty into opportunity.”
“It's not just what we want for people with a disability; it's what we want for every Australian, and this important step by Emily Higgins and all those who participated is part of it. We wish Bayside council well, in particular, for continuing to lead it.”
“I want to particularly thank Emily Higgins for her leadership in spearheading this initiative and bringing people together to share experiences, challenge assumptions and identify practical solutions. The roundtable reinforced that inclusion requires employers, governments, advocates and communities to work together to create pathways to employment, participation and independence, and I really want to stress that last point: independence. The future belongs to young people who are empowered to pursue their goals with confidence. Our job is to ensure every person has that opportunity by giving them a pathway to be able to secure employment, to be able to go on and live an independent life and to be able to go on and live their best life.”
“I also want to acknowledge the important work that's being done by local residents to ensure young Australians with a disability have a pathway to employment. Every young person deserves the chance to participate, contribute and thrive within their community. Recently, we had a Bayside young persons with disabilities roundtable hosted in the Goldstein office that brought together the Bayside City Council and local employers—such as the All Things Equal cafe, AusPV, Sports Conscious, Brighton Paper, Joe Tea, Buxton Brighton, MATCH and DFP Recruitment—along with the disability advocates and community organisations, and Sandy Village Traders Association, to focus on one question: how do we remove barriers and expand opportunity for young Australians with a disability to improve employment opportunities?”
“Other significant, notable contributors have been Dr Dov Degen OAM for service to medicine and mental health support, Stephen Laffan OAM for service to the community through voluntary roles with sporting associations, Prudence Molnar OAM for service to the community, Andrew Mullett OAM for service to Aussie Rules football, David O'Brien OAM for service to the community through the not-for-profit sector, Barry Sneddon OAM for service to sports administration, Cornelis Van den Dungen OAM for service to motor sports and Rodney Watson OAM for service to secondary education and to the community. Each has made an enormous contribution to our community, and we want to thank them not just for the work they've done but for the work they continue to do.”
“The King's Birthday honours remind us of the incredible contributors in our community and the wonderful work that they do each year. Goldstein is the home of many recipients, including Associate Professor Miron Goldwasser AM for significant service to orthopaedic surgery and to clinical education and training; to Michael Kennedy AM for significant service to snow sport development and advancement in Australia; and Professor Andrew Stripp AM for significant service to medical administration.”
“They have been directly complicit in fuelling organised crime. They have been directly complicit in supporting the legislation that has created the situation that we are now facing as a country. They have been directly complicit—”
“We have had a complete overdose of denial and deceit by this government about the impacts of its policy arrangements and a complete unwillingness to actually address the root cause of the problem. I understand that Labor does not want to confront this problem, but Australians are living the consequences of the problem Labor caused: illegal activity, organised crime, violence and firebombing on our streets, in our strip shops. That has increased not just the cost to small businesses—although it has directly for those who are attracted to it—but the cost to all small businesses across the board, because what we've seen is an increase in insurance premiums directly off the back of the government stoking criminal conduct. I can't believe that, as we're debating this bill, some of the Labor members are saying how virtuous their actions are.”
“The Australian small businesses who they've targeted with a firebombing in their budget have now experienced firebombing in the literal sense—by the organised crime gangs that profit off illicit tobacco. A consequence of this trade is that there has been a decline in the pretty basic proposition of respect for the law. Again, I go back to the prohibition movement: we saw exactly the same thing then, back in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, when honest citizens were engaged in dishonest activity or illegal activity, and the law actually propagated a disrespect for the law. This government has been an active participant in creating disrespect for the law. That is a disastrous outcome for our community.”
