Can you put a number on it?

Yeah.

Well, what I can tell you is, is that we-- there was always some ambiguity about whether or not it would apply in the first place.

And so for some degree, we had to make a policy decision about whether or not that ambiguity should be managed by effectively saying to each trust, "You have to come forward one by one for assessment." And from our perspective, we just thought the worst possible scenario would be for a small business to have to hire an accountant, to then have to go and talk to the State's Revenue Office, to then only be told that they never had a bill in the first place.

And so that would have been a waste of everyone's time, small businesses' time, but also frankly, the revenue office's time.

So from our perspective, we didn't see this as an opportunity to make a windfall gain.

We do not want New South Wales small businesses thinking we're trying to make a windfall gain at their expense.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

Can you put a number on it?

Yeah, well, what I can tell you is, is that we-- there was always some ambiguity about whether or not it would apply in the first place.

And so to some degree, we had to make a policy decision about whether or not that ambiguity should be managed by effectively saying to each trust, "You have to come forward one by one for assessment." And from our perspective, we just thought the worst possible scenario would be for a small business to have to hire an accountant, to then have to go and talk to the state's revenue office, to then only be told that they never had a bill in the first place.

And so that would've been a waste of everyone's time, small businesses' time, but also frankly the revenue office's time.

So from our perspective, we didn't see this as an opportunity to make a windfall gain.

We do not want New South Wales small businesses thinking we're trying to make a windfall gain at their expense.

We wanna spare them all the administrative hassle of having, uh, to engage with the state's tax office on this respect.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

Is that gonna happen?

Well, uh, I, I made it clear that I'm not looking to make any windfall gain, uh, at the expense of New South Wales small businesses.

Uh, namely because New South Wales small businesses are already battling through some really tough conditions right now, and I wanna give them as much certainty as possible.

Uh, which is why I can, uh, announce tonight with you, Clinton, uh, that we are, if reelected, we will ensure that discretionary trusts that opt into the federal government's r- uh, rollover relief will not pay stamp duty.

Uh, we are gonna establish the Australia's first state level rollover relief scheme.

We'll make it clear that if a family trust, uh, or a discretionary trust y- decides to become, uh, what's called an elected... uh, excluded election trust-

Mm.

There are some states, like for example, in South Australia, that don't levy stamp duty on these type of transactions whatsoever, so it's not a relevant question there.

Is it a global rating system or just applies to us? It

is.

No, it's a global rating system.

So people basically and governments pay these agencies to independently have a look at their finances.

And then they then publish these reports that are used by bond investors in their global bond market, which is huge and it's a very big market.

And that's how people who, for want of a better term, lend money to governments decide whether or not the government is high-risk, medium-risk or or low risk, or in our case, very low risk.

And just to, so you listen to this from context, there's only 21 state governments in the world that have a AAA credit rating from Moody's.

And does that dictate how and where you can spend money, where you can borrow it from, how easy it is to borrow, those sorts of things?

Has there been a pivotal moment in your career, a promotion you were given or something that happened that really changed the trajectory of what you were doing?

Yeah.

As I was mentioning to you before, I always wanted to be in industrial relations.

And so when I went to university, I went to economics, went to law, but I got myself a job at the Transport Workers Union.

And I found myself in that job having an age way too young, carrying responsibilities way too big, which was great because that's the nature of the trade unions is you dive in and you sink or swim.

But when you're sitting around age 24, 25, responsible for People's wages and conditions and also how you bargain, you find yourself really having to make some really tough decisions.

And for me, the one moment that really brought home for me kind of why you do what you do and also the responsibility that you carry is when you take people out on strike.

Is house prices one of the things that needs to be dealt with? And how do you view the fall in house prices at the moment and housing in general?

Is that right?

Well, actually, the federal parliament can change the rules.

That's what happened in 2018.

It's not like in 2018 all the states and territories agreed.

In fact, what happened in 2018 was that this came as a bit of a surprise.

And the Morrison government put it through the Senate, despite the opposition.

I want to pay some credit here to Dominic Perrottet, who was treasurer at the time.

When do we get the final one, and can something be done as a result of what they're suggesting in relation to GST?

What, what do you think of those comments from Senator McKenzie?

McKenzie?I think that's an argument that is commonly heard in the United States to oppose all efforts of gun control, and I think that it's not, uh, uh, relevant to Australia, uh, because we have demonstrated since Port Arthur that if you reduce the number of guns in circulation, you reduce the prospects of gun violence.

I don't think that's particularly controversial.

Uh, what the New South Wales Government announced yesterday was the next step forward, uh, after the New South Wales Parliament reduced the number of legally available guns to licensed gun holders, uh, in the wake of the Bondi tragedy, uh, on Christmas Eve.

What...

In essence, if you are arguing, uh, the New South Wales Parliament's already decided that we are gonna be reducing the level of guns, and what the buyback is therefore is in place to ensure that peoples whose guns were legal last year but now are not in accordance with the law are compensated for that change.

