STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:
One of the blokes who probably should be a senior Minister in the government, but doesn't get involved in all the factional games, is Andrew Leigh, the Member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Andrew, good morning.
ANDREW LEIGH:
Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you and your listeners.
CENATIEMPO:
A lot to talk about this morning. The Dunkley by‑election of course has been the big political news over the last week or so after the tragic passing of Peta Murphy. She was a very, very popular local member in Dunkley.
But the result, whilst it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a win for the Coalition, the government's got to be concerned about the swing.
LEIGH:
Stephen, I really appreciated the way you started talking about Peta, because this is a by‑election I desperately wish we'd never had to have. I'd known Peta for a quarter of a century, as somebody who was just a wonderfully genuine person, and a fantastic local MP.
I was pleased to see Jodie Belyea retaining that seat for the Labor Party over the weekend, not surprised to see Peter Dutton redefining defeat as victory, and clearly, it's another mark of approval for the government. After all, this is a seat we held by 6.3 per cent in the face of a normal 7 per cent swing against governments in by‑elections.
CENATIEMPO:
Yeah, but thank on, hang on, Andrew. I've got to pull you up there. Redefining it as defeat from victory; I mean this was a three and a half per cent swing against the government, and we know that when – in the circumstances and tragic circumstances indeed, those uniform swings don't hold up.
LEIGH:
Well, if you just look at the average swing, it was certainly well down on that, and Peter Dutton's extreme campaign, all of the fear‑mongering about migrants, all of that was shown up to be to be hot air. Obviously, the Liberal Party primary vote went up because some of the extreme parties that have run in the past didn't run candidates, and their vote went into the Liberal Party.
But if you look at the dodgy tweet by Sussan Ley, the awful ads by Advance this was a nastier campaign, and I think that sort of negative politics really turned off the voters of Dunkley.
CENATIEMPO:
Well, I still say a three and a half per cent swing against the government is not a win. You've obviously got to be concerned that the voters out there are hurting, they're concerned about the cost of living, and they're concerned about whether or not the government's doing enough.
LEIGH:
I'd always expect a swing against the government in a by‑election, Stephen, but we are keenly aware that people are hurting and that there's a lot of cost‑of‑living pressure out there.
The reason that every taxpayer will get a tax cut from 1 July is that we rejigged the tax cuts to make sure that people earning under $45,000 still get a tax cut. At the last Budget, we increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by the biggest amount since its inception, tripled the bulk‑billing rebate. We've now got more medications coming on to 60‑day prescribing, which is saving people money. Those with chronic health conditions are often some of those under the greatest cost‑of‑living pressures, and so what we've done on cheaper medicines really matters for them.
And the ambitious housing agenda we have deals with one of the big challenges for young Australians, who are feeling like they're locked out of the housing market, helped by the Housing Australia Future Fund, 1.2 million homes that the Commonwealth's looking to build and in concert with States and Territories, all of that focused on a big challenge of affordability.
CENATIEMPO:
Let ’s talk about that, the homes. I mean the federal government is not going to build a single house, and nor should they. I mean nobody's expecting that the federal government is going to go out there and build anything, because it's not what federal governments do. But there's been a lot of talk and a lot of rhetoric, and a lot of talk about money being spent, but not a lot of result yet.
LEIGH:
The Housing Australia Future Fund is about providing $30 billion to build more homes – which will be churning out tens of thousands of homes. The work that we're doing with States and Territories is really around making sure that they've got the planning and zoning right for the commercial sector to get out there.
I mean you're right, Stephen, that this is largely going to be a private sector initiative. We need more private sector developers out there building more homes. We've been under‑building in terms of our population for a while now. One of the reasons why we've seen these significant increases in prices, and why house prices are racing away from wages, and –
CENATIEMPO:
Isn't that a reason why we need to look at our immigration intake?
LEIGH:
We certainly are, and immigration would have been higher under the settings of the former government. So we're making sure that we've got migrants coming in to fill skills gaps, not to supplant workers, and the best judge of that is to look at the fact that we're still at full employment, we've still got unemployment sitting at around 4 per cent, a terrific marker for the Australian labour market by any historical standards.
We talk to lots of employers, they talk about the skills shortages, including the building industry, Stephen. We want to build more homes, many of those homes are going to be built through migrant labour.
CENATIEMPO:
Yeah, look, I don't disagree that we have a skills shortage, I just wonder if our immigration mix is actually exacerbating the problem rather than fixing it.
I do want to move on to ASEAN. The leaders are touching down in Australia for the ASEAN Summit. This is probably a more important summit than we've seen in recent years because of the rising threat of China. How do we take on a leadership role, because a lot of these countries are going to be looking towards us to, I guess, mitigate the threat of China, and the influence that it has in the region.
LEIGH:
The engagement with ASEAN is incredibly important. For me, it's got a strong family lineage, my father Michael Leigh just got a Medal of the Order of Australia in the latest Australian Honours awards for his work engaging with Asia, and he's currently in Malaysia continuing his work there.
The ASEAN Summit reflects 50 years of partnership between Australia and ASEAN. We've got to make sure that we've got a stable, secure and safe region, that we build shared prosperity.
In fact you'll see initiatives coming out this week around education, around more Australians being educated and working overseas and vice versa, about investments, getting more dollars, more investment into areas like clean technology and transport infrastructure in Australia, and about building those trade networks, because one in four Australian jobs depend on trade. So we've got to make sure that we've got those exports flowing, and the benefits of competition from international imports.
CENATIEMPO:
Andrew, I always enjoy talking to you. You handle yourself a lot better than most of your local counterparts, and I'll catch up with you in a couple of weeks.
LEIGH:
I'll take that as a compliment and leave the other as a comment! Thanks Stephen.