Neil Breen:
On the line is Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing, Michael Sukkar. Good morning to you, Minister.
Minister Sukkar:
Good morning, Neil. Great to be with you.
Neil Breen:
Why has it been extended, HomeBuilder?
Minister Sukkar:
Well, Neil, we put the original HomeBuilder program in place to protect the up to one million jobs in the residential construction industry. It’s gone exceptionally well. We’ve seen detached housing sales increase by 31 per cent since it was put in place. It’s protecting jobs so we want to keep that pipeline of construction flowing throughout 2021 and protect all of those jobs in the industry, not just the tradies on site but the entire eco-system of people who work in residential construction, and it’s also very good for families and for people who are trying to get into a new home or buy their first home, by providing them a grant to assist them in doing so.
Neil Breen:
Early on there were a few doubts about how successful the scheme would be but the Federal Government would be happy about how it’s rolled out?
Minister Sukkar:
Neil, we’re thrilled. I mean there’s always people who will pooh-pooh any announcement that comes out from the Government, there’s no doubt about it. But we’ve seen to date, 24,000 projects under the scheme, which is running ahead of where we thought that it would be. We didn’t think, to be quite frank, that we would see house sales, new home sales, rising above where they were pre-pandemic. I mean what we did with HomeBuilder was to protect the jobs in the industry that were already there. Not in our wildest dreams did we think that there’d be more new home sales than there were prior to the pandemic. More new home sales just means more jobs, more construction activity and again, more people who get into their first home or a new home and I think that that’s something that all Australians are very happy about.
Neil Breen:
Real-estate has been bizarre over the last couple of months. I read all the reports and house sales and house prices have just been crazy. It’s kind of caught me by surprise. Hey, JobKeeper. Can I talk to you about JobKeeper because preliminary data that the Government has released today – it’s in a lot of the newspapers and will be talked about today – says that 450,000 fewer businesses, around 2 million fewer employees qualified for JobKeeper in the quarter that we’re in now compared to the previous quarter which must show the Government good signs that businesses are recovering?
Minister Sukkar:
It’s a great indicator that the recovery is well and truly on. As you rightly pointed out, 450,000 fewer businesses, 2 million fewer employees…interrupted.
Neil Breen:
That’s an amazing number. I was stunned by it.
Minister Sukkar:
It is stunning and one of the great things now that the Treasurer and I are able to get around the country a bit more is meeting those business owners and employees who were on JobKeeper for a time but they are back, they’re not on JobKeeper and in many instances business has picked up almost to where it was pre-pandemic and you think, ‘yep, this is exactly what the program was there for’. It was to keep these people connected to their employer, it was to keep the business afloat in the interim, and boy did it work because they’re now back, they’re not relying on JobKeeper and we’ve kept that business together. So it’s phenomenal, we’ve seen 650,000 jobs created in the past five months which basically means, Neil that for 80 per cent of those people who lost their job or had their hours reduced to zero at the start of Covid-19, they’re now back. That’s 80 per cent that are now back. I think that that’s something that we should all be very, very pleased about.
Neil Breen:
I’m talking to the Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar. Minister, yesterday I was reading…China doesn’t like us at the moment, okay. They’re causing us all sorts of grief with trade and a 212 per cent increase on tariffs on wine that goes from Australia to China which will make the exports from here unsustainable. I read that the Government wanted to call in the World Trade Organisation to help with our fight there. Would China listen to the WTO?
Minister Sukkar:
The WTO obviously has a role and China has got obligations through the WTO as do all countries that are signatories to it. We’re obviously very concerned about the disruptive and restrictive measures that are being implemented and we appreciate that many Australian exporters are facing increased risks in the China market, particularly around some unpredictable administrative decision making. We’ve raised these concerns on multiple occasions in Canberra and Beijing and we are, of course, always here to defend our national interest, that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to ensure that we’re supporting, to the greatest extent possible, Australian exporters and Australian businesses. We’ll continue to do that but these are complicated and complex issues…interrupted.
Neil Breen:
How are we going to get China to the table? We’re buying defence shield missiles, the Prime Minister is rushing up to talk to the new Prime Minister of Japan – he’s the first world leader to go there and it cost him two weeks in isolation at the Lodge. All of these things, there’s obviously something going on with China behind the scenes that the public doesn’t have great clarity on. How are we ever going to get them to the table?
Minister Sukkar:
Well Neil I always go back to first principles on these sorts of things. Nobody trades with one another out of some sense of benevolence. We all trade with each other because you’ve got a product that I want to buy and vice-versa and that’s the way that it goes. We have obviously been a significant exporter to China and not just of mineral resources but, increasingly under the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, services. Why do they buy those services, and goods? Well presumably because it’s the right product at the right price and vice-versa. I think that in the end and in the long run, Neil, that’s where trade relationships always sit. Now from time to time these things will happen, we’re obviously very different political systems. We are an open, free democracy – very, very different. What we have to do is try and get through these intermittent disruptions from time to time but obviously doing so in a way that does not in any way cede our sovereignty or in any way ensure that we’re not defending Australia’s national interest. It’s always a bit of delicate balancing act and trying to be as open and honest and respectful as possible and that’s what we’ll keep trying to do. Obviously in these sorts of matters, our main focus and effort is on supporting those Australian businesses whose businesses rely on that trade.
Neil Breen:
For sure. Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar, thanks for joining me on 4BC Breakfast.
Minister Sukkar:
Good on you, Neil. Thanks much.