Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Andrew Clennell – Sky News Afternoon Agenda

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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CLENNELL – SKY NEWS AFTERNOON AGENDA

Monday, 21 August 2023

TOPICS: Help to Buy, Housing, ALP National Conference, Petrol Prices, The Voice, Intergenerational Report

E&OE

Andrew Clennell: Joining me now is the shadow minister for Housing and Social Services, Michael Sukkar. Michael Sukkar, thanks for your time. Let’s start with this announcement by Anthony Albanese. Last week the government would finally stop its home equity scheme, where the Government takes a share in the equity of 40,000 homes. What did you make of that?

Michael Sukkar: Well, I mean, other than the fact it was hopelessly late, there was some curious factors at play. Clearly, Andrew, this was a scheme that was promised by Anthony Albanese before the election. It was supposed to have commenced on the 1st of January this year. The sector’s been wondering where on earth this program has been and it seems as though he was holding it back so he could announce it at the conference. Either that or his housing minister’s so hopelessly incompetent that she was unable to deliver it on the 1st of January. The reality is, Andrew, it’s a very small scheme, a nation program. To be frank, most Australians don’t want to co-own a property with the government. There’ll be some people who will be looking forward to it. I suspect a very small number. I think the bigger story here though, is in the midst of a cost of living crisis, there was absolutely nothing that came out of National Cabinet last week that would make anyone struggling to pay their rent, anyone struggling to pay their mortgage or anyone struggling to save a deposit for first time any better because there’s nothing in it for any of those groups of people who are struggling at the moment with Australia’s housing market.

Andrew Clennell: Will you oppose or support this home equity scheme?

Michael Sukkar: Look, we’ll have a look at it, Andrew. Shared equity schemes are not new. This is not novel. This is not some brilliant new idea. They’ve been around for a very long time. We’ll have a look at it. It seems very curious, though, that the Prime Minister keeps emphasising that he required state and territory agreement in order to put this forward. Now, that makes me question what on earth they’ve come up with, because a Commonwealth shared equity scheme could easily be delivered without state and territory involvement. So the fact that they seem to be including the states and territories, either is an alibi for why it’s running so late or potentially the way it’s been structured means we’ll have a close look at it. Again, it’s a very small niche program. Most Australians, and certainly most Australians who want to buy their own home either won’t qualify for this, and if they do, I suspect most would choose to want to purchase a home for themselves, not to own a property with the federal government. So very a very niche program. We’ll have a look at it and we’ll assess it once we see how it’s structured…

Andrew Clennell: Because you could argue this policy of Labor’s will simply lift the price of homes and you could argue the same about your policy to allow young people to access their super for a deposit.

Michael Sukkar: Well, I suspect to be frank with their program, it’s going to be so small, Andrew I don’t think it’s going to touch the sides, to be frank. So in a theoretical sense, I understand what you’re saying in relation to access to super. We’ve always said and made very clear that you need to empower young people to use their own money to get over that deposit hurdle. We know the deposit hurdle is the hardest part for first home buyers at the moment, but you also do need to address supply constraints as well. You need to do both. But I don’t think the answer is to our housing market saying to young Australians, seemingly like the Labor Party is saying, which is we’re happy for you to rent for your whole life, we don’t want you to have a realistic aspiration of owning your own home. Now, there’s clearly going to be a portion of people who do rent for their lives if they’re out of necessity or out of choice. But this government does not talk about first home buyers. It does not talk about home ownership. It is completely vacated space. I suspect it’s waved the white flag on home ownership for younger Australians and I want to tell those younger Australians that the Coalition has not done the same, we believe that they have every right to have a realistic prospect of owning their own home, just like their parents and grandparents had. And that’s one reason why we believe they should get access to a portion of their own super responsibly to fund their deposit, to buy a home, and then to be required to put that back into super at the end. So they have the retirement income benefits, but importantly, they’ve used that money in the interim to help them get into a home, which we know is so important for everybody’s lives, not just financially – We know the social impacts as well.

Andrew Clennell: Doesn’t the PM have it right then? And you mentioned this earlier when he said supply is the answer here. Isn’t supply the thing that governments and particularly state governments need to target? What did you make of the promise by the PM to pay state governments billions if they build 1.2 million extra homes but only in 2028?

