RAF EPSTEIN:
Right now, though, the Senate is being presented yet again with the federal government’s Help to Buy scheme. It is one of the things the federal government wants to do on housing. Effectively, the government owns the house with you, so that makes it easier to get a loan. Clare O’Neil is the Minister for Housing and MP for the southeast Melbourne seat of Hotham. Thanks for joining us.
CLARE O’NEIL:
Good morning, Raf. Good to be with you.
EPSTEIN:
Before I get to your critics, can you just explain simply the Help to Buy scheme? How does it work?
O’NEIL:
This scheme is designed to help 40,000 people who are ordinary Australians get into their own home, because our government has a very basic belief we want to live in an Australia where ordinary people can buy their own property. So, this is designed to help childcare workers, aged care workers, apprentices, hairdressers. And those are the kind of people who are locked out of the housing market today. And effectively, the government comes in as the bank of mum and dad and helps that person put down their deposit, helps them pay off a share of their mortgage, and then when the home is sold, the government is repaid that money. So, this is a really important piece of the government’s agenda. We are trying to help people who are locked out of the housing market, but we need the Greens and the Liberals to come with us. And right now this initiative is being blocked in the parliament by those 2 parties.
EPSTEIN:
Now, the Greens joined us yesterday. Max Chandler‑Mather said, it won’t help the people you say it will help. Let’s just have a listen to what the Greens housing spokesman told us yesterday.
MAX CHANDLER‑MATHER:
The Housing Minister’s not being honest at all. What we understand is that scheme won’t help childcare workers at all.
EPSTEIN:
Clare O’Neil. He says childcare workers would need to spend more than half of their income on a mortgage under this scheme. Is he right?
O’NEIL:
Absolutely not, Raf and I was pretty disappointed to see the way this debate kind of played out yesterday, and I say this with great respect, but there was some very shonky analysis that was produced which was completely wrong, misleading.
EPSTEIN:
He says it’s from the Parliamentary Library.
O’NEIL:
Well, no, I mean, I’d really encourage people to have a look at it. He has done these calculations assuming that a childcare worker is going to buy a very expensive house. What this scheme is designed to do is to assist people to get their journey started on the property ladder. A single childcare worker is going to be looking at properties that are affordable for them. They’re probably in all likelihood going to be doing what a lot of young people do today, Raf, and that is start their journey looking at pretty small apartments in the inner city of Melbourne. And that’s a realistic option. The truth is that there’s a lot of kind of political games that have been played with this bill and I find that really sad, because at the beginning and the end of this, it’s pretty simple. We’ve got a housing crisis on our hands. The Albanese government has a bolder and more ambitious housing agenda than any Commonwealth government has had for decades in this country. Part of that agenda is helping people get into home ownership. Now, we’ve already assisted 120,000 people into home ownership through our Home Guarantee scheme. This is a second set of measures which is specifically designed for the aged care workers and childcare workers, these key workers who got us through the pandemic and helping them into home ownership. And the fact that the Greens are holding this up. This is not why Greens voters send their MP’s to parliament to block critical measures like this.
EPSTEIN:
If you’re in that dispute with the Greens about the childcare workers, they don’t earn heaps. Fifty-five grand to 65 grand is the average. Is there something in that scheme that says, look, you can’t use this and end up paying two thirds of your income going into your mortgage. Is there a way of designing the scheme so that won’t happen?
O’NEIL:
It won’t happen, Raf, because that individual is going to have to get finance, they’re going to have to get a bank loan to support their share of responsibility for the mortgage. And a childcare worker, realistically is not going to get assessed to be able to buy a $950,000 house on their own. We’ve got to be realistic and keep the debate in actual grounded facts. In reality here, the facts are, these are the exact people who are being locked out of the property market. The government is saying, these are people who need and deserve our help and we’ve designed a scheme to do exactly that and it needs to get through the parliament.
EPSTEIN:
They don’t always work, these schemes. The Greens also mentioned the one in NSW. Sometimes they don’t work. The conditions are too tough and no one ends up taking them up.
O’NEIL:
Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen with this scheme. What I see in my travels around the country is a sense of desperation for literally thousands and thousands of people everywhere who will do anything to get into the property market and what they’re waiting for is for an Australian Government to reach down and give them a hand and get them in. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. I do not think that we’re going to have subscription problems with this scheme. I think, if anything, we’re going to have people who are falling over themselves to try to get that massive opportunity, the life changing transformation that it is to own your own home. And this is a really important measure, Raf, one of many things the government is doing about housing, but a very important thing that should be supported.
EPSTEIN:
Clare O’Neil’s the Housing Minister in Anthony Albanese’s federal government. The phone number is 1300 222 774. More broadly, Clare O’Neil, it’s a lot of money to help not that many people. If you’re struggling to persuade the Coalition and the Greens, wouldn’t it be worth sort of paying attention elsewhere and not spending all of that money to help just a few people?
