Read the complete write-up of Tim Wilson net worth, biography, age, height, family, parents, partner, wife, politics as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Tim Wilson is an Australian politician and a member of the Liberal Party of Australia. Wilson serves as the Federal Member for Goldstein in the Australian House of Representatives. He was elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2019, and served as the Chair of the Standing Committee on Economics from September 2018 to September 2021. He is currently the Assistant Minister to the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction.
Before entering politics, Wilson was a policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) from 2007 to 2013 and Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner from 2014 to 2016.
Early life
| Name | Tim Wilson |
| Net Worth | $4 million |
| Profession | Politician |
| Height | 1.73m |
| Age | 41 years |
Timothy Robert Wilson was born on March 12, 1980 (age 41 years) in Melbourne, Australia. He grew up in Melbourne and has Armenian ancestry on the maternal side of his family and is the second of three children. In his early years, Wilson’s parents ran pubs in Richmond and Little Collins Street. Following his parent’s divorce, he moved to Mount Martha and attended Mount Martha Primary School and The Peninsula School, Mount Eliza.
At Monash University, Wilson studied fine arts before transferring and completing a Bachelor of Arts (Policy Studies) and a Masters of Diplomacy and Trade (International Trade). He was elected President of the Monash University Student Union Caulfield in 2002 and again in 2003.
Early career
Tim Wilson was employed by the Institute of Public Affairs for seven years, serving as Director of Climate Change Policy and of Intellectual Property and Free Trade.
Human Rights Commissioner (HRC)
During his time at the IPA, Wilson was a vocal critic of the Human Rights Commission and called for the abolition of the Commission. He was appointed as Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner between February 2014 and February 2016. On appointment to the Human Rights Commission, Wilson resigned his membership of the Liberal Party. It was reported that in the first year following his appointment he charged out $77,000 in expenses including almost $15,000 in taxi fares on top of his other benefits that he was entitled to. Wilson’s response to these charges was “You’d rather I sit in my office all day?”.
During the term of his appointment, he supported the Abbott Government’s attempted changes to Section 18C of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Wilson argued that 18C was ineffective in preventing racial discrimination and instead asserted civil codes of conduct imposed by employers, industry and community groups would bring cultural change. President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, stated that Wilson was “on board” with the rest of the Commission regarding the removal of 18C. In one instance, when questioned if he accepted that any person had the right to use racial slurs including the word “nigger” he replied “I won’t say it, but that’s right” while adding that “even petty and casual racism is unacceptable”.
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In July 2020, it was revealed that, while a commissioner, he had used his Commission email account to introduce a prominent international speaker to the Institute of Public Affairs for an event, as well as arrange his attendance at the free-market think-tank’s functions, and to obtain from someone an endorsement in support of his campaign to gain Liberal preselection for Parliament.
Tim Wilson acknowledged that he had opposed the release of the emails, which had been sought through a freedom of information application, but considered them “utterly irrelevant” and a “non-story”, saying his support of the IPA was publicly disclosed and well known throughout his term. Furthermore, Wilson stated he originally halted the release of the emails to toy with the freedom of information applicant to “make sure the applicant thought there was something salacious in these emails only to be disappointed that they were utterly irrelevant and they’d wasted their time, and sadly that of the hard-working people at the Australian Human Rights Commission, who had to compile and redact these documents”.
Politics
In 2008, Wilson, then a Liberal Party member, ran for the position of deputy mayor of the City of Melbourne in a joint ticket with Peter McMullin, a former Labor mayor of Geelong. Wilson and McMullin lost.
Federal parliament
On 19 March 2016, Tim Wilson was preselected as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Goldstein. He defeated Denis Dragovic by two votes. Fellow IPA member, Georgina Downer was also a preselection candidate, but lost in the first round of voting. As recently as 2014, Wilson did not live in the electorate but moved into the electoral boundaries in anticipation of the election.