Michael Sukkar: Well, I do agree with the Prime Minister that supply is the answer. It’s a bit like saying puppies are cute. Yes, we all agree puppies are cute. We all agree. We all agree that supply is the answer. But he had months and months in the lead up to this meeting, months we didn’t need months of preparation and talking up this meeting for the PM to come out and and and turn out these hackneyed sort of phrases. No, we needed concrete plans. What are the projects where the house is being built? Who’s funding them? What are the time frames? What sort of stock is it? Is it reserved for first time buyers or is it for renters? That’s what people were expecting out of this meeting. Instead, we got no commitments. We got a potential for money to flow into the future to state and territory governments if they do the right thing. Does anyone really believe the states and territories governments are going to turn on their form of decades and all of a sudden start pumping out new housing? No. The Prime Minister needed to show some leadership. Instead, what he did was he said, if you do the right thing, I might give you some money at the end. We’ve heard it all before, Andrew, the states and territories, planning and zoning reform, it just rolls off our tongues in politics and in the media because we’ve been hearing it for decades. We sadly saw nothing out of this meeting from the Prime Minister. As I said, a meeting that promised so much and delivered so little. No one who’s struggling with their rent or struggling with their mortgage or struggling to save for that deposit for first home will have seen anything out of that meeting that made them feel any better the next day and I think that’s really the depressing thing for many people at the moment, that there’s no sense of urgency from this government, and that’s why they announced a policy at the national conference that’s already eight months late. How on earth do you have as a key part of your speech, a policy you’re supposed to have delivered on the 1st of January this year? Most people would feel too much shame…

Andrew Clennell: You’re just teeing off now, Michael so let me ask about the PM’s failure to name the petrol price. What what did you make of that?

Michael Sukkar: Oh, look, I don’t think many of us would be surprised, to be frank. I think the Prime Minister is living in a in a world that most Australians probably wouldn’t really understand. And that’s partly the nature of the job and partly the nature of the man in the job. You know, getting around on RAAF jet – he’s certainly gotten a lot of that. But I think it’s incumbent on leaders to try to the best possible, the best extent they can to remain connected to the issues that they constituents and their fellow countrymen and women are facing. So would I say it’s the absolute worst sin of all time? No, but I was pretty surprised that, you know, when he drives past the servo, he doesn’t sort of look up out the window and see what the price is. I was a bit surprised.

Andrew Clennell: What’s the petrol price in your part of Melbourne at the moment?

Michael Sukkar: Oh look, it’s about $2.20 at the moment. Yesterday I think it was about $2.17 when I was driving down Canterbury Road in Vermont. So it’s getting up there and you know, when we were in government we put in place temporary excise relief. This government took that away and I don’t think Australians have seen anything from this government that….

Andrew Clennell: Is it time for a bit more excise because it was about this price when you put in the relief?

Michael Sukkar: Yeah, look, I wouldn’t want to tread on our economic team as far as making unilateral statements like that. I just think the reality here is 15 months after the election of a Labor government, most Australians today are either poorer or definitely feeling poorer than they were 15 months ago. That’s the reality. Their mortgages have increased by $22,000 a year – If you’ve got an average mortgage. Your rent has increased by 12% year on year – If you’re a renter, your fuel costs have gone up, your grocery prices have gone up. And yet we’ve got our prime Minister jetting around the world telling Australians that they’ve never had a better. I mean, we sit there in Parliament listening to the Treasurer, listening to the Prime Minister essentially saying Australians should feel very grateful at how good everything is. And I wonder if that’s part of his disconnect from what what people out there are really feeling. And we saw that again, not the worst of all time, not knowing the petrol price, but maybe he’s so disconnected from what real people are dealing with that when we raise these issues in the Parliament, he’s genuinely perplexed as to why we are saying that people are doing it so tough because sometimes in Parliament he does seem genuinely, genuinely of the view that, you know, we’re making this up and we’re not because we’re out everyday listening to people and we know how much they’re struggling.

