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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
THURSDAY, 1 MAY 2025

SUBJECTS: Coalition costings; Unions.

JOURNALIST: What do you make of the Coalition's costings?

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Well, the Coalition's costings today will show what a con job this has being. Five million people have voted and we will wait and see what is in there, but we can already see that there will be cuts, savage cuts, secret cuts that they've hidden all campaign cuts to Medicare essentially to pay for their nuclear reactor scheme and no dressing that up on the end of the election is going to change anything. We know students will pay more, there'll be less housing, income taxes will rise, and I think it's all a fraud, really, to pretend that you're improving the budget bottom line when you know that you're going to have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for nuclear reactors around the country.

JOURNALIST: You did get a warning from the S&P the other day though, about the promises from both sides. Aren't they perhaps showing like they're acting on it perhaps more with these numbers out today?

GALLAGHER: Well, that's why it's important that we released our costings on Monday. We showed that we got the Budget slightly better than it was at budget time, despite all our promises. And I think that shows you the responsible approach we've taken where we've found savings, we've made provisions in the budget to fund our election commitments. But on the other hand, if anyone cares about the S&P rating, the AAA credit rating, borrowing to fund a taxpayer funded nuclear energy system is going to bankrupt the Budget. That's absolutely clear and under those arrangements, we wouldn't be able to retain the AAA credit rating.

JOURNALIST: Do you think next election, there needs to be a commitment from both sides to release costings much earlier?

GALLAGHER: Well, we've released them three times, essentially. We've had the Budget, we then had the pre-election fiscal outlook, and then we balanced everything out with the other commitments we've made that weren't included. So, we've done three sets of costings in five weeks. It's a matter for the Opposition why they want to wait until 48 hours out, to rush their costings out at the end of the campaign so they don't get the scrutiny after five million people have voted. And that's because they're going to cut Medicare, they're going to cut the public service, they're going to make you pay more for your education. There are going to be less houses and they're going to raise your income taxes, and they didn't want that as part of the election campaign.

JOURNALIST: There's a story that you were just commenting on in the Australian today about businesses warning about long service leave. Is that something that businesses should be worried about if you're reelected?

GALLAGHER: Not at all. This is a total beat up in the paper. There are portable long service leave schemes, they're run in a number of industries and they're run by the State and Territory governments. This is not a matter for the Commonwealth. Thank you.

ENDS