Interview - Sunrise
MATT SHIRVINGTON: Well staying with the budget and the government defying fresh demands from the Business Council of Australia this morning, who say the tax changes must be limited to just real estate. It comes as WA Premier Roger Cook becomes the second Labor Premier to break ranks as well, calling for another carve-out, this time for the mining industry. For more, Jason Clare, Education Minister, joins us now live. Good morning to you, Minister. So, the criticism isn't just coming from the Coalition anymore, it's Labor Premiers. We heard Chris Minns last week as well. Now, Roger Cook. Real estate, sorry, real business owners as well, are saying, why are you rushing this through so quickly? Why do these changes need to happen immediately? Why are you trying to get it done?
JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Well, this will be done in stages. The first bill gets introduced today, but there'll be a series of bills to implement these reforms, as there always is with big tax reform. But the goal here is pretty simple, mate. We want to be able to cut income tax for millions of Aussies who work for a living, right across the country. We want to make it easier for young people to be able to buy a house. And these tax changes that we were just talking about a minute ago, are designed to help us do that. You know, I don't want us to be a country where young people are forced to rent for their entire life, where they've got no other option, where they can't afford to buy a house. But, mate, that's where it's going. When we were in our 20s, the average house was about four times the average salary. Now it's about 10. It's even higher in Sydney, where we live. You know, something's broken here, and we've got to fix it. And that's fundamentally what this is all about.
SHIRVINGTON: The big issue is we're getting so much feedback on our text line, and this isn't social media feedback, this is real people telling their real stories. Dave from Minto runs a carpentry business. He's actually owning a house, trying to pay it off at the moment, but also, too, he's questioning whether or not to spend more money on growing his own business because he's trying to stay under that $2 million threshold, or you're going to take more tax when he sells it. At the end of the day, he's saying the reason he can't stand at that threshold is that inflation is so high, he's paying more for fuel, more for insurance, more for materials. He then says, okay, well, maybe I invest in shares, nah can't do that anymore. Maybe I'll get an investment property, can't do that anymore. They feel hamstrung that they can't get ahead and try and create a nest egg outside of their primary residence that they can pass on to their future generation.
CLARE: Yeah, certainly. You know, the war on the other side of the world is kicking the guts out of us in terms of inflation, what we're trying to build here -
SHIRVINGTON: But it was going up anyway before.
CLARE: Oh, no. But it made it worse. You know, I think everybody would agree that what's happened overseas has made it worse. That's why the focus has been on making sure we've got enough petrol and diesel and aviation fuel here. And we've done a good job of that. What we're trying to do here is make the tax system fairer, whether you're investing in property, whether you're buying your first house, whether you're setting up a new business. We want more people like that bloke to set up new businesses. Absolutely. You know, small business is the engine of this economy. But we want to make the tax system simpler and we want to make it fairer. And above all else, we want to be able to reduce income tax, and we want to make it easy for Aussies to be able to buy their own house.
SHIRVINGTON: Can you increase the threshold of the turnover of the business? Because I think that's a big part of it, is that a lot of people that run a business worth $2 million turnover only have a two to three per cent of actual income of growth revenue. Can you actually increase it to ten million, for example?
CLARE: That's what those conversations are about right now. So, the bill today is about cutting income tax and about making it easier to buy a house, and it sets the foundations for these tax changes. But the second bill that we introduced will have all of that detail. And I think Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, has set it out that consultation is going on right now with small business about all of those details.
SHIRVINGTON: Important day for education, particularly public education. It is Public Education Day. The government has signed agreements with all states and territories to fund every public school fully and fairly. How will we see the difference? How will parents see the difference? How will students see the difference?
CLARE: Well, this is a big deal. I'm a product of public education and proud of it. And the fact is that public schools have never been properly funded by State governments or Federal governments until now, until those agreements that you just mentioned. In the Budget you can see the numbers. It's an extra $20 billion for public schools over the next 10 years. You ask me, how do you see the difference? This is not a blank cheque. This is money that's tied to reforms like catch-up tutoring. So, if your child is at school and a phonics test in year one or a numeracy test in year two says that, you know, they're behind, they need more help, then this funding helps to provide extra support. So, you get them out of a classroom of 30 into a small group of two or three or four, and they get intensive support over six months, which means that they can learn as much in a year, learn as much in six months as they'd normally learn in a year. So, they catch up, and if kids catch up when they're young, they're more likely to finish high school. So, it's real practical reforms and the funding helps to deliver that.
SHIRVINGTON: It's welcome to parents' ears, that's for sure. Thank you. Appreciate your time, Minister.
CLARE: Good on you, mate.