Tim Wilson was subsequently elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the 2016 election. He served on the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport, the Standing Committee on Industry, Innovation, Science and Resources and the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs.
When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a spill of leadership positions in 2018, Wilson supported Turnbull against Peter Dutton. Following the vote to remove Turnbull, Wilson moved his support behind the eventual winner, Scott Morrison as the new Liberal leader and Prime Minister.
In 2018, Wilson was appointed by Scott Morrison as the chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics. Tim Wilson won a second term at the 2019 election, though there was a swing against him of 4.9%. Wilson was promoted to be an assistant minister in September 2021. He was named as the assistant to Angus Taylor responsible for the areas of industry, energy and emissions reduction.
Political positions and controversies
One of Wilson’s roles at the IPA was Director of Climate Change Policy. He had also studied environmental issues in a variety of postgraduate studies. When he was at the IPA, Wilson argued against Australia being a party to the Kyoto Protocol and he was against any government prices on carbon. Following the 2019 election win, Wilson endorsed the cuts under the Kyoto and Paris Agreement and claimed that the Liberal party would meet their targets, even though they had been against them in the election a few months earlier.
Prior to his time in parliament, Wilson was strongly opposed to many environmental policies including calling Tony Abbott’s Direct Action plan an “undesirable solution”. He also called for the closing of the Climate Change Authority, the ending of the Renewable Energy Target and defunding of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Despite personally not expressing climate change denial, Wilson has endorsed people’s right to express such views and was opposed to universities preventing such views from being taught in their institutions.
LGBT issues
While human rights commissioner, Tim Wilson claimed that asylum seekers were going to brothels to get a blow job from a male prostitute and use the receipt to prove their status as gay men. This would be used to assist in their claim for asylum, as they would behave persecuted had they been returned to their country of origin. In writing the story, Crikey contacted a number of sex workers who called the claim ‘absurd’ and they could not find a single asylum lawyer who could verify the claims.
Wilson also defended the rights of religious groups to discriminate against LGBTI people. He was praised by the Australian Christian Lobby for this stance.
Same-sex marriage
Tim Wilson had been a public advocate for same-sex marriage for more than a decade prior to its becoming legal in Australia. The Abbott Government in 2015 promised a public vote on same-sex marriage, which was remained the coalition policy for the Turnbull Government. Following the 2016 federal election, Wilson supported the legislation for a public plebiscite on the basis that it was the fastest route to reform, although other advocates for the amendments to the law suggested the quickest and cheapest way was through a conscience vote on the floor of parliament. Those against the plebiscite said that Labor had already guaranteed a conscience vote on the topic in 2011, and if the Liberals would follow suit there would be a majority for the change.
Tim Wilson opposed efforts to block the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey in the High Court and continued as a prominent Liberal campaigner for the ‘YES’ vote during the plebiscite process.
Freedom of speech
Tim Wilson has been a strong advocate for freedom of speech, from his time in the IPA. He is an advocate of almost all speech to be able to be expressed in public. During his time in the IPA, he pushed to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which outlaws offensive behaviour because of “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”. When testifying before the Senate committee he was unsure if freedom from discrimination did exist or if it should. He also argued that there was a human right to defend the rights of fringe minorities to express offensive opinions.
He also argued against plain package cigarettes as an attack on the property rights of the cigarette companies and was against the anti-bikie laws in Queensland, that aimed to hamper the criminal activities of several motorcycle gangs.
In 2019 he tweeted his support for the protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government, and the importance of their voices being heard. However, a tweet surfaced from several years earlier where he said of the Occupy Melbourne protests “all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time-wasters … send in the water cannons”.
Franking credits
When Scott Morrison ascended to the prime ministership he appointed Tim Wilson as Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics. Under Wilson’s tenure, the Committee launched an inquiry into Labor’s election promise, the proposed changes to refundable franking credits, holding a series of public hearings around the country. Wilson argued that Labor’s policy constituted a ‘retiree tax’ that would damage the savings and superannuation balances of up to one million retirees.[46] Opponents of the hearings saw the process as a series of sham hearings aimed at advancing the Coalition’s agenda.
