KIERAN GILBERT:
The tax changes will once again feature prominently this week as Parliament sits again and joining me to discuss that and the other issues of the day, the Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer. Kelly O’Dwyer thanks for your time. The Education Minister Simon Birmingham telling us this morning that there will be a statement before the Budget. What sort of timeline can we can we expect on that – in terms of the tax plan?
MINISTER O’DWYER:
As Simon has said and the Prime Minister has said, we very clearly will have our tax plan announced before the Budget but obviously you need to work through the detail very carefully and in a very considered manner before you actually release your policy. We’re going through the full Cabinet process in order to be able to ensure that the tax policy that we bring to the Australian people will be in their best interests – it will help to ensure that we have a competitive Australia that will encourage people to invest, encourage people to save and the tax policy that will be fair. We know that you need to do that work in order to have a proper plan…
GILBERT:
Do you accept that you’ve got to convince a lot of your own colleagues though as well? There’s quite a large group worried about any change to negative gearing, are you worried about this descent which continues?
MINISTER O’DWYER:
No, I’m not worried at all. It is entirely proper for a political party to have robust discussions about important tax policy. We didn’t see that with the Labor policy, they decided to rush out a very reckless policy around negative gearing, they didn’t have long discussions about it, they didn’t examine it in detail and they have rushed to a failure. That is why their policy will have such a damaging impact on the Australian economy. They are going to have a third of all investors taken out of the market for established property from the first of July 2017. Now that’s going to have a big impact on property prices for established property, driving those prices down…
GILBERT:
And are you modelling that at the moment because Labor hasn’t modelled it, Labor hasn’t done modelling. Is the Government now modelling Labor’s proposal?
MINISTER O’DWYER:
Labor have been very tricky, on the one hand they claimed that they had done all sorts of modelling, it had to admit that they had done no modelling what-so-ever on their plan which will have such a significant impact on the economy. We’re carefully considering our plan and our tax policies, we know the impact that the Labor plan will have on all of those people in Australia who negatively gear there’s about 1.3 million Australians who negatively gear and of those Australians who negatively gear, two thirds of those have taxable incomes of $80,000 or less. But it won’t just impact them.
GILBERT:
Are you now modelling their plans so you know that a substantial critique rather than just saying we know that it will make people poorer are you doing the numbers on their plan?
MINISTER O’DWYER:
We examine all tax policy very carefully Kieran, we examine it very carefully. But it actually doesn’t take too much for people to understand the impact of Labor’s policy because it is pretty clear. What they’re saying is that they’re going to get rid of negative gearing for all but new properties. So we will see when their plan comes into effect from the first of July 2017, for those first home buyers who might be looking to purchase new properties we’re going to be seeing investors crowded into that market which will have the impact of potentially pushing up prices on new property in the short term but for established property, you’re taking those investors out of the market which will have the impact of actually pushing down prices.
GILBERT:
Alright Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer thank you very much for your time. Busy morning on Sky news thanks for making some time. Appreciate it.
MINISTER O’DWYER:
Great pleasure.