“As I pointed out, illegal gangs tend not to pay tax and tend not to report their data to the Australian tax office. And, of course, we're continuing to live with the downstream consequences of the health impacts associated with what is likely to be a rising level of illicit tobacco consumption. I do appreciate that the government has finally woken up after fuelling this crisis—fuelling a situation where businesses are being firebombed, fuelling the very environment that has led to an otherwise lawfully consumed product becoming illicit to the benefit of organised criminal gangs. I acknowledge that they've finally woken up to the fact that even they can't go on pretending that there's nothing wrong here. Now, they're taking, frankly, pretty modest measures to say 'maybe we better stamp this stuff out'.”
“There are distribution networks available to those who are engaged in unlawful tobacco, and now they're shifting over to illicit alcohol on the same basis—that the excise is providing such a premium that they can displace lawful products. What a shock: when there's an expansion in the volume of illegal products, organised crime gangs don't report their data to the ATO. So what we have is a government that's still indulging in the idea that somehow it's seeing cigarette rates and consumption rates decline and that the Australian community is going to be healthier as a consequence. The drunken denial that we continue to see from this government, not just drunken denial to its broken promises in the budget but drunken denial and deceit in its response to illicit tobacco, is one that is now costing the taxpayer billions in forgone revenue.”
“Now, we're seeing the firebombing of small businesses across the country. We're seeing it in the Goldstein electorate too. There have been firebombings, I understand, in Moorabbin. Lawful businesses that have not been involved in the illegal tobacco trade have also been targeted in Sandringham, all because we have seen a profiteering motive that government has actively stoked. As a consequence, the profits have been so great that they have led to the attraction of organised crime gangs from overseas and our own country to profiteer. It's even worse than that. We've gone from a problem of just illegal tobacco to now shifting towards illicit alcohol. This is one of the things that's emerging very strongly in the state of Victoria.”
“That is exactly what has happened here. Thank you, Nicola Roxon. Thank you to the ministers who have decided to firebomb small businesses across this country under poor policy framing. What we have had is a replication of the problems of prohibition in Australia at every level—problems where the federal government introduced legislation and then the states couldn't be bothered or failed to enforce it, creating premiums for illegal activity, which have been harvested by organised crime and profiteering. We have had consistent failure of enforcement at every level—state and federal levels—thinking that they can somehow decide what goes on in the hearts of men. What we've now seen, of course, are turf wars. Exactly the same thing occurred in prohibition, where people died.”
“One of my great political heroes is a woman by the name of Pauline Sabin, and I suspect nobody else in this chamber has heard about her. Pauline Sabin was a woman who was part of the saloon movement that tried to introduce prohibition in the United States. She supported it because she wanted to stop the issues of domestic violence, which were particularly targeted towards women at the time from drunken men coming home from saloons. She then watched the prohibition movement not only lead to a flurry of illegal product but turn lawful citizens into unlawful actors. People actively engaged in subversion of the law at every level just to be able to go about their daily lives and consume a product. At the time, what were called the progressives, by the way—we need to be clear—thought that they knew how to live people's lives better.”
“That fell on deaf ears inside this Labor government and earlier Labor governments. None of this is a surprise. None of this is a shock. It is a direct and deliberate consequence of the policy design of the Albanese government, the Gillard government and the Rudd government. Think about it. You have a situation where you take a lawful product, you put it into plain packaging akin to other illegal products which already thrive within organised criminal gangs and then you increase the tax rates to the point where it becomes an attractive proposition for organised crime gangs to enter into the market and to be able to enjoy outrageous proceeds off the back of otherwise lawful citizens. We've seen this in human history.”
“I want to start by saying that we support this legislation and the spirit in which it's achieved, but I also want to reflect on just how inadequate it truly is. Let's look at the reality. Under this government, there has been a thriving illicit tobacco market that has fed organised crime across Australia, and nowhere has it been more acute than in my home state of Victoria. Frankly, it's an absolute national disgrace that this crisis has allowed itself to get to this point. We have seen Australian small businesses firebombed by criminal gangs as part of a turf war over an illicit product, and this didn't come out of nowhere. Australians were consistently warned about the consequences of a reckless approach to tobacco regulation by so many people, including academics and myself.”