O’NEIL:
Forty thousand people is a lot of people, Raf, and I don’t– I don’t agree with the idea that that’s an insignificant sum. So, let’s just look at some of the numbers here. We’ve got about 100,00 first home buyers coming into the market each year. This would add 10,000 each year to that sum of people. But I do also want to remind your listeners that’s not all that we’re doing. We’ve got this 120,000 people that we’ve helped into the housing market through the Home Guarantee scheme. We’re working really hard with the states to try to really lift construction capacity and build, build, build. We’re helping more than a million people around the country through significant increases to Commonwealth Rent Assistance and we’re supporting renters through really pushing the states to step up on lifting rental standards. We have a very comprehensive plan here, but let’s not ignore home ownership like Raf, you know, we’ve had a housing crisis in this country that’s been cooking for an entire generation. It is time that the Commonwealth government stepped up and said, we are going to engage in the provision of housing for ordinary people. And that is exactly what the Albanese Government is doing.
EPSTEIN:
You said build, build, build. We haven’t had this small number of housing starts in this state in something like 10 years. So, whatever you’ve been doing for the last 2 and a half years, it hasn’t helped building get off the ground in Victoria, we’re building the same number of houses we were building 10 years ago. So, whatever you’ve been trying to do, there isn’t much evidence it’s working in Victoria.
O’NEIL:
There is not a single person in the country, literally, who wants to build these numbers up more than I do. And I acknowledge they’re not where they need to be. We need to build 1.2 million homes over 5 years and I want people to understand the housing crisis is complex and it has many causes. In a sense, the solution is simple and that is that we don’t have enough homes. More homes means more affordable housing. I think it’s clear, though, that we are going to have to do more to work with the sector to improve construction capacity. When we arrived in office, we happened to be elected at a time where construction builds were at their lowest that they’d been for about a decade. And the government is working with states to try to do some big things to shift that. But it’s tough. It is tough. If this was an easy problem to solve, a government would have sorted it out a long time ago. What I can tell you is that there is ironclad and genuine commitment to do something about this problem. For the first time in a long time, we’ve got a Commonwealth government that stepped into housing that’s trying to provide leadership and we are tackling this problem from every single angle. But there’s more that’s got to be done. No one’s going to deny that.
EPSTEIN:
But from every single angle, it’s on you, isn’t it? We don’t even have enough people to build the homes we have. That is on your government, isn’t it? I mean, there’s not the humans to build the houses you want to build.
O’NEIL:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, workforce is a major issue here and for all of the issues that you’ll get raised by construction companies at the moment, one of the first things I’ll say is that we don’t have the labour that we need. And again, there’s lots of different causes to that. What I can tell you is that our government is spending record amounts on trying to build that construction workforce through training more apprentices, through massive investment in fee‑free TAFE, which is starting to churn out literally tens of thousands of tradies who will work in construction. But again, Raf, I just say to you, I mean, I’m responsible in part for this problem. The Commonwealth has got to play a leadership role here. That doesn’t make it simple. The reason we have had a housing crisis in our country boiling away for 30 years is because it’s complicated and it’s difficult to solve. But I can tell you, we’re stepping up and we’re doing everything we can to try to sort this out.
EPSTEIN:
1300 222 774 is the phone number. You’re listening to the housing Minister, Clare O’Neil. The Help to Buy scheme is facing potential rejection in the Senate. Again, Minister, can I just ask you about a vote yesterday in the House of Representatives? Parliament did pass a motion about the October 7 attacks in Israel. Labor and the Coalition did not agree and that is putting it mildly. The language is incredibly heated. How much work was there really to try and get agreement between the Coalition and Labor on this?
O’NEIL:
Firstly, Raf, can I just acknowledge for your listeners, October 7 was a very, very difficult day for a lot of people in Australia and in my community out in the southeast. We’ve got an amazing, thriving Jewish community, and I just want to acknowledge the incredible grief and pain that they’ve felt this week, indeed, every week since October 7. I can tell you very directly and honestly that there was a deep desire on the part of the government to have a bipartisan motion through the House of Representatives to commemorate October 7. We don’t want to see our country divided. Every force, when I look globally, when I look at social media, like, there are lots of things at the moment that are pressing our society to move further and further apart. And part of the role of government and politicians is to try to bring people together. We worked hard to try to get to a space where we could do that. And I don’t want to sound overly political, but my observation, looking at the politics of this, is that Peter Dutton doesn’t want that. His natural instinct is to divide wherever he can, and we saw that again yesterday. It could have been a moment of real unity for the Parliament, instead, we’ve got the government moving one motion and the Liberals doing an alternative. And I do think that’s really sad and it’s not what the community wants of us at a time like this.
EPSTEIN:
When did those negotiations start with the Coalition on trying to get some sort of agreement? It can’t all be their fault.
O’NEIL:
Well, I don’t have that information. I know the Prime Minister was very keen to get a bipartisan motion. I actually did speak to him about that. I don’t know the exact timeline of when he spoke to the Opposition Leader and the like. Raf people will make their own judgments. I’m a member of the government and I’m very, very conscious that we want to see the country brought together. It’s not the Australia we want, where people are fighting over every single thing that happens globally and domestically. We’ve got, you know, big challenges as a country and we’re not going to work through these when we’re divided on issues like this. And there was a genuine intent to do a bipartisan motion. The Liberals did not agree to that. People can look at the politics and, I think, make up their own mind about who and why that may have happened.
EPSTEIN:
Clare O’Neil is a Melbourne MP, the seat of Hotham. She’s also, of course, Housing Minister. Thank you for your time this morning.
O’NEIL:
Thanks so much, Raf. Really good to talk to you.