E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS
THURSDAY, 28 MAY 2026
Topics: Budget; Married at first sight
LAURA JAYES: Jim Chalmers is just three minutes away from introducing his legislation, some of the budget bills into Parliament this morning. Joining me now is the Social Services Minister, Tanya Plibersek. Tanya, thanks so much for your time. First of all, you know we've heard calls from a lot of different interest groups, not only businesses big and small, but now a couple of Labor premiers saying look, there needs to be some serious exemptions when it comes to CGT. So, what's going on this morning? The government is pushing through, is it crash or crash through here?
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, not at all. And Laura, I think it's important to remember that from Budget night the Treasurer said of course we will consult on the details of these tax changes. But the legislation that he's introducing today is really important.
It's a tax cut for 13 million Australians, the Working Australian Tax Offset tax cut for 13 million Australians. And that goes hand in hand with that thousand dollars instant write off as well, where people won't have to keep their receipts, they'll just be able to get a $1,000 tax deduction each year.
It's also the changes to the way capital gains tax is calculated. The discount at the moment, which is the flat 50% is not being removed entirely. It's being replaced with a capital gains tax discount that's based on inflation. So, that's an important change as well. And the other change is the negative gearing change that says if you're currently negatively gearing a property, for example, no change to you. If you're going to negatively gear a property in the future, it has to be a new build.
The legislation is being introduced today, but we expect as with every budget, there'll be more than one tax bill, there'll be a range of tax bills, there's always a number of tax law amendment bills, as you know. And so where there is fine tuning to be done as the Treasurer said from the beginning those consultations are ongoing and they'll appear in subsequent tax law amendment bills.
JAYES: Okay. But the government is essentially saying to the general public, just trust us, we'll get this right where, you know, you didn't seek a mandate for these changes as surprises to everyone. But I want to talk about the tax cuts that you have in this package of bills as well, because this looks like base wedge politics here. If these tax cuts are so important, why tie them to aspects of the budget you know, are controversial, not just from the, the opposition, but the Greens too, who hold the balance of power in the Senate?
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Well because, Laura, to pay for tax cuts, you have to make changes in other parts of the tax system. So, you can't go into Parliament and say, yes, we support all of the spending measures, but we don't support any of the things that raise revenue over time. I mean, our tax package is broadly revenue neutral over the forward estimates because in some areas, tax will be collected more fairly where it's been avoided in the past and in other areas, so, for 13 million working Australians, they'll get the Working Australian Tax Offset. They'll get the $1,000 instant write off. Well, you know, the reason it's part of a package is so that it can be broadly budget neutral. Our opponents are very quick to say, oh, the government wants to spend money, but they're not very quick to be prepared to vote for budget repair. Don't forget, in 10 years, they never delivered a surplus, despite saying they would deliver a surplus in their first year and every subsequent year, they never delivered one. It's only Labor that is able to be responsible when it comes to budget repair.
JAYES: Budgets are littered with good intentions. I also remember the time that Wayne Swan stood up and declared the three surpluses he delivered tonight and then never delivered them. So, you know, it comes back to this philosophy.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: We had a thing called the global financial crisis.
JAYES: Sure.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah sure it was a big deal.
JAYES: Yeah, sure, it's COVID as well. And you know, point to that as being the biggest spending era of the previous government. I mean, this is all politics.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Yeah, but the previous government said they would deliver a surplus in their first year. That's a long time before COVID hit. And they said they’d deliver a surplus every year after that. They never delivered a single surplus. And in fact, in the budgets just before they were kicked out of office, they were spending like drunken sailors. And many people would tell you one of the reasons that we had that very high inflation rate over 6% as they were leaving office was because of their lack of budget restraint. When it comes to small business, this budget has $3.5 billion dollars of tax cuts for small business and we have an opposition that, that shouts us down when we raise that in question time. They don't want to talk about the $3.5 billion of assistance for business in this budget. They don't want people to know about it.
JAYES: Well, I'm not sure, I'm not sure whether they don't want people to know about it. But what I feel, we spoke about this last week as well and I think when I talk to Labor MPs and Ministers, you also want to ignore that some sections of the community, and I think growing sections of the community are really worried and upset about these CGT changes. You got Roger Cook, the mining sector, big business, small business. You have Chris Minns in NSW. You know these aren't oppositional figures per se. You've just said that there will be some fine tuning around this. I think not a small section of the general public is saying we want more than fine tuning. So, what is it? Significant carve outs?
