E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 20 APRIL 2026
Topics: MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT; CAPITAL GAINS TAX.
NATALIE BARR: For their take, let's bring in Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce. Good morning to you. Tanya, I don't know. Every day feels like either a new setback or a bit of progress. How does this turmoil benefit anyone? Where do you think we are with this?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Well, I don't think it does benefit anyone. And we've seen real impacts on civilians in Iran and around the Middle East, which of course, we're concerned about. And although Australia is not formally a party to this conflict, Australians are paying a very heavy price for it. You certainly see the price at the petrol station, but you also see it flowing through to goods and services across the economy. So, we absolutely want to see peace as soon as possible, we want to see de-escalation, and we want to see the situation resolved.
BARR: Yeah. And Barnaby, it's more than people cancelling their holidays because they're too scared to fly, maybe, and things going up, isn't it? It's general confidence, business confidence, which spreads far and wide, obviously to regional areas, maybe more than most. Do you have faith the President knows what he's doing here?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well, it doesn't really matter. We've got to deal with the cards that have been dealt with us. And, yeah, it does show the world in a febrile nature and we're living in a different world now. And it shows that, as we've always known, there's no such thing as a short war. They just go on and this one's going on. So, what can we take from it? We can take from it this. We've got to prepare ourselves better in the future. We were not prepared for this. And if something like this happens again, when it concludes, and we all hope and pray that it does, as soon as possible, we have got to be vastly better prepared than we were this time, because this is - in some areas, this is a train wreck and it's getting worse economically.
BARR: Tanya, what's your message to families who are pretty stressed by all this now?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, the message is the government is doing everything possible to protect them from the impacts of this. We've halved the fuel excise, we've got rid of the heavy vehicle road user charge, we've released 20 per cent of our stock. So, we've actually got more petrol on hand today than when this conflict started, because the Prime Minister has been travelling in our region securing those supplies, and not just of fuel, but also vital inputs like fertiliser for our agricultural sector. This is not a conflict of our choosing, but our government is absolutely protecting Australians from the impacts of it. And we also of course just last week announced a very substantial increase in our defence budget. What we were left by the previous Coalition government was a defence system based on a bunch of press releases about things that they were going to do sometime in the future that they hadn't put money into the budget for.
JOYCE: The history channel.
BARR: Okay, let's move on. I think a lot of our viewers, the Treasurer is reportedly set to shake up the capital gains tax in the May budget by reversing the system to its old format. That was before the current 50 per cent discount that was introduced back in 1999. Now the original CGT system used indexation adjusting asset values for inflation so to tax applied only to a property's real increase in value. Tanya, any change to the capital gains tax discount, will that be grandfathered? So, if you have an investment property, will it apply to that property now or will it just be properties going forward?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well Nat, we're not going to speculate about what might or might not be in the budget in a few weeks’ time. We'll just have to wait for the budget. But I can tell you what we've said about intergenerational equality and making sure that young Australians have that Australian dream of home ownership available to them. We've seen almost 300,000 people, for example, use the benefit of our 5 per cent deposit scheme to get into a home of their own. The majority of those people wouldn't be in a home of their own today if it wasn't for the action that our government is taking to help Australians with home ownership. We know that young Australians, just like their parents and grandparents before them, want to make that investment in their future.
BARR: Ok, so would you like to see the capital gains tax discount go, Tanya?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not going to speculate on anything related to the budget. I'm telling you that -
BARR: Okay, forget the budget. You know, you're talking about capital. You know how hard it is to get into the market. Is that something you think is a bit old fashioned?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I am of course, like every parent, concerned that her own children will be able to own a home of their own one day. And what I want to see is more homes built in Australia. And I want to make sure that these great programs like the 5 per cent first home deposit are available to more people. We're also, for example, just today, announcing extra investment in manufactured wood products because we know that timber is such an important input into the cost of housing. We're investing in that. We're, we're making sure that we've got the tradies to build the homes. We're training more Australian apprentices than ever before. About 700,000 people have taken up our free TAFE offer because we know we need more tradies here. On every front, we're working to make housing more available and more affordable for Australians.
BARR: Which is, it's just a slow burn, isn't it, that's the unfortunate thing. Barnaby, what's your take on the capital gains tax discount which affects a lot of people sitting at home. You don't have to be too wealthy to have bought a house years ago. It's sitting there and you might lose the discount.
JOYCE: Well, between the History Channel of, you know, 'we didn't create this, it was the previous government' and a litany of talking points, the one thing you didn't get in that previous answer was whether they're going to bring in a capital gains tax. So, I think you're about to get yourself a capital gains tax because they don't know how to pay for all the things that they're dishing out.
BARR: Would you support that, Barnaby?
JOYCE: I would not support a change in the capital gains tax at all. Because a lot of people have premised how they invest on, on the basis of the capital gains tax. And if you start going changing things, you're basically reaching into other people's pockets to pay for your discount on this and free this and free something else. You gotta pay for it in the end. And this is where the rubber hits the road. It sounds like from what Tanya said, you're about to get walloped with a new big new tax. So, it's big new capital gains tax for all the people.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That’s really not what I said.
JOYCE: Well then say it’s not going to happen, Tanya. Can you?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Barnaby, you know that we never speculate about the budget weeks out from the budget. It's absolutely consistent.
JOYCE: Why not? So, it's on the cards.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And you never did it when you were the Deputy Prime Minister.
JOYCE: It's on the cards, folks. There you go, you're about to get it.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's just another scare campaign from One Nation.
JOYCE: Oh, my gosh. Then just say no.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Just another One Nation scare campaign.
JOYCE: Just say no. Just say no. two letters, one syllable.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We don't talk about the budget weeks out from the budget.
JOYCE: No, we're not going to bring in--
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Another One Nation scare campaign is what I'll say.
BARR: Okay well, we'll see, won't we? May 12.
JOYCE: Here we go. Watch out.
BARR: Thank you very much.
ENDS