“Of course, the health minister is quietly doing the numbers for his leadership tilt, but the government is caught out being drunk on their denial and drunk on their deceit. Don't worry. There is hope. A coalition government will scrap these taxes that attack the aspiration of Australians and undermine Australians that want to get ahead. We will make sure that taxes are adjusted to pay back inflation. We will increase the instant asset write-off to $50,000 and make it permanent. We are consulting on a small business act to protect Australian self-starters from Labor's aggressive tax attacks. Have your say by going to www.standwithsmall.org.”
“Every day, Australian self-starters wake up to build a better future and a better small business for themselves and their communities. We should want them to get ahead, and we should want a government that backs Australians who back themselves. But the Albanese government has declared war on Australia's small-business community. Let's face it: we already have record-low consumer confidence. We have record-low small-business confidence. We also have record small-business insolvencies. The only solution from the Albanese government is to chuck higher taxes on top. Fifty times over they said they wouldn't be introduced because the Prime Minister was a man of his word and said, 'I will lead a government that keeps its promises.' We know full well that isn't the case, and Australians are living it. The government is scrambling.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Today the Albanese Labor government voted 11 times against lower taxes. By voting against the coalition's tax-back guarantee, Labor is locking in higher taxes for Australian workers year after year. Will the Prime Minister be up-front with Australians and admit that his government voted to steal hundreds of billions of dollars in extra taxes from hardworking Australians?”
“'How much will Australians give to the government that they can get back under new tax measures?' They can't answer that. 'Does the budget say it will build more or less homes?' We know the answer to that—35,000 fewer. 'What about the direction of rents?' They're going up. (Time expired)”
“'Minister, has the government modelled how quickly the tax cuts that you're offering in this budget will be overtaken by receipts from inflation, and, if so, when will it be overtaken?' We asked that yesterday. Did we get an answer? No. Zip. Zero. 'Minister, can the government guarantee that, under the budget, a worker on the median wage will be better off in real terms next financial year, once you factor in inflation?' They couldn't answer that one either. We know the reason why. It's because Australian workers won't be better off. 'Minister, what is the total value of budget expenditure?' That's the other big problem we've got. They just keep accruing more and more on the off-budget expenditure side, or the shadow budget.”
“There have been record small business insolvencies—that's jobs, that's aspiration, that's hope and, of course, that's employment. Every time somebody wants to work hard to get ahead, under the Albanese government the answer is to punch down at them and to tax them. Even worse than that, they don't want them to succeed. Since the budget, we've had examples of small businesses that are concerned about the impact these tax changes are going to have on them in the future, and the Treasurer wants them to fail so that they fall short. What a despicable act from a government—to want the citizens of their own country to fail at commerce, to want them not to be fully successful or able realise their ambitions and their dreams. That's what makes me so angry. They won't even answer basic questions.”
“I think it's actually because they don't understand their budget, and I think we're more seeing and more evidence of that. The slippery treasurer—I could come up with a different word, but I'll just leave it at 'treasurer'—might think he can dart his way in and dart his way out, but eventually economic reality will catch up with him. You need to answer basic questions, Treasurer, because what you spin isn't what Australians are living. I know the Prime Minister goes into question time—and the Treasurer does the same—and says that Australians have never had it so good under the Albanese government, but the reality is something quite different. We've had a three per cent decline in real wages since the start of the Albanese government.”
“He's unable to tie his shoelaces or even add one and one. When I die, he will not be capable of handling an inheritance or managing the challenges of siblings. Therefore we established a discretionary trust to administer his share equitably and to make sure that he was able to live a dignified life, despite his brain injury.' What's the Albanese government's solution to that, Member for Mitchell? The answer is to tax it. Chuck a minimum 30 per cent tax on people with a disability. When we used similar examples in the House of Representatives and asked the Prime Minister whether he was going to impose taxes on people with a disability, he dismissed it as though there were no problem at all; he even denied that it was going to happen. This government can't answer basic questions about its budget.”