E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
THE TODAY SHOW
FRIDAY, 12 APRIL 2019
SUBJECT/S: 2019 Election; Labor’s Fair Go Action plan;
DEBORAH KNIGHT, HOST: Now, the man who wants the top job, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, is also in the Emerald City. He joins us now from the Sydney Markets at Homebush. Bill Shorten, good morning to you. You kicked off your pitch to voters yesterday in enemy territory, in the safe Liberal seat of Deakin. You must be very confident that you've got this election in the can?
BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: No, Deb. It's great to be on your show this morning. As for where I campaign, I campaign over all of Australia because I think Australians are sick of politics as usual. I don't view Australia as Liberal or Labor, I just view it as Australia and we have all got the same challenges. Everything is going up except your wages. We have had six years of massive instability in the Government and people just want to see proper investment in their kids' education. Making sure that when you're sick it's your Medicare card, not your credit card that determines your level of health. They want action on climate change. So, we are about cost of living and that's why I started in a suburban backyard because that's where Australia is. It's the families around the dinner table wondering what the future is going to hold and how Labor can help them look after their family and their health.
KNIGHT: Well, the bookies are the best bet of how things are going to play out and your odds of winning are better than you'll get with Winx at the track tomorrow.
SHORTEN: Yeah well, there is a way to go, things close up. But what I'm going to do is focus on the people. I happened to catch the tail end of the other fellow's interview and it's all pretty negative, and I suppose if you've run out of ideas that's where you go. We have got a positive plan for the future of Australia. I think Australia is over the fact that we can't take action on climate change and that our energy prices have gone up. They want to hear what we are going to do to help get wages moving. They want to know we can properly fund our hospitals and our schools. And today, I've been at the market here at Flemington. This is a fantastic market. It is the centre of the cut-flower industry in Australia, Mother's Day is coming up, lots of growers and I've also been over to the growers shed with the fruit and veggies - a lot of small businesses here and I think they were interested to hear our ideas to help small business as opposed to big business.
JOURNALIST: Well, you are promising to make life easier for Australians, but new treasury costings which the Government has released show you'll hit households with $387 billion in extra taxes over the next decade. Do you really think voters will welcome paying $5,400 a year more in taxes under Labor than the Coalition? It is a potent argument.
SHORTEN: The Liberals are lying about tax. I don't want to talk too much about it. That's just a bucket of lies. Whenever Labor closes a tax loophole the Liberals call it a tax increase. Whenever we stop unsustainable subsidies –
JOURNALIST: Do you deny that these costings from Treasury are correct?
SHORTEN: They are not correct. There you go, short answer too.
JOURNALIST: So no validity at all, you won't be taxing more -
SHORTEN: Oh no. Listen, you and I know that, and more importantly Australians know, this is a Government who is going to run on fear and negativity. For me it's a choice. Do we want to spend tax subsidies giving property investors their tenth investment property or pay accountants a million dollars to minimise your tax and then let the very rich claim their payment they made to the accountant as well as minimising their tax, or do we want to spend the money on making sure that when you are in the fight of your life with the big C, cancer, that we help you with your out of pocket costs? It's a question of priorities. This government want to give away our taxes to the top end of town. We want to see taxes spent on education and hospitals. At the end of the day, Deb, we can over-complicate politics. It doesn't matter if you are in the market here, or on the farms where the produce is being grown or in the middle of our big cities, the mums and dads wondering what to do with their kids on school holidays, it's the same thing. It's about family and it’s about health. If your family is ok, and your health is ok then everything else is a possibility. So we are prioritising cost of living, health and education, lower energy bills and we are going to go forward on that, not tax cuts for the very well off.
JOURNALIST: A lot of retirees though, many of them who are on modest nest eggs are not millionaires, they’re worried about your changes to the franking credits. A lot of people who have got investment properties, a lot of them are not millionaires, are confused and concerned about your crack-down on negative gearing and capital gains tax. Will you be reviewing any of these policies, particularly the property ones in light of the fact we have seen the housing market really go downhill since you released that policy?
SHORTEN: Let's go to the heart of the matter, I'll try and answer it as quickly as the time will permit. But on property, let's not be confused. If you invest, if you negatively gear currently under the existing rules, for your investment that you've already made, it won't change. So actually no-one who is negatively gearing is affected. But going forward, we can't keep handing away billions of dollars to fortunate property investors, many of who are buying their fifth or tenth property when our schools and our hospitals are not properly funded, when we have got waiting lists for basic surgery, lifesaving surgery. So it's not retrospective the changes, and also going forward, you'll still be able to negatively gear for new housing. In terms of the rest of the propositions, I'll put it as simply as this: our tax system is making it harder for our young ones, our millennials, the younger people to be able to even buy their first home. We have got to start creating a level playing field. I want to keep alive the dream of owning your first home, not being able to property invest in your tenth home.
KNIGHT: Alright, Bill Shorten, we thank you for your time this morning. There's five weeks of this. We look forward to chatting to you during the course of the campaign. Thanks again.
SHORTEN: Cheerio, bye-bye.
