Interview with Bill Woods on 2GB Afternoons

INTERVIEW WITH BILL WOODS ON 2GB AFTERNOONS

30 June 2026

Subjects: SMSF Taxes, Liberal Party

E&OE.........

Bill Woods

Super funds are not permitted to borrow for investments, but an exemption allowed self-managed funds to access limited recourse borrowing arrangements to purchase single assets like residential or commercial property. Now, no longer. Liberal Senator for New South Wales Andrew Bragg is on the line. Thanks for your time, Senator.

Senator Bragg

G'day Bill, how are you?

Bill Woods

Well, thank you. Now, this is just another attack on those who are trying to get on the property ladder and of course in turn, quite probably affecting housing supply.

Senator Bragg

Well, it seems insane to me that the government would want to reduce housing supply by 35,000, but that's what they're doing. And they're going to reduce it by many more thousands by stopping SMSFs from investing in property. So, I don't know why the government wouldn't want more houses, but maybe this actually explains the mess that we're in in this country.

Bill Woods

And oftentimes the money people have in that self-managed fund might be the only asset they have to draw on to buy a property. This cuts off that avenue.

Senator Bragg

Well, it does seem strange. I mean, I think there's reporting that there's at least 4,000 people last year who used a self-managed fund to invest in property; many of those will be off the plan. It seems from the industry that that number is actually higher than 4,000. But whether it was 4 or 400 or 4,000 or 4 million, any SMSF that is investing in an off-the-plan scenario is providing more housing stock. So I would have thought that would be celebrated and not abolished.

Bill Woods

And older people who, you know, if you're say in your late 60s or early 70s and you go to a self-managed fund for whatever reason, you might not look at anything off the plan because you might be looking at your rental income as well as a little bit of capital gain—it's a more short-term investment. As you say though, if people are running a self-managed fund fairly early in life and there is a lot of potential for long-term gain, off the plan can be very useful, and as you say, in turn it fuels the market that we need to do.

Senator Bragg

Well, we're short on housing in this country. We need to get 250,000 houses a year at least; under this government, we'll be lucky to get 170,000 this year. And so SMSFs are providing off-the-plan stock which is needed to house Australians. Banning that doesn't make any sense to me, but nor do the broader changes to CGT and negative gearing, because those changes will reduce supply by 35,000 in addition. So, at the end of the day, look, if you have higher taxes and more restrictions, you're going to have fewer houses. So, I don't think these guys are ever going to fix the housing crisis, I think they're going to make it worse and worse.

Bill Woods

Well, a lot of the tinkering is certainly actually inflationary, rather than increasing supply. I'm sure you agree, the bottom line is to get more houses built—and this is certainly one way of doing it, as opposed to just feeding people access to more money and therefore bidding up the price of the existing supply. There seems to be a disconnect between what the government is saying it's doing and what is actually available for young people trying to get into homes.

Senator Bragg

Well, it's like a Ponzi scheme, isn't it? I mean effectively the underlying productivity issues in the building sector—whether they are to do with the high cost of building because of the convoluted building regulations, or whether it is to do with the CFMEU and their unruly behaviour—these issues have not been addressed by the government. So all they've done is effectively allow a situation where they've let too many people into the country, they've let not enough houses be built because of their failure to address productivity, and then they've unleashed these 5% deposits which have allowed people with not much money—but sometimes with a lot of money, because they're not means tested—to access a government program. And so all that has done has been to pump up prices at the entry level, which has made life harder not easier for younger people.

Bill Woods

Can you give us a sense of how Treasury comes up with the numbers when there are these modifications and deals done to get legislation through? How much actual research and number crunching is done when these little changes are made?

