Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Sharri Markson – Sky News Australia

THE HON MICHAEL SUKKAR MP – SHADOW MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, NDIS, HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH SHARRI MARKSON – SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA

Thursday 1 August, 2024

TOPICS: ‘Pro-Palestinian’ Officeworks staffer, Housing, Clare O’Neil

E&OE

Sharri Markson: Now, let’s have a look now at Australia’s housing crisis. It does continue to be a problem for so many families across the country. New dwelling approvals falling to their lowest level in 12 years. For the year to June, there were only 162,000 houses and apartments that were given the green light. This is a drop of eight and a half percent. It’s just not enough to keep people off the street. Thousands of Australians are sleeping rough every night because of the demand in housing and services. Well, let’s bring in now shadow Minister for Housing, Michael Sukkar. Thank you very much for your time, Michael. Look, before we get into housing, I just wonder if you want to comment on that interview that we just heard from that Jewish customer who was refused service at an Officeworks in Melbourne and their response that they think it’s okay to keep that person employed.

Michael Sukkar: Well, Sharri, thank you for giving that customer a voice. I think this is a shocking example of the sort of twisted logic and twisted thinking that has consumed so much, particularly of the left in this country, that that someone couldn’t see – in that case that worker at Officeworks – couldn’t see how blatantly bigoted she was being, that that wasn’t something that was obvious to her. She clearly couldn’t explain why she was unwilling to do the laminating of that particular paper, but it was just clearly a hatred of Israel and potentially of the Jewish people. I think it is depressing, though, that swift action from Officeworks isn’t forthcoming. I mean, it’s a clear cut case here. I’m not someone who rejoices in seeing people lose their jobs or enjoy people being canceled, but you’re as a business, putting people on the front line to deal with customers in a respectful way. And it’s the most blatant and worst form of of anti-Semitism, I think, that you could imagine in that sort of instance. And the fact that the company couldn’t see that that would be an obvious situation where that person was ill-suited to dealing with the public and ill suited to dealing with and quite frankly, any customer that walks through that door and asks for a lawful service, which is clearly what the customer you just spoke to did. So the truth is here and you know, you don’t want to draw too many long bows, but we have not seen any leadership from the Prime Minister down on this issue since October 7. It’s bizarre to me that we have a situation in this country where large groups of people think it’s entirely acceptable to show their anti-Semitism towards Israel. The country who was attacked in the most brutal way by Hamas. And I would say part of that permission structure that I think has crept into our society, I think is partly come from the fact that there’s so many mixed messages from the Prime Minister and his government – no leadership on this. You could imagine a Prime Minister, John Howard, Robert Menzies, Bob Hawke, you could imagine that they would rise to the occasion here. We’ve seen a Prime Minister that’s not willing to offer that leadership. Instead, we see that leadership being offered by people like Peter Dutton, who, as you know has has obviously taken a very important trip to Israel. So I think it’s shocking that this thing hasn’t been dealt with until it hits the headlines and even then it hasn’t been dealt with properly.

Sharri Markson: Exactly. Exactly. Very well said, Michael. I completely agree with you. Let’s return to the housing issue now that you’ve come in here to speak about. Labor has committed to the target of building 1.2 million homes over five years. Do you think this is going to be yet another broken promise?

Michael Sukkar: Well, they can’t meet the target, Sharri. I mean, it’s clear this year alone they’ll be about 75,000 homes short in one year. Most reputable commentators are saying that might be lucky to get to 800 -850,000, which would be the smallest number of homes over a five year period that we’ve seen for 25 years. We saw approvals yesterday down again. And for your viewers, Sharri, the problem with approvals being even further down is that if we’re saying we’re not building enough homes now and there are less homes being built under labor, now that we’re under the former coalition government, the lack of approvals we’re seeing now is going to flow through the pipeline of housing over the next 18 months to two years, which means even fewer homes will be built over that period and the great irony of this situation now is, is we’ve got the failed former minister Clare O’Neil, who was dumped from the Home affairs portfolio into this portfolio, now facing up to so much of the mess that she created in her failed job as Home Affairs minister, because in two short years of this government, we’ve had more than a million migrants come to this country. So we’re running a world record gold medal level of migration in this country, yet we’re building fewer homes. And as I outlined a few weeks ago, it means we need to build a new home every 2.4 minutes just to house and accommodate the new migrants that Labor’s bringing into this country. So sadly, we now see a failed former minister being put into housing and quite frankly, I believe housing is one of, if not the most important portfolio in any government and it shouldn’t be traded as a dumping ground for a failed minister who’s really ought to have been demoted.

Sharri Markson: Yeah, and it’s an interesting point that you make that when she was home affairs minister she was in charge of bringing in the high levels of immigration that is now adding to the problem she’s going to have to solve in her new role as housing minister. And we’ve also seen the reporting from Simon Benson in The Australian that the Albanese Government, under their $10 billion housing fund, has paid out $30 million in executive salaries and bonuses, but as of June hadn’t built one completed house, so this is definitely going to be a problematic area and and it’s a crisis for families. Michael Sukkar, really appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Ends