Rafael Epstein:
The numbers don’t look great for the housing market in terms of the continual ever‑upward rise in prices. The number of auctions has halved, prices for houses peaked last year and what’s in the headlines today is that for the first time in 15 years prices have dropped in every capital in Australia over a 3‑month period.
So I want to know if that is good or bad for you. The number’s 1300 222 774. It’s 23 minutes to 9.
We are joined now by Clare O’Neil. She’s the Minister for Housing, so she’s part of Anthony Albanese’s federal Cabinet. She’s also the ALP MP for the seat of Hotham, which covers suburbs like Clayton and Oakleigh.
Good morning, thank you for coming in.
Clare O’Neil:
So nice to be with you, Raf, really appreciate your time.
Epstein:
House prices come down, just in general, is that good news or bad news?
O’Neil:
Well, it’s a cyclical market, and the fact that house prices are softening in Australia is something that happens every couple of years. So I think it’s important to get the context.
What is really clear to me as Housing Minister of our country is that house‑price growth over the last generation is unsustainable for the nation. There’s a great deal of media interest in looking at what happens month to month, year to year. My job is to see the big picture, and the big picture is that over a 25‑year period in our country house prices have grown by 400 per cent, and the results of that for the nation are not surprising. We have seen first‑home owner rates fall through the floor, and particularly amongst young people and particularly amongst working class and low‑income young people.
So the Australia that you and I were raised in was an egalitarian and beautiful place in part because housing was affordable for ordinary people; that is changing. So we do need to see –
Epstein:
Did you want it to change?
O’Neil:
We do need –
Epstein:
Did you want it to change?
O’Neil:
Well, I do want it to change. We need house‑price growth slow. You talked about what’s going on in the market today. Let me just remind you that what’s happening in that softening at the moment is part of a picture where house prices have grown 50 per cent just since the beginning of COVID.
We’ve got chronic affordability problems facing the country on housing; we need to build more homes, and that’s a really important part of the answer. But remember that what our government has fixed here is a system where every young person who is listening to this radio show right now was having to pay taxes into a system to subsidise investors to buy their second and fifth and 10th property when they can’t afford to buy a home deposit.
That is not a functional housing market. And that’s why we’ve made that big switch, so that in every auction that happens this Saturday and every auction into the future, first‑home buyers are actually standing on a level playing field with the support of government through the 5% deposit program and other programs.
Epstein:
Maybe one issue is for first‑home buyers who buy on the edge of the city, house prices are still up a lot; Pakenham, Cranbourne, Officer, Melton. Those house prices have gone up 25 per cent in the medium term. So they’ve gone up – I looked those numbers up this morning – so in Pakenham and Melton prices have gone up 25 per cent in the last 5 years.
So I take your point about trying to help first‑home buyers. Where a lot of first‑home buyers purchased, it hasn’t helped them. That’s a problem, isn’t it?
O’Neil:
Well, it is a problem, Raf, and I would never come on your show and pretend that the housing crisis is fixed and everything’s fine from here. We’ve got a 40‑year‑old crisis that’s been built up in part because Commonwealth and state governments have dropped the ball, stepped back and not done enough, and that is changing, not just under our government but as well your state government here in Victoria.
One of the reasons we have such chronic issues with housing is for 40 years we haven’t been building enough homes; we have a chronic housing shortage which is most severe at the affordable end of the market.
So what is our government doing about this? Well, funny you should ask, because we made a big announcement with the Victorian state government yesterday about working with them to build many homes that are directly for first‑home buyers.
Epstein:
This is the stuff on government land?
O’Neil:
Exactly. So just to briefly explain this, what we have said to the Victorian Government is, we will pay you to support housing infrastructure, the boring but important bits of water and sewerage and all the other things that have to happen before you can even start building a home. In exchange, we want you to step up and build homes for first‑home buyers around the country.
So this is the kind of creativity that you’re starting to see from Australian governments. You have a state government and a federal government working in lockstep, to say there is no civilised country in the world where the government doesn’t engage in housing to make sure that people on lower incomes get support. We need to think a lot more about how we can do that more fundamentally, and that deal in Victoria is a big part of our work.