The need to compensate gun owners who found themselves, uh, owning guns in excess of the allowable cap, I think is necessary.

Treasurer, just briefly and finally, on the Thriving Kids, uh, Program, which, uh, the states are dealing with, will New South Wales be ready to go for this October start date?

I mean, what drew you into politics? How did you end up as the State Treasurer?

Well, I've been state treasurer now for nearly four years.

I've been a member of parliament for 10.

I was a nerd at high school who spent a lot of time reading a lot of newspapers and watching the news every night.

And I got really interested in public affairs back then.

And what really prompted me to get particularly political was when Paul Keating lost.

And when Paul Keating lost, I noticed that Australia was changing.

Australians would rather have a house, but the reality is if you want to live in Sydney, we're not going to solve it all having a house.

Is there anything in that budget that is going to address housing affordability?

Yeah, the budget builds on some of the announcements we made earlier in the life of our government.

We did announce just two budgets ago the biggest investment in social housing since the Second World War.

We have announced a myriad of programs and policies to get more essential workers into a home that they can afford.

But ultimately what we did in this budget is we said we really need to embrace a lot of these modern methods of construction that we are seeing rolled out in places like Sweden, in places like Finland, that are really helping them build homes as quickly as in five weeks' time.

Now, we're playing a bit of catch-up with these states.

We do know that one of the biggest issues we've got is just it's expensive to build in New South Wales.

And it's deeply troubling for all of us in this state and in this country.

I mean, how much pressure are New South Wales businesses under at the moment?

They certainly are feeling the effects of the biggest, uh, oil shock in a generation, but what's really interesting about New South Wales' economic projections is that we are the only state to be reporting, uh, economic growth that has been created by the private sector.

The government contribution to economic growth is coming down, as it should during a time of high inflation, but we are seeing the ingenuity of New South Wales workers and New South Wales businesses combining to unleash a private investment boom, uh, taking place predominantly in renewable energy and, and artificial intelligence related CapEx, like data centers.

Uh, we think that it's important that the economy grows with the private sector expanding.

And thanks to the very hard work of New South Wales employees and New South Wales employers, I can report that private investment is expanding f- uh, faster than any other state.

How are you gonna keep inflation under control?

Well, two things.

Firstly, uh, we are already shown that we can keep our expenses under control.

Can you do better than $3.5 million?

Well, I've happily talked to the owner of the Ladybug and the other businesses, and we've always said that we're always keeping an eye on this.

I can absolutely confirm to you today in your program that we do expect this to come to a head relatively quickly now about how we get the road up and running again.

And I can absolutely confirm to you that there is money in the budget to fix the Great Western Highway issue.

And we have put that provisions aside.

When it comes to supporting the businesses that are affected, I have been listening to Mark's program.

I know Mark has been ferocious about this as his view.

Our listener is Roger.

Which the previous government announced.

But didn't fund.

Um, the, and I certainly haven't hidden from you or from your listeners some of the turmoil we've encountered on projects like the Western Sydney Airport Metro as well as City Southwest Metro.

So, uh, it-- the, the easy part is announcing the projects.

The harder part is funding them, and that's certainly what we've been doing in the last budget without privatization, and that's the big difference between the way in which we're building Metros and the way in which, uh, the Liberal Party has.

We're not selling ent-entities like Sydney Water.

We're not selling off Essential Energy.

Our listener is Roger.

Is that right?

That certainly seems to be what we found through our, uh, investigation.

Uh, and this all came to light at the end of last year in September when there were some pretty serious allegations that emerged about some of the people who are involved in the contract, um, supply chain that is building, uh, the metro from the new airport to, to the rest of Sydney.

Uh, we immediately sent... asked a QC to go and have a look at this.

They've come back, and they have found there is credible evidence to suggest that there has been a lot of cash payments, uh, at, in s- the subcontractor parts of the supply chain.

That's pretty serious, uh, from our perspective.

Uh, any underpayment is a big deal, uh, and equally it does create questions around whether or not people have complied with their tax obligations, whether they've complied with their insurance obligations, whether or not they've complied with their disclosure obligations, they're... equally whether or not they're following all workplace health and safety laws.

But you, you mentioned the people in the, the unit blocks, right? So if they wanna go and use that green space, can they not walk another block and use Centennial Park, Treasurer? So doesn't that sort of blow your argument out of the water?

So if I'm an international player, do I want to come in and buy something in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane or an equity asset here when the valuations might be relatively high because of the demand for it? So I'm kind of trying to work out what you're asking here.

Well, firstly, a lot of these funds are already here and we're wanting them to scale up more and to think about how they marshal their forces in the wider region from Sydney and from New South Wales.

Very first message we want to send today.

But the second message is quite right, which is we want to tell more of this story to Australia because The rate of growth of our superannuation industry is now so fast that we can't absorb all this investment domestically.

We will have too much money chasing too few assets.

So a lot of this money will need to go offshore anyway.

And that's a good thing because it helps us pay for a tremendous retirement for working Australians.

Can they do that in Australian infrastructure or in property or wherever?