SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
MINISTER FINANCE
MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
MINISTER FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON BRIEFING
TUESDAY, 25 MARCH 2025

SUBJECTS: Federal Budget; cost-of-living; tax system; US-Australia relations; Dutton’s return to office order.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Minister, welcome to Afternoon Briefing.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Thanks for having me on.

KARVELAS: The Budget will be delivered in a couple of hours. The Treasurer tells us that the idea behind this Budget is repair, relief and reform. We’ve heard a bit about repair from you, we’ve heard a bit about relief. Where’s the reform coming from?

GALLAGHER: Well, you'll need to wait until this evening to get the Budget. Obviously, I'm not going to steal Dr Chalmers’ thunder by coming a bit early. But the picture of the Budget really builds on all of those three themes, and it builds upon the budgets we've handed down before. So, it's really a work in progress where we're chipping away, making investments, repairing the Budget where we can, lowering debt, and making sure we can provide that cost-of-living relief to people while they're doing it tough. It tries to do a number of things, PK. Budgets always do that. There are hundreds, if not thousands of decisions, that all interrelate to each other.

KARVELAS: This is a very untraditional budget. I've covered – I don't think it's right to count them right now, but many budgets. Do you concede that this is essentially an election manifesto, Minister, rather than a traditional budget?

GALLAGHER: Well, I think it's a continuation of the work we started since coming to government in 2022, and you'll see that. So, things like, an example there is when we tripled the bulk billing incentive, and now we're in this budget extending that to everybody. So, you can see those pieces fitting together. Yes, we're on the eve of an election. So, this budget comes at a highly political time. I accept that. And budgets are always political in the sense that they are government's priorities that map out where we've been and where we're going, and this budget does that.

KARVELAS: One of the issues, which I think your side of politics has conceded, is just how long we are forecasted in deficit for. Are you comfortable with a decade of deficit?

GALLAGHER: Well, I think my job is to really work out how you repair the Budget over time and is to be honest and upfront with people that you can't just make decisions that flip that switch when you've got some of the pressures we've got. Because doing that would mean that people would experience hardship or harm. You wouldn't be able to fund Medicare, you wouldn't be able to provide support through income payments and things like that. And so, I think part of my job is to continue to find savings, we’ve found about $95 billion during this term of government. But it's to obviously continue to work away and chip away to make sure that you're returning the Budget to balance over time but doing that in a way that doesn't hurt households.

KARVELAS: And do you think a decade is the realistic timeframe? Or would you, if you become Finance Minister again, would you seek to accelerate that timeframe?

GALLAGHER: I think it's important to get the Budget back into balance over time, and it's subject to decisions that need to be made in the future. But I think you can look at our record, which is we have found $95 billion worth of savings. The last budget before the last election found precisely zero. So, I think we've put – our record matches the approach that we would take going forward, which is, yeah, you've got to find savings. You've got to make every taxpayer dollar stretch as far as it can go, but at the same time, make sure you're funding the services that people rely on.

KARVELAS: There is a big discussion about what tax reform might look like for our country. I know what you've already done in government. You've obviously redistributed the stage three tax cuts, and there's been some multinational tax reform. I'm going to say these things before you do, Minister –

GALLAGHER: Taking away my answer.

KARVELAS: I am, but helping you out. Will you take – and I know you’re not going to make all your announcements now, but just at a sort of macro level – will you take tax reform to the next election and seek a mandate for it? Or is it something you think should happen in the next term, through a conversation with the public over the next term?

GALLAGHER: Well, I think there's always lots of discussions about tax and there's a lot of opinions about it. And we get it probably speeds up and becomes a bit more intense around budget time every year. I think tax reform is hard work, and we've got measures in the Senate right now that we can't get through. We have twenty-five votes in the Senate. It’s a chamber of seventy-six. And we've got a very modest change to superannuation that's stuck there, because we can't get a majority at the moment. And so, I think we need to be realistic about that as well. We'll always look at how you balance the Budget, how you make sure you can invest in services, look at how your revenue is coming together. But I think the tax debate we have in this country is pretty frank and healthy at the moment. We get a lot of free advice about that.

KARVELAS: And some of that free advice might be terrible, but some is reasonable, and it's about the intergenerational challenge that we're having between generations, young people increasingly saying they're feeling pretty bleak about their future given the trouble you're having over, as you describe it, a small measure, doesn't that mean you need to take things to an election to get a mandate given when you've done it outside of that mandate, like the superannuation change, you’ve struggled?

GALLAGHER: Well, that's what we'll be doing with the superannuation change. And we did, when we put it in, we made it clear that it would come into effect after the next election. So, in a sense, we're doing exactly that. But even the changes to PRRT, to bring that revenue forward from projects, that was hard work to get through the Senate. So, I think my view is, we have to be realistic with the parliament that the people of Australia have elected and tax reform is difficult.

KARVELAS: Now, you know that a budget is all about the next day headlines, so to speak, or the next evening ones given we live in a digital world. Are we just going to have headlines later tonight, after 7:30 PM, after the Treasurer is on his feet delivering this in the Parliament, which are about debt and deficit? Or is there more and hope that you're going to be providing that perhaps we haven't anticipated?