Epstein:
Clare O’Neil is the Housing Minister in the federal government. It is 18 minutes to 9 on 774. Talking about house prices are falling and how we help people who need to buy homes.
Just to continue on that theme, Clare O’Neil, you call the deal announced yesterday creative. The Property Council are sort of tearing their teeth out in frustration. They’re saying it’s still just too expensive to build; you’re almost crowding them out. If the state and federal government need to step in and build houses, that’s proof you’re not doing enough to let people like the Property Council build. I mean the issue is we’re not building enough houses. You’re still in the way, is their argument.
O’Neil:
Well, I don’t – that’s not how I read what the Property Council believes about the work of our government generally on housing.
But if I can just step back. Like, let’s be real here, this is a really damn hard problem for the country to solve. If it was easy, then I wouldn’t be sitting in front of you getting these questions.
What I want people to take away from this is you are seeing a level of engagement, resourcing and activism on housing from every level of government that we haven’t seen as a country since the post‑war period.
Epstein:
Where’s the proof of that?
O’Neil:
And we are making – well, we are making progress. I mean if you’re looking for proof, Raf, I wouldn’t look any further than what’s happening here in Victoria. We’ve had a state government that’s really started to really engage on housing quite a while ago, like before I think a lot of other state governments engaged in the same. We have seen Victoria build a very large number of homes. They have built more homes around Victoria than any other state or territory in the country right now for about the last 5 or 6 years, and –
Epstein:
But it’s still not –
O’Neil:
– what are you seeing in Victoria, Raf? You’re seeing slower, more sustainable house‑price growth, you’re seeing rents growing at a much more sustainable level than any other state or territory, and you’re seeing more first‑home buyers in the market.
So just with housing, big, difficult problem for the country. What I don’t want to get lost is the progress that we’re making here, and we are making progress.
Just under our government, if I can give you another example, right now across the country there are more homes under construction than there have ever been in Australian history. We’ve got 250,000 homes being built.
Epstein:
Can I interrupt? I want to interrupt.
O’Neil:
Yep.
Epstein:
You’re the Housing Minister. I know you’ve got a good grasp on the numbers. It is true Victoria’s been building a lot of houses, I appreciate that. It’s still nowhere near enough. The Property Council is saying housing supply is dropping off a cliff.
So a lot of what you say may well be true, but it’s only part of the problem. It costs a fortune –
O’Neil:
Yep.
Epstein:
– to build houses.
O’Neil:
Absolutely.
Epstein:
All of your tax changes, house prices coming down, that is not being fixed; it’s still not addressed; it still costs too much to build a house.
O’Neil:
Yeah, I really hear what you’re saying, and I hear your frustration, and Raf, let me just remind you that one of the reasons housing is such a chronic problem for the country is that there’s no silver bullet here. We are actually seeing the effects of about 20 broken systems: a planning system, a tax system, a Construction Code that doesn’t function correctly. All of these problems need to get fixed and I want your viewers to know that governments are actually engaging with this and fixing them one by one.
Epstein:
It’s on Labor, right, you guys have been there for close to 5 years.
O’Neil:
– yep, yep, yep, so –
Epstein:
– and Labor’s been in this state for most of this century.
O’Neil:
And really important, Raf, that you give your listeners the full picture. Yes, big issues. But I want them to know, more houses under construction around the country right now than there have ever been before. Our government has delivered more first‑home buyers around Australia than we’ve ever seen before on average over the life of our government.
Do we have a lot more work to do? Hell, yes, we do, of course we do. If this was an easy problem to solve, then it wouldn’t be a chronic underlying for the country. But we are making progress here, and yes, we still have a long way to go.
Epstein:
Clare O’Neil’s the Housing Minister. I want to know from you what you make of house prices going up or down. I’ll give you some of the very mixed picture in Melbourne soon as well, out of – the headlines contain some interesting stories about Melbourne house prices.
Clare O’Neil, before I let you go, I do want to address the thing that has dominated the week, that is of course the horrific attack on Helen Haines. Before I ask you about that, I’m sure a lot of people saw and heard Phil Haines, her husband, speaking at the Alfred yesterday afternoon; it was on Charlie’s broadcast live on Charlie’s drive show.
