Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Laura Jayes – Sky News

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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH LAURA JAYES – SKY NEWS

Tuesday 19 March, 2024

TOPICS: Labor’s housing crisis, Migration intake

E&OE

Laura Jayes: Welcome back you’re watching AM Agenda. Australia cannot build enough homes at the moment and migration is putting even more pressure on that. On this program over the last couple of days, we’ve showed you data points that show that home construction and approvals at their lowest rate, also rental availability well below 1% in some major cities. So that housing target. What does that mean at the moment? 1.2 million new homes in five years. That was a promise by Anthony Albanese. That looks like a pipe dream at this point. Joining me now is the shadow Housing Minister, Michael Sukkar. Michael, thanks so much for your time. Look, not all of this is the federal government’s fault. This can’t be done through one level of government, but it is well behind. What’s the quick solution here?

Michael Sukkar: Well, just to touch on that, Laura, what is in the government’s control is the number of migrants they allow into this country. And the analysis that has been reported widely today that you’ve touched on as well, Laura, shows that we’ve got migrants running at four times the number of homes being built. So we’ve got migration over the past 18 months of about 900,000. We’ve got about 250,000 homes built. We see the Urban Development Institute say today that those number of homes being built is going to drop even further. And we see that through the approvals data. So what is in the government’s control is you either have an uncontrolled migration program that has absolutely nothing to do with the number of homes being built, or you have a planned migration program and that’s really the point we’re making, and that is the government’s control. And then finally, Laura in relation to the 1.2 million homes, a promise from the government. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on. We’ve now got new home builds at nearly 20 year lows at a time when migration is being ramped up. So that is squarely in the Government’s control and no wonder we now see rents up 26% since the government was in power. And again, as you say, vacancy rates at historic lows.

Laura Jayes: Houses don’t get built overnight or even indeed in two years. So I think there’s a failure of successive governments past and present. Wouldn’t you agree?

Michael Sukkar: Well, what we’ve seen since the election is everything get worse. So I’m not for a second suggesting, Laura, that it was all perfect previously. But when I was housing minister, we had first time buyers hit nearly 170,000 a year. We had new home starts increasing, we had approvals increasing because we were a government that was very focused on home ownership, very focused on ensuring that every Australian had the aspiration to own a home. Not everything was perfect, but what we’ve seen since the election of a Labor government is, as I say, new home builds down, first home buyers at the lowest levels for over ten years. Approvals down and rents up. So everything is getting exponentially worse. And at the same time we see the Labor Party making these commitments of 1.2 million homes that let’s be frank, look, they know they’re not going to get within hundreds of thousands of that target.

Laura Jayes: It is a target. You’ve got to have a target. It wasn’t a promise. You got to have a target. And whether you made it or not is a big problem. Let’s go back and talk about migration for a second.

Michael Sukkar: Well, Laura, they’re not they’re not even going to get close.

Laura Jayes: No they’re not and we’ve been we’ve known that for quite some time. But it’s up to the states to build them as well. And the states are lagging.

Michael Sukkar: They haven’t admitted that they won’t meet that target, Laura, so I…

Laura Jayes: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s well into next term. But let’s talk about migration, because that’s the immediate problem here. You say it’s too high at the moment. Jobs still need to be filled. We still need the skilled migrants to help build these houses so that’s the problem. So what level should it be at? And you know what migrants intake should be slowed down. Would you slow down students? Would you slow down Skilled visas.? Humanitarian visas don’t make up a huge cohort here. So where do you cut?

Michael Sukkar: Well, firstly, Laura, and very perversely, the government has not been ramping up migration of the sorts of trades that we need to build the homes. Quite the contrary, they’ve actually reduced that cohort of skilled migration for people who are building the homes, whether they’re the electricians, the plumbers, the carpenters, they have not been the source of our increase in migration. So that’s the first point. And so the suggestion from the government that somehow their uncontrolled migration has been an attempt to build up the industry so to build more homes is wrong. They’ve actually done the opposite. In the end, Laura, I always say this to you and I say it whenever I’m discussing this, I’m a product of migration. I’m a huge supporter of migration, as is the Coalition. But you’ve got to have planned migration…

Laura Jayes: Okay but what number should it be?

Michael Sukkar: …With migration running at 900,000.

Laura Jayes: You keep criticising the Government, saying it’s too high, so what should actually be? Let’s put it on the table.

Michael Sukkar: Well, it needs to be a lot smaller and it needs to be tied to the amount of infrastructure you can deliver. This idea that governments get a free kick and can just bring in.

Laura Jayes: So you want migration to be tied to housing and infrastructure. So that would mean if there’s no houses being built at the moment at a rapid rate or infrastructure being built in a city like Sydney, they should be next to no migration.

Michael Sukkar: Well, it needs to be absolutely calibrated to the number of homes you can build, the infrastructure you can deliver, because in the end, Laura, we are a migrant nation, but we do that in order to create a better society for Australians that live here. And if running an uncontrolled migration program makes the standard of living of Australians worse and even worse, Laura, makes the next generation of Australians feel as though they’re unable to ever own their own home, or let’s be frank, even get a rental in their own city.

Laura Jayes: Absolutely. It’s horrific. So of course. Let’s let’s watch what you’re saying on the on the figures that we have at the moment, tied to migration, sorry, tied to infrastructure and housing for the next couple of years, that should be almost reduced to zero or a couple hundred, a couple of thousand a year.

Michael Sukkar: Well, our shadow spokesman will outline all of those policies in time, but I don’t think it’s controversial for me to say, and I quite forcefully, that absolutely the migration intake has to be connected to the infrastructure and the housing that can be delivered. And if the government’s suggesting that they can continue to bring hundreds of thousands of new migrants in without the homes being built, we vehemently disagree in the Coalition. We think Australians should be able to get a rental, should be able to aspire to own a home and in that sense you’ve got to tie your migration to the number of homes that you built.

Laura Jayes: All right, Michael, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.

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

Ends