Andrew Clennell: Alright, on the voice big rally in WA yesterday, led by Michaelia Cash chanting, ‘If you don’t know, vote no’. Is that the best slogan? A lot of older Australians at that rally. Isn’t that where the main no support comes from?

Michael Sukkar: No, I think there’s people across all of the age groups that are forming a view that they are not likely to support this. I think there’s still a long way to go and I wouldn’t want to be calling this referendum one way or the other just yet. And for people like me, it’s yes, if you don’t know, voting no is part of it. And I think it’s powerful only because the Prime Minister has worked so hard to try and keep details from people. It’s not as though people are not trying to go out and get that information, but so much of the detail is being actively hidden by the Prime Minister. But for me, Andrew, I have to say my reason for voting no is that I don’t want to entrench racial division in our society. I come from a migrant background myself and one of the great things for me growing up and speaking to my father and my parents was that it didn’t matter how long your family had been here once you were an Australian, we’re all equal. And that was something that gave me a lot of comfort. Whether your family was here for one generation, could trace their family back to the First Fleet, or indeed had been here for 60,000 years. We’re all absolutely equal under the law and equal democratic rights, and I just wouldn’t want to see us change that. So for me, it’s not necessarily a don’t know, vote no. It’s a let’s not build in racial divide into our country. In the end, we’re all Australians regardless of our ethnicity.

Andrew Clennell: Nearly out of time. Just a couple of quick things. The PM said yesterday there’s little difference between your stance and the government’s on the voice. What did you make of that?

Michael Sukkar: Oh, he’s kidding himself. How desperate can you get? I mean, we’ve heard for months leading up to this the prime minister virtue signaling about his leadership and the position he was taking on this. No one in the coalition has ever proposed entrenching racial division like this into our Constitution. So, you know, if if he is so desperate that he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel to use those arguments, then maybe the yes case is in more trouble than I was alluding to earlier. The reality is we don’t want to see entrenched in our Constitution – differing rights based on nothing more than the blood that’s flowing through your veins, your ethnicity. As I said, as an Australian with a migrant background, Andrew I consider myself just as Australian.

Andrew Clennell: But you don’t mind the voice. That was his point. You don’t mind? You don’t mind constitutional recognition on one hand and you don’t mind a voice on the other. All he’s doing is putting them together wrong?

Michael Sukkar: No, that is wrong. So constitutional recognition has been essentially Liberal Party policy since John Howard was Prime minister, indeed Labor Party campaigned against it at that referendum like they campaigned against the constitutional recognition that John Howard stood for, which in essence remains our party position. So that is unquestioned. But no, we don’t support a voice. We’ve said that we would support regional and local bodies providing advice to government. That’s not a voice that regional and local bodies just like we do right now, Quite frankly, listening to various groups and particularly in relation to Indigenous policy, but for essentially every portfolio. So look, if the Prime Minister’s so desperate to say there’s nothing to see here, this is all bipartisan, I think they’re in a bit more strife than perhaps many of us thought.

Andrew Clennell: Alright, just finally, Jim Chalmers getting a lot of mileage out of the Intergenerational Report this week. I guess we’ve heard for some time there’s going to be a blowout over a decades in government costs. How worried should we be about this?

Michael Sukkar: Well, look, I don’t think we’d be surprised that a Labor Treasurer is rubbing his hands together to try and have a document that might justify him jacking up all sorts of taxes and charges on Australians. I mean, let’s be frank, Labor governments love these opportunities and will love looking at the Intergenerational Report and looking at the future imposts on government as a great justification for higher taxes. That’s what Labor governments do. I mean, Andrew, I mean Victoria, the Victorian Premier, said he would never increase or impose a new tax. So I think we’re up to about 45 new or higher taxes down here. So I think Jim Chalmers will use this as an opportunity to try and till the soil with the Australian public to either abolish the stage three tax cuts or to impose other taxes and charges all over the economy because that’s in Labor’s DNA, they think they can spend your money better than you can as an Australian – and as Liberals, we think that that money is better in the pocket pockets of individuals to make their decisions of, and government should be no bigger than it needs to be.

Andrew Clennell: Michael Sukkar, Shadow Minister for Housing Social Services, thanks so much for your time this afternoon.

Michael Sukkar: Thank you, Andrew.

Ends