GALLAGHER: Well, you’ll have to –

KARVELAS: There's been a lot of low expectations about this budget. I'm just getting a sense if there's something that perhaps our viewers, who are watching this before it's officially declared, should be hopeful for?

GALLAGHER: Well, I unfortunately don't get to write the headlines, because I probably would write them a bit differently than you and your colleagues do, PK. But I think what they'll see is a budget that's been put together in pretty uncertain times, a lot of global uncertainty, pretty difficult times for households, so, cost-of-living – but a very clear path about the future we'd like for this country. And I think there is a level of optimism in that, including the fact that from a lot of the forecasts, that you'll see in the Budget, show that the difficult times we've been through – there is a view that we've turned the corner and that should bring hope and optimism to households as well.

KARVELAS: I just want to talk to you about the Trump tariffs that look like they're coming. The Opposition is saying that, if you look at the detail of what the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself is saying, we really aren't likely to be hit by the next round. Is that how you see it?

GALLAGHER: Well, we're continuing to engage with our US counterparts, obviously, and we'll do that through the diplomatic channels, rather than through media.

KARVELAS: But in terms of the view and the conclusion they've come to – which is that because we are, for instance, in a trade surplus, we are in a different situation with the US – that they would not impose tariffs on us. Do you see it that way?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, well, the Opposition have said a few things, haven't they? They were first out to blame and have a go politically, rather than work in the interests of Australia, and now they're kind of trying to find the right spot again. Our position hasn't changed. Working in the national interest, engaging with the US – it is a different administration. They're coming out with a different view on a whole range of matters. We'll always stand up for the national interest –

KARVELAS: Is it your sense that we will be hit by more tariffs?

GALLAGHER: All of our counterparts are actively engaged, PK. There isn't a thing that we could be doing that we are not doing in making sure we're standing up for Australian jobs, Australian industry and Australia's national interests. And we will continue to do that right up until the US make their decision.

KARVELAS: Now, the Independents are saying there's now preliminary legal advice on the salmon farming legislation that's been rushed through, saying it actually won't even pertain to this area because it's been rushed through so quickly. Could Labor have rushed through this legislation so fast for a political fix that you may have stuffed it up and it won't even work?

GALLAGHER: Well, that's not the advice the government has, so I'm not sure. I haven't seen what the Independents are saying. This has gone through our normal channels, through our normal drafting process and advice that government would get. And we think it is important to provide that certainty to good jobs in that part of Tasmania. I've been down there, I've spoken to workers –

KARVELAS: You don't think it's going to be subjected to legal challenge and it's a vulnerable piece of legislation?

GALLAGHER: Well, I think the legislation seeks to deal with that. And I think our commitment is to provide certainty for the people in that part of Tasmania, North West Tasmania. I mean, whole towns rely on industries like this. The school has – all children going into school are connected to this industry, and it means a lot. And we stand up for jobs. And the legislation we've got deals with that, and we'll be getting it through the Parliament this week.

KARVELAS: Final question, Minister, and I'm really stretching the friendship here and your generosity. You're also Minister for Women. You, in fact, have many hats. Will we see more in terms of women and work? I know you've been zeroing in on the Coalition and the idea of women working from home. Will there be something there in the Budget? It’s your area, so you can’t do, ‘the Treasurer won’t let me’.

GALLAGHER: Well, there'll be – you'll see, again, this is a big part of the building blocks from the first budget to this one. Every single budget, we've looked at what we can do to shift the dial on women's economic equality. We've got women in work at the highest rates, we've peaked on workforce participation, the gender pay gap at the lowest record, we've got women earning $217 per week more because of both big pay rises in those feminised industries like aged care, we’ve got a big women's health package, a number of measures in women's safety. And the approach that we'll take on working from home is one that reflects modern workplaces and how most jobs –

KARVELAS: Would you like to see more of it?

GALLAGHER: More working from home? Well, for me, it's about workplace flexibility, really. And any woman you speak to who has various responsibilities inside and outside of work, craves and values workplace flexibility. Some of that may be working from home, some of it may be the hours they work, some of it may be the place they work. All of that matters to women. And our Government reflects modern Australia. We're more than half women in the caucus, and we value these things, and that's why that'll be the position we take.

KARVELAS: And on Peter Dutton’s plan for more people to go back to work in the public service, because that's specifically what the policy is about, do you think you will lose women from the public service if that policy was enacted?

GALLAGHER: Yes, I do. And I was in a Centrelink office a couple of weeks ago in Northern Queensland, a call centre arrangement, where it was very clear, they said, if they didn't have flexible working arrangements and some capacity to work from home, they wouldn't be able to fill the jobs up there. So, without a doubt.

KARVELAS: So, have you quantified it?

GALLAGHER: I wouldn’t – it’s anecdotal, but I know that in all the surveys that are done about what you want in work for the APS, workplace flexibility is often ranked higher than pay. That's how important it is to people.

KARVELAS: Minister, thanks for joining us.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.

ENDS