Laura Jayes:
I spoke with the Housing Minister a little earlier.
Minister Sukkar:
Well, Laura, it’s very clear from what the Leader of the Opposition outlined last night with housing that you can’t trust Labor with a calculator let alone trust them with the economy or with housing. What Anthony Albanese has promised last night through the establishment of his housing fund means that, in order to work and in order to deliver the houses that he’s promised in that speech, this housing fund would need returns of nearly 25 per cent. Now the Future Fund at present has a benchmark rate of return of about 6 per cent and yet he’s making promises that seem to rely on a 25 per cent return. I think that most Australians would love to know where you can get 25 per cent. Now this is either a catastrophic clanger, an error, a budget error the like of which we have not seen for many, many decades or Anthony Albanese’s being dishonest. One or the other, either of them are bad. So you can’t unfortunately take anything serious that they proposed in housing last night because they obviously cannot fund what they’ve proposed. So it’s unfortunately very underwhelming what we saw last night from the Leader of the Opposition.
Laura Jayes:
Your Government doesn’t really have a leg to stand on though when it comes to big spending, does it? You can’t really sit here and criticise Labor for big spending after the budget that you’ve just handed down?
Minister Sukkar:
Well Anthony Albanese didn’t speak about aged care; he didn’t lay out a plan for mental health. The remarkable part of last night’s speech was just how little was in it. In the end, what we’ve been able to do in Australia, on virtually any metric throughout the Covid‑19 economic meteor which has hit this country, is ensure that our economy is at the front of the pack. Whether its jobs returning, whether its unemployment now at 5.6 per cent. In the budget on Tuesday night we outlined our plan which will see unemployment drop to below 5 per cent. What we’re doing is wisely investing to yes, provide Australians with the services they require, but empowering Australians and Australian businesses to create the prosperity and the jobs and the economic growth that we need in order to fund that. What we saw last night was a grab bag of gripes and again – in my own space of housing – numbers that, Laura, are not just out by a little bit, we’re not talking about numbers being out by a smidge, these are numbers that are so far wrong, it is catastrophically embarrassing for the Labor Party.
Laura Jayes:
But building this kind of affordable housing would have productivity gains and stimulatory gains in the economy, wouldn’t it?
Minister Sukkar:
Well that’s why we do it. That’s why we’re already deliver 10,000 homes through the Morrison Government’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. That’s why we invested $2.5 billion to deliver 130,000 homes through HomeBuilder. What the Labor Party is proposing – even though their numbers just don’t stack up – is to spend five times as much for one sixth the number of dwellings. So we’re already doing that, we’re doing it at a scale, quite frankly, that has not been seen for many decades. So what Labor proposed last night was to deliver fewer houses than what the Morrison Government is, and using a funding model that requires a 25 per cent return. It’s just remarkable that they could get their numbers this wrong.
Laura Jayes:
Well shouldn’t we be concerned then that, Michael Sukkar, your Government is rolling out these affordable homes and we are seeing house prices that are completely out of control at the moment?
Minister Sukkar:
Well let’s go back a year, Laura, when economists at most of our big four banks were suggesting huge reductions in house prices. In fact, one economist at one large bank said that house prices might drop by 30 per cent. We responded with HomeBuilder, we’ve responded with the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. On Tuesday night we outlined further measure including the Family Home Guarantee to help single parents enter the housing market, and what have all of those policies done? It’s actually led to first home buyers being at their highest levels, Laura, for nearly 15 years.
Laura Jayes:
Yes, but isn’t it true that those same economists are now saying that first home buyers will be priced out of the market very soon – if not already – and in capital cities, it’s still virtually impossible?
Minister Sukkar:
Well Laura the first home buyer numbers disabuse that fact. First home buyers, as I said, are at their highest levels for nearly 15 years. We’ve got owner‑occupiers who are three quarters of the market who are dominating investors. There’s lots of challenges in the housing market and it’s always difficult to purchase a home and affordability is an issue but what we saw from the Labor Party last night was promising something that they even know that they can’t deliver i.e. that they are being deliberately misleading about the returns out of this fund or, probably even worse, they’re mathematics is so far wrong that they’re assuming a return four times higher than what the future fund can provide them. It’s just remarkable, Laura, that a Leader of the Opposition would be that unprepared in what was a big part of his speech. I’d be very keen to see their assumptions that underpin those bold claims but again, you can’t trust Labor with a calculator, you can’t trust them with housing policy or the economy.
Laura Jayes:
That’s a bit rich considering we saw those assumptions that were so far wrong from Treasury when it came to JobKeeper?
Minister Sukkar:
Well Laura, again, we can all remember back a year ago about the absolute uncertainty that hit our economy. You know it, you were there, you saw it and the fact that our economy by any measure, is at the top of the leader board, didn’t happen by accident. Yes, it was the outstanding work of the Australian people, but it was very important decisions taken by the Morrison Government which has led to Australia being at the front of the pack economically. All of those decisions – whether it was JobKeeper, whether it was JobSeeker, whether it was the highly successful HomeBuilder program – we’re very proud of because they kept Australians in jobs, they kept businesses going and it means Australia is in the best possible position coming out of Covid‑19.
Laura Jayes:
Well just one final question. You’re championing this idea of a two per cent deposit with a government guarantee for single mothers to get into the housing market, which is great. But I’m thinking back to the GFC where the house of cards was built on home loans that simply people couldn’t afford and couldn’t afford to pay back. Is that at the back of your mind somewhere?
Minister Sukkar:
Those considerations are always why we’re very careful when we establish schemes like this and the underpinning of the Family Home Guarantee – just like the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme – is that, in the end, a bank will need to undertake its own credit assessment of an applicant. So we facilitate it through the guarantee – in this case, an 18 per cent guarantee for single parents – but in the end the credit assessment is taken up by the bank and in my discussions with the banks, they think that there are more than 125,000 Australian single parents who they are very keen to lend to because they are very good, very credit worthy customers…interrupted for live cross.