MINISTER PLIBESEK: First of all, Laura, 90% of small businesses are completely unaffected by these changes and you wouldn't know that from the sort of social media that the Liberals are doing on this.
JAYES: What do you mean by 90%? Is that direct, is that direct changes? Because is that taking into account future investment, other share schemes? I mean, that's a hard figure.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Well, I think that's part of the problem with the misinformation that's going on with this budget. You've got people putting out memes that they admit are deliberately misleading and they say we're doing it for attention. And then you get Liberal Party figures like the Shadow Treasurer picking this up and pretending that it's somehow real. We've got the $20,000 instant asset write off made permanent in this budget. We've got two year loss carryback in this budget for businesses. We've got, we've got loss deductibility. We've got a whole range of measures for businesses here that assist businesses and rather than people understanding or the Liberals being prepared to talk about that, they want to talk about a small minority of businesses. There's plenty of people in the business community who are saying, you know, have a Bex and a good lie down, have a look at the detail, understand this.
JAYES: Who are they? They're a little shy.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Daniel Petre literally said have a Bex and a good lie down because the idea that this is going to somehow undermine innovation or investment is not right. And I go back to the fact Laura, that from budget night the Treasurer has been saying yes, of course we're happy to talk to people about implementation issues here. That is absolutely standard practice after any budget you make the announcement, you say this is where we're going, let's talk about the implementation impacts on you. Absolutely standard practice. That's what we're doing in this budget as we have in every budget.
But the very clear aim here is to make the economy more fit for purpose, not suck up investment in already constructed housing rather to support innovation, to support venture capital. There's measures in there to make venture capital investment more attractive as well. This is a great budget for business and instead of getting caught up in the misinformation, I think it's very important to look at the legislation as it's introduced and as, as Daniel Petre said, have a Bex and a good lie down.
JAYES: Okay, sure. I would say confidence is a massive factor when it comes to investment and I think this has in these early stages, to say the very least put a dampener on confidence across the board. You see it in the housing market, you see it in businesses talking about making their next move.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Laura. In fact, if you listen to Harry Triguboff, another person who knows a bit about what he's talking about, he'll tell you that in fact there's much more interest in new builds. That's exactly what we want in our housing market?
JAYES: From first home buyers I wonder though?
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Yeah, well, two things Laura. First, home buyers are succeeding at auctions where they previously would have failed because they would have been competing with someone who is getting a tax subsidy to compete with them to buy a property.
JAYES: I get that but in the last two weeks it doesn’t look like that happened because you look at the auction clearance rates across the board and they are well down some 30% in some areas.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: The new build becomes much more attractive to people who do want to negatively gear in the future. And I think you know, as I say, Harry Triguboff is someone who knows what he's talking about. If he is pointing to increased interest in new build, well from my point of view that's a great thing. We need more housing in this country. We want to see more interest in new builds. We want to see young first home buyers not having to compete with cashed up investors who get a taxpayer funded subsidy to compete in the housing market on those established properties. It's a win win.
JAYES: Tanya, I think your mic's just fallen down. You know how to fix that so if you could get. I just want to ask you one last question here. Thank you, on the run.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: That's what happens when I get too excited.
JAYES: Yeah, exactly. Let me just ask you a really important question about MAFS. This is Married at First Sight, you see some of the claims that have been made from overseas versions of the show in the UK, but there's also some concerns about it here in terms of not only the bullying, the misogyny that we've spoken about in the past. What do you think about these latest claims and the fact that this show is watched by millions?
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Well, I was very disturbed to read the reports this morning that included allegations that someone had been filmed without her knowledge in the shower. Obviously, no one should experience such a thing in their workplace and the set is a workplace for the people who are being filmed. I believe that's being investigated by SafeWork NSW. So, I'm not going to comment on individual allegations other than to say in the first place, everybody deserves a safe workplace. In the second instance, I'd say, as we've said before, Laura, so many people watch this show, so many kids watch it, it's such a great opportunity to platform what healthy relationships look like. And I think in the past where you've seen people talking about how they want a submissive wife or, in one instance putting their fist through a wall during an argument, I think that is, that is showing exactly the sort of behaviour that we want discourage. Anything that normalises or platforms that sort of behaviour, I think is really troubling.
JAYES: Tanya, thanks so much. We'll let you get to the chamber. We'll see you soon.
MINISTER PLIBESEK: Always a pleasure. Thanks.
ENDS
