: It’s been a shaky week for the Federal Government losing control of its housing agenda as the Help to Buy bill was stonewalled in the Senate, with the Prime Minister not ruling out a double dissolution election. The Government’s industrial relations reforms also copped criticism, this time at the Business Council of Australia’s annual dinner, which was attended by the Prime Minister. And, away from exclusive dinners, tens of thousands of workers have walked off the job in Melbourne and Sydney to demonstrate against the Government’s decision to force the CFMEU’s construction arm into administration. Now, on his way to the Quad Leaders Meeting in the United States, the Prime Minister will stop off in Cairns this morning to join the Queensland Premier to announce what he says is Queensland’s biggest ever social and affordable housing development. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, joins me now on Radio ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Breakfast. Prime Minister, wonderful to have you back.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Patricia. Good to be with you.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, is your commitment to a universal 90 per cent subsidy for the first child in day care off the table now, given the Productivity Commission has another model it prefers?
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’ll make our own decisions. We’ll take into account the Productivity Commission’s recommendations along with the findings of the ACCC. But what we’ve been doing in government is making child care cheaper for 1.2 million families. We’ve delivered that. Importantly as well, what every report has shown is that we needed to do something about wages in the sector. That our early educators deserved something more than our thanks, they deserved a pay rise and that is why we’ve made the decision of a 15 per cent pay rise, 10 per cent this December and then another 5 per cent next December as well. Now, that’s a precondition for a successful sector, is to keep the workforce there and to value them. So, what we will do is examine these PC recommendations and we’ll respond over time. But we’re absolutely committed to making child care affordable.
KARVELAS: But is it going – Prime Minister, is your second term agenda – you’ve been criticised, as you well know, for not articulating a sort of bigger, broader vision. Is universal childcare set to be that bigger, broader vision for your second term?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it certainly will be an element. Just as in the last month, Patricia, we’ve given the biggest reforms for aged care in 30 years. We have passed legislation for the NDIS to make sure that it’s sustainable. We are going to see, perhaps today, it click over to 1 million jobs having been created on our watch since we came to office. We’ve announced the increase to 15 per cent pay for child care workers just as we’ve delivered significant pay increases for aged care workers. And we’re continuing, as well, to improve our international relationships, of which my attendance at the Quad will be the latest example of that.
KARVELAS: Do you want to deliver universal childcare?
PRIME MINISTER: I want universal childcare to be available. That’s a principle.
KARVELAS: So, you’d like to go further than the Productivity Commission’s chief recommendation?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s a very extensive report from the Productivity Commission. With respect, it’s not one recommendation. There are 56 recommendations across three volumes, so we’ll examine all of the recommendations as appropriate and we’ll make sure that we respond appropriately we do think that this is something that wouldn’t be achieved in just one term, I indicated that before the last election, but we’ve made significant advances on our agenda in our first term, more to do in our second term.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, as I segue into a discussion about housing, I want to ask a broader question. Who is your greatest opponent right now, the Coalition or the Greens?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they’re together. It’s called the No-alition.
KARVELAS: But as a competition for seats and power and influence, do you see them as equal competitors?
PRIME MINISTER: It’s called the No-alition. We’re a Government that is determined to build, that’s determined to advance an agenda, to improve the lives of Australians. Both the Coalition and the Greens have in common that they’re blockers. They are now just opposed to an agenda. They don’t put forward practical plans. In the Greens case, they put forward things which are uncosted and unachievable. Really just the vibes of policies rather than serious ones. And in the Coalition’s case, we don’t see any costed policies for the one thing that they’re talking about, which is nuclear energy sometime in the 2040s. They can’t tell us how it will be built. They can’t tell us how much it will cost. We know that it will produce under 4 per cent of Australia’s energy needs.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, you also took housing reforms to the election, but these two key housing bills are being stonewalled. Doesn’t this make the Government look weak? I mean, you haven’t been able to achieve anything in the Senate this week that’s on your Government, isn’t it?
PRIME MINISTER: No, that’s the Senate that is there. The Greens and Coalition –
KARVELAS: But you haven’t been willing to negotiate like you have in the past to try and get these bills through.