Senator Bragg

Well, none. I mean, in terms of the budget itself, the government say that they modelled a version of changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing, but I think that the version they actually modelled was different to the one that they introduced. And in relation to the SMSF change, I don't think they've done any regulatory analysis whatsoever. We asked Penny Wong about this in the Senate yesterday and she couldn't give an answer. So I think most of these things are made up on the fly. A lot of them are influenced by the government's proximity to the big super funds, and so a lot of their bad ideas come from the big super funds who just really want to get more market share. So their game is to kill SMSFs because they're losing money from Cbus and AustralianSuper, they're losing money from those funds and people are going and doing it themselves and doing better than the big union funds.

Bill Woods

Now we're already seeing housing prices drop in some markets quite significantly. Reports that up to $122,000 could be wiped off the value of the typical Sydney house over the next year. Now, look, we don't want prices to go up significantly because that's what this is all about—more supply makes it more affordable for people who want to get into the market, particularly our kids. But steep falls also have implications. Some people could end up for example in negative equity, they might have borrowed more money than their asset is now worth?

Senator Bragg

Well, in Melbourne and Sydney it looks like there might be some price change. In other markets, I note that there is still price growth. Look, at the end of the day the fundamentals haven't changed. I mean, there's still a low level of supply, there's still a large level of population growth largely from migration. So let's see where we get to—I'm not a house prices forecaster, but my sense is that the fundamentals have not been fixed. So I don't think we're going to see any structural change. There may be some short-term hiccups as a result of interest rate rises and the like, but ultimately, you're not going to solve the housing crisis until you build more than a quarter of a million of them a year in this country. And you've got to build them at a price that people can afford to buy them. And that's why it's also important that we pare back some of the regulations that we've announced, that we would do in terms of the National Construction Code, because that means that it is illegal to build a cheap house in Australia, which I think is insane.

Bill Woods

Paul is speculating on the text line that banning the self-managed fund house purchases will allow the government to use these houses to add to their 1.2 million house building plan. Interesting point—more government control and government-owned stuff. You wouldn't hear a Labor government say that, would you? Andrew Bragg, I have to ask you while you're here and thank you for your time, I know Parliament is sitting and you're busy, you've got a lot of stuff on your plate... but do you need a rebrand? That's been the talk of the town in the last 24 hours.

Senator Bragg

Well, no, the main point here is that we have to get going with policy. I mean we need to outline a radical set of economic policies that Australians are looking for. People are hungry for change and they should be hungry for change because the country is going in the wrong direction. The trajectory is very bad, and I think we are the best shot at doing that, and that's what we're doing at the moment with Angus as our leader and our team.

Bill Woods

But you've got to be all singing from the same hymn book as they say in the classics.

Senator Bragg

Well of course, but I believe that we are all committed to the idea of a significant economic program, the most significant since Fightback! in the 90s, that is going to be necessary for us to win the trust of Australians. And I think that's really what we're trying to do by talking about some of the things we've talked about today on housing, but there's a lot more we need to do around tax and spending and small business. These are all the things that are germane to the Australian people. The people think the system is broken and they are right. And I believe we are the best organisation to address the broken system with a radical economic agenda.

Bill Woods

How far can you swing towards One Nation, which the polls at least for now seem to be indicating you have to do? And particularly to a hardcore of your own party faithful, it must be said, I've had texts on this already today. But how do you do that without becoming One Nation, or dissolving into One Nation as an identity when it comes to the next federal election?

Senator Bragg

Well, there are some cultural issues which are important. There are some cultural issues which are so important to the fibre of Australia, the fabric of this country. But there are other issues which are peripheral and we need to pick out the right ones. But ultimately it comes down to beating this bad government on the basis of a much better economic policy, which is about helping people, not about helping big, vested interests. As we've discussed today Bill, the government only gets out of bed every day to help their favourite vested interests at the unions and the big super funds. We want to get out of bed every day and help out small businesses, people, and families.

Bill Woods

Well, I know that's a luxury that's still a fair way off because you have to get back to work. Thank you for your time today Andrew Bragg, really appreciate it.

Senator Bragg

Thanks Bill.

Bill Woods

There he is. Senator Andrew Bragg.

[Ends]