Liberal Senate candidate Nick Tyrrell has a long campaign ahead. Photos: Michelle Kroll.
New Liberal Senate candidate Nick Tyrrell has pinpointed flexible childcare, tax reform, small business and housing as key issues to prosecute during a long campaign to the next federal election due in 2028.
Bubbling away underneath is the ever-present concern about the cost of living, something the Go Boats founder believes will mitigate whatever position the federal Liberal Party adopts on climate and Australia’s commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Mr Tyrrell is already letterboxing and bailing up shoppers at shopping centres, promising a far more visible campaign than the last one.
He admits there is a lot of ground to make up to be competitive, which is why he believes the early preselection last Saturday was necessary.
Mr Tyrrell hopes that, come the election, he won’t have to contend with thought bubbles on public service cuts and working at home, which torched any hopes of a reasonable Liberal vote in the ACT.
“I can’t tell you how damaging that was in a town like Canberra,” he says.
Mr Tyrrell met with the federal Liberal leader’s office to explain how much it hurt the party’s chances, not just in Canberra but also in surrounding areas and in outer metropolitan seats where there are many public servants.
The other big issue he will have to overcome is where the Liberals land on climate and net zero.
Mr Tyrrell believes most Australians want to do their part, but the question is at what cost.
“I’m one of those,” he says.
“I’m literally driving my EV right now, I’ve got a roof full of solar panels and a big battery, and I started a carbon-neutral, eco-friendly business and took it national.
“So you’re talking to someone who’s actually put their money where their mouth is on emissions reduction and environmentalism.”
But if people start to feel like it’s costing them too much, support for net zero could evaporate, Mr Tyrrell says.
He says Labor is hiding the cost through subsidies.
“The net zero by 2050 at any cost brigade is ignoring the households that are already struggling under the impact of Labor’s policies on that front,” he says.
“It’s less about ‘do we need to reduce emissions?’ and more about ‘how are we going to get there?’, and be able to take middle Australia with us on that journey.”
Nick Tyrrell says parents need more childcare options.
Mr Tyrrell believes the ACT not only needs a Liberal voice in Parliament to provide balance, but to create a political incentive for a federal government to pay more attention to its needs.
He believes that despite three Labor MPs and a Senator, who is also the Finance Minister, the Territory is being shortchanged.
“You hear about $7.2 billion being allocated to the Bruce Highway in Queensland, and then we have to cry poor over getting barely $100 million for a convention exhibition centre or moving a pool,” Mr Tyrrell says.
“If one of those seats was marginal, especially the Senate being a Territory-wide seat, I mean, gosh, can you imagine how much more attention we’d get from a funding point of view for different projects?”
A parent of two young children, Mr Tyrrell believes the current subsidy-based, one-size-fits-all childcare system is unfair to families trying alternatives, such as a parent or grandparent staying at home.
“Whether you’ve got additional needs for your child and that’s not served by institutional childcare, or you have odd hours, you’re a shift worker or you have a business where you need flexibility in childcare arrangements, there need to be more options, whether it’s income splitting or whether it’s the subsidy follows the child, and you can claim for taking days off work.”
As someone who founded a small business, Mr Tyrrell is scathing of an onerous tax reporting system that is crippling initiative and innovation.
He attacked Labor’s removal, supported by Senator David Pocock, of the tax deductibility of the 12 per cent interest charge for late payments and the 40 per cent drop in the proportion of remissions granted, saying an overly aggressive Tax Office was hounding small business.
An Ombudsman’s inquiry is underway into the behaviour of the Tax Office.
“In an environment where the only thing keeping GDP above zero is effectively government spending, it means that businesses are already going backwards and small business employment is going backwards,” Mr Tyrrell says.
The other tax issue in his sights is bracket creep, which he called a tax on people trying to get ahead and a tax increase by stealth.
If the threshold were indexed, it would also make the government think more critically about the trade-offs between taxing and spending.
“You force the government to make far more considered decisions about how it’s spending our money,” Mr Tyrrell says.
On housing, the federal government should focus less on demand, for example, first-home buyer schemes, and more on supply by incentivising state and territory governments to release more housing and speed up approvals.
In the ACT, lease variation charges are a handbrake on new housing, Mr Tyrrell says, adding that the Barr Government appeared to be open to some relief.
“I was hearing from a small-scale townhouse builder a few weeks ago, where they bought two blocks, and there was a potential for 12 townhouses,” he says.
“But for every townhouse there was going to be $80,000 worth of lease variation charge on it, and that gets passed directly on to the person who wants to buy that home.”
But Mr Tyrrell, who doesn’t own an investment property, remains open to negative gearing reforms that place limits on the number of homes one can claim, saying that it might be better for some of those homes to be in the hands of first-time owners.
“I don’t know where the number is, maybe it’s two, maybe it’s three, I don’t know, but I’m definitely open to being convinced on limits on negative gearing,” he says.