Here’s just a little bit of what Phil Haines said.
[Excerpt]
Phil Haines:
The 2 most important parts of Helen for us as a family are her heart and her mind. Her heart is huge. She is a very compassionate, caring, loving person, incredibly supportive of all around her – her family, her community, anybody she comes across.
[End of excerpt]
Epstein:
He was incredibly calm in the midst of – I don’t know what. Clare, what would you say about what he said, and about what happened to Helen Haines?
O’Neil:
It represented the kind of gracious, big‑hearted approach that Helen took to all of her public engagements, and how he had the capacity to stand up and address the media yesterday, I just cannot fathom.
What this family must have gone through over the past couple of days is life‑shattering. And Helen’s life is never going to be the same again after what’s happened.
So, you know, we’re having to come on as politicians now, roll into, you know, more debates and media commentary. The grief that the country is experiencing about this is desperately profound.
Epstein:
Why is it hitting you so hard?
O’Neil:
Because Helen’s our friend, and she’s our colleague, and she’s just experienced a vicious, brutal attack that comes from a place of anger and hatred that’s really hard to appreciate and understand. So that’s the first piece.
And then I think also a realisation that this does represent a bit of a turning point for us and a desperation on the part of politicians to not let this change the free way that we interact with the public here in Australia. We have a very egalitarian approach to politician in Australia, where, you know, I do my own grocery shopping, and I do street stalls and I talk to people and I make myself accessible, and that’s part of my job.
Epstein:
Do people come up to you in supermarket?
O’Neil:
Absolutely. Oh, you bet they do, Raf, especially in this role that I’m in in housing, and –
Epstein:
Has that now become scary?
O’Neil:
Um, no, I don’t want to say that. I really don’t want to give the impression that the life of an Australian politician today is full of rage and aggression, because there is a chasm between the in‑person interactions I have with people and what I experience online.
Nine out of 10 interactions that I have with real people are warm, positive, encouraging, even when they’re critical of something that I’ve said or that the government is doing. The online environment’s completely different. And you know, if people are interested to see what we’re putting up with, find any female politician and just go and have a look at the comments that they get on their Facebook posts. It’s an unspeakable, violent tirade that we experience.
The thing that’s most worrying about what’s happened to Helen is this feeling that what’s being said and done online is filtering into the culture of how we treat one another as Australians. And that’s the thing that we’ve all got to grapple with. It’s not just about politics and politicians; this is about the respect that we have for one another as citizens of our great country, and how we go back to a world where politeness, civility and respect are just the norms of how we engage.
Just one other thing I wanted to share with you. I worry a lot about the way that Australians see politics and how that’s changing over time. I feel like we live in a culture which is obsessed with conflict, and that’s what Australians see of politics.
That’s not the whole picture of what we do. Yes, there’s Question Time where people are very direct with each other; yes, there are moments where people at the fringes say things that shouldn’t be said.
The majority of the work we do in politics is actually collegiate, and it’s collaborative, and it’s bipartisan.
Like did you know that 80 per cent of legislation that goes through the Australian Parliament goes through with the support of basically everyone in the parliament? But that never gets reported because all that’s interesting is conflict and aggression and, you know, the more outrageous the better. That’s not a good culture for our country.
I just leave you with one example. Helen Haines is passionate about housing, and she’s passionate about housing in the regions, and she and I have had lots of engagements. And in the last Budget we got this $2 billion Infrastructure Fund that was specifically about trying to help local councils build housing around the country.
Helen and I worked on that together, and we were able to deliver that. Not a single news article got written about it. It was the collaboration that happens every day in the parliament that’s invisible to ordinary people. And I want them to see that most of the work we do. It has the national interest firmly at heart, and we treat each other properly, and that’s got to be a part of the picture.
Epstein:
Thank you for coming in.
O’Neil:
Thanks Raf.
Epstein:
Clare O’Neil’s the federal Member for the seat of Hotham right here in Melbourne. She’s the federal Labor minister. You heard what she had to say. She had reflections on Helen Haines, on the conversations we have in public, on house prices, ‘cause that’s what politics is all about; many, many things. I’ll be back with your calls.