Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Tom Connell – Sky News Australia

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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH  TOM CONNELL – SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA

Tuesday 22 October, 2024

TOPICS: Housing Infrastructure Programme

E&OE

Tom Connell: Housing policy is going to be a huge part of the next election. The Coalition says it wants to help build another 500,000 homes. It’s going to do so through $5 billion. So how will that happen? Joining me live now, Shadow Housing and Homelessness Minister Michael Sukkar. Thanks for your time. What you’re effectively talking about is putting up money for the infrastructure that needs to be built for these homes. So how does that work exactly? How is that accessed and how it will be approved?

Michael Sukkar: Well, thanks, Tom. Yeah, our housing infrastructure program, we think, will unlock 500,000 homes. We think that’s a fairly conservative estimate, too, to be frank. Over the last two years, we’ve literally met with hundreds of councils and received proposals from those many of those councils who have made very clear to us, as well as the industry bodies, that the biggest blockage to getting new housing developments going in this country are some of the more basic services and infrastructure, whether that be water, sewerage, telecommunications and road access, and that with investments into those critical pieces of infrastructure, all of a sudden you can unlock huge amounts of housing. There’s a lot of these projects around the country. So we think with a $5 billion investment, we can unlock at least 500,000 homes pretty quickly. And the industry bodies, whether it’s the HIA, MBA, UDIA and many others have endorsed this as is the best way to get housing supply moving quickly.

Tom Connell: And so you’ve spoken with the councils about this. This is about putting the money out there so there’s no issue with getting that funding or delays. Does it mean that normal council charges taxes, whatever they might be, would be less for these houses? You’re putting up the money for this infrastructure. Is that going to mean that the councils won’t need to put up the money and they should be charging less?

Michael Sukkar: Well, the moment what’s really happening, Tom, is the projects just aren’t going ahead because there’s no money to fund them. So rather than being able to fund them in some other way, including user charges, they’re just not going ahead. So we think this will do two things. It’ll bring forward projects that might be sitting there for ten or 15 or 20 years, but it will probably also unlock some projects that are never likely to go ahead under the current settings and our hope would be, of course, that in the end that means you’ve got a cheaper housing product at the end. We know that these detached Greenfield houses tend to be the province of first time buyers, so we’d love those savings to flow through to the end purchaser.

Tom Connell: Alright, sounds more about sort of unblocking the blockages, if you like, in the pipeline. You’ve got a pretty clear focus you alluded to there about detached houses. You’ve spoken about Greenfield sites as well. So how do you make sure that’s prioritised? If you’re the minister, once a government, once a coalition, if the coalition is elected, you look through and you have a sort of priority or bias towards those Greenfield sites, because Peter Dutton today has said any project is is welcome to this, but there’d be a priority on that outer-urban detached or urban detached housing.

Michael Sukkar: Well, in the work that we’ve done, Tom, as I said over the last couple of years, it’s clear that that’s where the need is most acute. The infrastructure in those detached Greenfield housing sites is the area, to be frank, where we’ve got the greatest blockage. And that’s where we think the infrastructure dollars will go as far as possible. I mean, in the end, what we want, Tom, is for every dollar invested, as many houses as possible to be delivered at the end. Our determination has been that that will be through those Greenfield sites. And that’s clearly going to be how the fund is orientated.

Tom Connell: Okay, and prioritised, seemingly. Can you give some examples? Melbourne could be a good one because I know it better than other places. I’m from there originally. Where is right for this investment, specifically suburbs or areas?

Michael Sukkar: Well, they tend to be in our areas with those new Greenfield opportunities in Peri Urban councils. I was at on Sunday, we made the announcement on Saturday, and Sunday I was out with our candidate in Monash, Mary Aldred, for a good example in Drouin. A $4.2 million investment to upgrade a road which would allow the council to approve 5,000 new homes. A really modest investment, but money that they don’t have and money that they can’t get access to at the moment that would allow them to approve those 5,000 homes. In a growth area there’s a lot of building going on, but there’s a lot more that could happen. At the moment, half the road is closed because it can’t cope with the traffic as it is. So a $4.2 million investment into a road delivering 5,000 homes, it’s quite an extraordinary outcome for the investment and I can assure you there are hundreds of these projects around the country. We have received applications from those councils. These are real projects with real costings and real homes attached, and that’s why we have confidence that 500,000 homes at the very minimum would be unlocked by this Housing Infrastructure Programme.

Tom Connell: With this priority. This this would increase and ramp up urban sprawl, wouldn’t it? You’re talking about going out. So that would mean the urban sprawl continues where a lot of experts are saying we have a missing middle in Australia around density. This, what you’re saying, might well build the houses, but it will be people a fair way out, won’t it?

Michael Sukkar: Well, we know at the moment that about 70 per cent of first home buyers do purchase detached houses with a backyard. That’s a clear preference of first time buyers and we think that Australians should have that opportunity to own a home with a backyard in a suburb. So you might refer to it as sprawl, or the experts might refer to it that way, we refer to it as suburbs. These will be the wonderful suburbs of the future and our forefathers invested in suburbs like this that we live in now, and it’s our obligation to do that for future generations. We think that it’s the area where we can get the biggest housing yield. I think the councils that we’ve spoken to, the hundreds of them have made that clear as well. So we make no apologies for focusing on people living in homes and homes with a backyard and and we know that that’s the choice, the overwhelming choice of first time buyers at the moment, and we’re happy to facilitate that even further.

Tom Connell: You know, there’s also a lot of talk about people wanting to be able to live near where they work. Drouin, so what’s that, 97km from the city? If someone’s working in or around Melbourne, that’s a it’s a long commute.

Michael Sukkar: Yeah, but I’m using Drouin as an example. I mean if you look in New South Wales, Liverpool, Parramatta, I mean, these are often centers that have huge economies themselves where people are working.

Tom Connell: So is that key to getting these, to decentralising more and working with the states, because that that’s been a focus for some. I know Box Hill has been a focus for example, not too far from you, from the Labor Government. Is it important to work with state governments and get these near not just the big cities but other smaller centers that still have the jobs and so on with them?

Michael Sukkar: Well, no, because we are blessed with a country with a lot of land and at the moment in my home state of Victoria, the vast majority of our housing growth is in Greenfield housing projects that are detached homes. That’s as I said, about 70 per cent of new housing in my state. So the idea that I think the Labor Party’s going down, which is you’ve got to live in an apartment or nothing, that’s not our approach. Our approach is people should have every opportunity to live in whatever they want, including a home in a Greenfield suburb and we know that there are jobs and opportunities in those places. We see it in Parramatta, we see it in Liverpool, we see it throughout Western Sydney, we see it in virtually every single, south east Queensland, every single state in our country, that this is where we can really turbocharge housing approvals. Half a million homes really quickly with our Housing Infrastructure Programme and we want to give that opportunity. The Labor Party seem to go down the path of like what the Victorian State Government announced this week, putting 20-storey towers in our leafy suburbs. Well, they’ll need to get the buy in of the community before they do that. We think there are other opportunities…

Tom Connell: It’s another interesting area of it. It’s something we’ll probably delve into another day. My point was more around being near other centres. It doesn’t mean you need to be apartment or townhouse. You can still have a house, but sort of other centres other than CBDs anyway, one for another day. We’re out of time. Michael Sukkar, appreciate your time today.

Michael Sukkar: Thank you, Tom. Good on you.

ENDS