It was later revealed that the inquiry had a number of legal and procedural issues that were directly linked back to Wilson. On 31 October Wilson anonymously registered the domain stoptheretirementtax.com to allow people to register to speak before the inquiry. The site had a commonwealth coat of arms and also solicited submissions. Wilson sent a letter out urging people “to campaign against Labor’s retirement tax”. The letter had both the Commonwealth logo and Liberal party branding, a clear breach of commonwealth guidelines.
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Tim Wilson arranged for meetings to coincide with an activist group opposing Labor’s policy and contained the “possible intention to engage in protest activity at the hearing”. As the chair, he also tolerated handing out political party material at the hearings. This was one of the actions he would later be rebuked for by the speaker.
Wilson brought in a cousin, Geoff Wilson, to assist in the inquiry. Geoff Wilson managed an investment fund that he founded. The fund was revealed to have a value of $3 billion, and Tim Wilson had funds under management. In February 2019, Labor accused Wilson of improperly interfering with the committee’s inquiry into dividend imputations and had committed a contempt of parliament. The Speaker found that while no contempt had been committed, Wilson had not honoured committee conventions and rebuked Wilson for the manner in which the inquiry took place.
Superannuation
In September 2020, Wilson was criticised in responding to concerns regarding the level of the superannuation guarantee rate for women on Twitter with “I’d prefer that they can buy their own home so they’re not homeless”.
He then began a push for people to be able to use their superannuation to pay for a deposit on a house. Wilson began using the hashtag on Twitter of #homefirstsupersecond to support his campaign. There were a number of negative reactions to Wilson’s policy including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull calling it “the craziest idea I’ve heard” and saying that the policy had “some really poor arguments”.
Others focused on several tweets by Wilson’s that appeared to be giving unlicensed financial advice. The chief executive of Industry Super Australia said that Wilson had “a clear conflict of interest”, Wilson responded by saying the group was “bullying” the government.
Covid-19
Amid the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Wilson wrote to the Australian Human Rights Commission (as a previous head) and the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission asking whether the Andrews Government’s COVID-19 curfew could be justified on human rights grounds and whether there were ground for the commissions to take action to protect rights and freedoms. Wilson stated that he believed the curfew was “unjustified and does not meet the justification for a limitation on Victorians’ human rights” due to public statements by the Chief Health Officer and Victorian Police Commissioner.
During the pandemic, Wilson was also critical of the actions of commercial airlines in relation to excessive fees charged to stranded overseas Australians describing the process as “gouging”. Wilson called on National Cabinet to increase the number of Australians able to return from overseas on a state-by-state basis.
Following the announcement by the Turnbull government of a deadline for Australians to opt-out of the MyHealthRecord scheme, Wilson publicly opted out and called for the Government to make ‘opt-in’ the default position because of privacy concerns.
Partner
Tim Wilson is married to his longtime partner Ryan Bolger. However, Wilson is openly gay. Wilson proposed to his partner, Ryan Bolger, on the floor of parliament while giving a speech on the amendments to the marriage act on 4 December 2017. Both the proposal and Bolger’s affirmative answer were recorded in Hansard and went viral on the internet. They were married on 11 March 2018. Wilson said about his religious beliefs “I’m more of an agnostic, but I prefer to say that I haven’t found God but I’m on a journey and I may one day find God.”
Tim Wilson net worth
How much is Tim Wilson worth? Tim Wilson net worth is estimated at around $4 million. His main source of income is his political career. He is one of the influential politicians in Australia. However, because of Wilson’s many statements about personal liberties during his pre-parliamentary career, Guy Rundle, a writer for Crikey gave him the name ‘freedom boy’, which has been used by others since then.