Michael Sukkar MP

Interview with Tom Connell – NewsDay, Sky News

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

TRANSCRIPT

 INTERVIEW WITH  TOM CONNELL – NEWSDAY, SKY NEWS

Wednesday, 21 June 2023

TOPICS: Housing

E&OE

Tom Connell: Shadow Housing Minister Michael Sukkar joins me to fix the whole housing problem in Australia. I’m sure. So thanks for your time.

Michael Sukkar: Thanks, Tom.

Tom Connell: Is it a housing crisis and if so, what’s going wrong specifically? What’s broken about it?

Michael Sukkar: Well, there is no doubt a housing crisis. I mean, what we’ve seen particularly since this government’s been in office, is lower housing approvals, lower numbers of houses being built, first home buyers down and rents up. At the same time, we’ve seen the government drastically increasing migration. So I can tell you, I’m someone who absolutely supports a planned migration system, but you can’t propose to drastically increase the number of migrants we’re bringing to Australia without any clue about where they’re going to live. And that’s what we’re partly seeing with vacancy rates being so low with rental markets around the country. And the answer from the Labor Government is when we say, how are you going to house 1.5 million migrants over the next five years? They say, well, we’re setting up our fund, which will build 30,000 over that five year period. You don’t need to be a maths genius to work out that they’re not fair dinkum about doing what’s necessary to ensure that there’s the number of houses for the drastic increase in migration that they’re proposing.

Tom Connell: That’s the social and affordable. So most of the markets are always going to be private. What do you think on social and affordable housing though? Is more needed and if so, what’s your alternative to what Labor’s putting up?

Michael Sukkar: Well, social and affordable housing, even what we saw from the Labor Party on the weekend is you need to identify the projects. What are the projects, where is the land, who are you partnering, who’s building them, how are they being funded?

Tom Connell: That’s the micro. But if they’re starting from the macro, we need more. Do you agree with that?

Michael Sukkar: Always with the growing population, you always need more social and affordable homes. Absolutely. We’ve got a growing population and of course you need more. You need to ensure that you’re keeping up with the demand. Now, we’ve seen in all of the jurisdictions, particularly even in my home state of Victoria, waitlists for social and affordable housing are longer than ever. We’ve had a long term Labor Government in Victoria, so there’s no doubt that there’s a problem there. But I’ll get back to the point I was making even the announcement on the weekend of an additional $2 billion. It was obviously a rushed announcement. It was obviously done in order to try and placate the Greens to get their support in the Senate. But unless you identify the projects, what is actually being built, I fear for that $2 billion will just end up being subsumed into state and territory housing budgets. There won’t be any additional housing. It’ll just be business as usual. What was already on the agenda for those states and territories without an additional house being built.

Tom Connell: Housing is a long running issue. I’m not going to go into. You know, Coalition years.

Michael Sukkar: I’m very happy to go int the Coalition years.

Tom Connell: My point is it’s a slow building issue. You know, Labor didn’t come in and then overnight we had a crisis. Is there something broken about the approvals and the levels of government? Would you like to figure out a way where councils are no longer part of the hold-up? Are they the red tape? Do you know, like these three levels? Is that never going to be a good process?

Michael Sukkar: Look, there’s the one area, I think, where there’s absolute, you know, unanimous view is, is that clearly planning and zoning. And when I was housing minister, I spoke about it a lot and I wasn’t particularly popular with state and territory housing ministers when I would say this, but there’s clearly a huge problem with the time it takes.

Tom Connell: But in addition but also density and just getting NIMBYism, do you see that as a problem?

Michael Sukkar: Well, that’s a factor of the same problem, but there’s also the taxation burden on housing. So every State Government now sees housing as a great place to go and tax. In Victoria, we’ve got the Labor Government in Victoria now putting on an additional. Some people have estimated an additional $65,000 with their windfall gain tax on every single new lot, typically for first home buyers that will go out the door. Higher land taxes, higher stamp duties. I think if we’re talking about what can the government do, one thing that Julie Collins, the Housing Minister, and the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, should do is get on the phone to their Labor colleagues in all of the states and say, stop taxing, stop increasing taxing on on houses because there’s analysis that says around and in some jurisdictions 44% of the cost of a new home are taxes and regulatory charges. It’s nearly half the cost of a new home is the tax take and they are being ratcheted up by Labor governments around the country. So I don’t know why the Federal Labor Government can’t get on the phone and start trying to address those.

Tom Connell: One of the other proposals around accessing super to buy your first home. You took to the last election. You’re going to take it again. We’ll see what form. It’s interesting though, because everyone gets access on the day it comes in one day, July 1st of whatever year everyone eligible is suddenly getting access. How many people would that be? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands, millions that would suddenly be in that market?

Michael Sukkar: Well, there’s no doubt it would be tens of thousands. It wouldn’t all be in one go.

Tom Connell: It wouldn’t be in one go?

Michael Sukkar: No, it wouldn’t be for a whole host of reasons.

Tom Connell: But they’d all be eligible?

Michael Sukkar: There’d be a there’d be a chunk of people who become eligible. Absolutely. That’s the whole point. I’m not suggesting it’s a small policy. It’s a significant policy. I mean, one of the biggest barriers for first time buyers to get into the market is that deposit hurdle. And what we see, particularly in a market that’s rising, is on day one, you think you need to save a certain amount to buy a home. But as the market continues to grow, you get further and further away. So the way to break that is through that to help with the deposit hurdle. We think superannuation loan money is your money. It belongs to Australians and there’s nothing more infuriating in speaking to first home buyers or prospective first home buyers that I speak to. When you’re madly trying to get your deposit together, yet you’ve got a lot of your own money locked away that could be used to help you buy your first home.

Tom Connell: And the questions are how many, how many people get on that day?

Michael Sukkar: It would be significant. It’d be tens of thousands. And we are glad that it’s significant because it would significantly help.

Tom Connell: We’ll delve into it again I’m getting getting the wrap I’ve got to go.

Michael Sukkar: Good on you.

Tom Connell: Not my fault, Michael Sukkar, Thank you.

Ends