Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Chris Kenny – Sky News

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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KENNY – SKY NEWS

Thursday 22 February, 2024

TOPICS: Labor’s housing crisis, border security

E&OE

Chris Kenny: Let’s go to Melbourne now and catch up with Shadow Housing Minister Michael Sukkar. Good for you to join us. Michael, I’ve got to get your response to this stuff from Anthony Albanese. Now, there’s a debate to be had about whether he’s resourcing Operation Sovereign Borders well-enough, whether he’s tough enough on these issues, what sort of security checks have been put in place for refugees from Gaza and all that. But to just dismiss this willy-nilly as an opposition fear campaign, surely insults the people of Australia.

Michael Sukkar: Well, it’s a huge insult to Australians and we have the department saying themselves that there are fewer surveillanced flights. We’ve seen boats arriving off our coast in WA. And let’s not forget Anthony Albanese’s history. I mean, he was a senior minister in the Rudd government that dismantled Howard’s very successful border protection policies. He then went to the 2013 election saying Operation Sovereign Borders wouldn’t work, you can’t turn back boats. He then in 2015, led the charge within the Labor Party at Labor conference to oppose turnbacks and now as Prime Minister we see everything unfolding in front of our eyes now. We know his heart’s not in it. And surprise, surprise, the Labor Government is now looking as though they’re delivering weaker borders at a time when they’ve said to Australians, there’s no difference between us and the Coalition and, in the end he’s hoping that Australians have amnesia and don’t remember his extraordinarily weak background on borders throughout his entire public life.

Chris Kenny: But more importantly, he’s hoping that no more boats will turn up. But the point is he’s got to stop them. The first thing he should do there, of course, is reintroduce the previous level of aerial and water patrols to try and make sure they intercept every boat that comes. But on Gaza, refugees and security checks, it’s impossible to do a proper security check on someone in Gaza in the current circumstances within a number of days. What is the alternative here is that surely you can’t just leave people there in that situation if you think they’ve got a right to come back here, should they perhaps be held somewhere like Christmas Island? Looked after well there of course. But while the authorities have some time to do proper security checks.

Michael Sukkar: Look, Chris, it’s laughable the idea that you can do thorough vetting of any individual coming from a part of the world that’s been governed by Hamas, that you could do that in 24 hours is ridiculous. And it doesn’t matter what the prime minister says. We know for a fact that you cannot do the sorts of thorough checks that I think most Australians would expect. Australians have a big heart, but expect also that migrants to this country have been thoroughly vetted for security, health and other purposes. And if the Labor Government is seriously suggesting that they’re suddenly able to process these things within 24 hours, I think it just doesn’t pass the pub test and in the end, it seems as though they have been more determined to rush through the process than have the best interests of Australians at heart.

Chris Kenny: Yeah, you got to get this stuff right. I want to come to your portfolio now – housing. Now Labor made big promises about a couple of hundred thousand extra houses. We know the immigration rate is higher than it’s ever been. We have a housing crisis. How are we going getting more housing stock into the marketplace?

Michael Sukkar: Well, let me tell you how we’re going, Chris. We’ve got first home buyers at their lowest level since the Gillard government. We’ve got building activity at it’s lowest levels since the global financial crisis. We’ve got rents rising at more than 10% and we’ve got approvals of new homes at record lows. So, sadly it means Labor’s housing crisis that we all saw in 2023 is going to get worse in 2024. And what’s their response? Their response has been to make a promise into the never, never of 2029 that they’d build 1.2 million homes. We think, conservatively speaking, that they’re going to fall short of about 400,000. Now, we’re not talking about a rounding error. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of homes short. And as you quite rightly point out, as we’re building record low numbers of homes, Australians are locked out of the housing market. The Labor government last year brought in 520,000 migrants. Record levels of migration with absolutely no idea of where those people will live. They have no plan for housing. They are not interested in Australians realising that aspiration of owning their own home, because in the 20 months they’ve been in government, they’ve not spoken about first home buyers once.

Chris Kenny: Yeah, we’ve got to get more people buying and building their own homes. There’s nothing surer than that. You can’t just leave it to government to do all this. Thanks for joining us, Michael. Appreciate your time.

Ends