PRIME MINISTER: Patricia, we’ve put forward a policy which will help 40,000 low and middle income earners be able to get into home ownership. I would have thought that should sail through. Sail through. And the embarrassment of this new No-alition in voting to not have a vote. Be clear about what’s happened this week. They’re so embarrassed by voting against this legislation because of its merits that they have voted twice to not have a vote. The second one to put it off for two months, effectively defeating the legislation. Now, this is up to them to explain how they justify that. This is part of our $32 billion ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾s for Australia plan. We have a plan for more social housing, for more private rentals and for more home ownership. And they are blocking two measures, as you say, increased home ownership through the Help to Buy scheme and –
KARVELAS: Sure, but let me put it this way –
PRIME MINISTER: The Build to Rent scheme that is about private rentals for affordable housing. And the Greens’ justification of that, Patricia, is that developers will benefit from the incentives which are there. I don’t know who they think builds houses if developers are excluded. And the Coalition just go along with this nonsense.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, I want clarification on this. When do you plan to reintroduce the Help to Buy bill again?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ll reintroduce it into the House of Representatives during the sittings which are remaining this year. We will do that. And we had to do that with the Housing Australia Future Fund. We announced 13,700 new social and affordable homes, just on Monday, right around the country. Now, they could have been built by now, had this same No-alition, not done the same thing last year and blocked –
KARVELAS: Ok. When it comes to the Greens. I spoke to the Greens leader, Adam Bandt yesterday and he says it’s like putting a bucket on a huge house fire. It is a pretty incremental, small policy. Prime Minister, are you looking at broader, bigger reforms to housing and are you willing to negotiate around anything that the Greens are putting on the table? Is there any movement on something like negative gearing?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they’re not putting anything on the table –
KARVELAS: Well, they are. You might not like it, but they are. They’re saying they want negative gearing reform, capital gains tax reform. They are. So, are you prepared to look at those things?
PRIME MINISTER: They’re tax measures. They’re not what this legislation’s about. And this legislation is their policy that they are voting against. They voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund last year and delayed it for month after month after month. This legislation has been in the Parliament for 200 days without being carried. And the senators, they must like talking to each other, because they haven’t either voted for or against any legislation this week. That’s the important thing here, Patricia – for your listeners – that they have sat now, today will be the fourth day of a Senate only sitting week in which they not either passed nor opposed any legislation.
KARVELAS: But isn’t that partly on you, your side of politics too Prime Minister, that you in the past have been able to get the Greens across the line by negotiating? You don’t appear to be doing that this time.
PRIME MINISTER: The Greens have eventually, have eventually, after delaying, voted for the Housing Australia Future Fund. We didn’t get them across the line. They whinged that we were putting additional money into housing through other forms, such as the Social Housing Accelerator –
KARVELAS: There was more money put on the table.
PRIME MINISTER: No, it wasn’t, Patricia. They claimed –
KARVELAS: I watched the timeline of events. I think there was more money delivered.
PRIME MINISTER: There was $2 billion delivered to states and territories in the June, in return for them fixing existing housing that work is underway. The Greens complained at the time that they didn’t know anything about it.
KARVELAS: Ok, you’re saying they had no influence on mounting pressure on the Government?
PRIME MINISTER: Patricia, they continue to block. It’s up to them to justify why they are blocking legislation that they say, Adam Bandt says – it either has merits or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t have merit, vote against it. But I believe helping 40,000 Australians into home ownership does have merits. This is a scheme that has worked all around the world and it would be just another element as part of our $32 billion plan. The major part of that plan in terms of expenditure is social and community housing. The main negotiations that occur there are with state and territory governments, not with the Senate. And that agreement is contained in Appropriations bills, not in Senate legislation. Otherwise, I’m sure they’d try and hold that up again. We have had 120,000 Australians helped into home ownership through our First ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Guarantee scheme. That’s double the number that were helped under the Morrison Government.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, given housing is such a hot button issue and you mentioned $32 billion, and yet Australians aren’t really giving you much credit for doing much in the housing space. Are you prepared to offer more? Is this going to be a referendum on housing, the upcoming election?
PRIME MINISTER: Elections are always about the full suite of measures, economic, social, environmental and who has a plan. We have practical plans. Today, through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, we’re funding the largest ever social and affordable housing project in Queensland, that’s ever been conducted, 490 new social and affordable homes in Cairns. I’ll be there with the Premier of Queensland today. This is an exciting project and I really look forward to being there. Construction will start next week. We are getting on with doing what we can to overcome more than a decade of neglect. Think about this, Patricia. For a whole lot of the time of the former Coalition Government, there wasn’t even a federal Housing Minister. They didn’t even bother to be engaged.
KARVELAS: So, just to get some absolute clarity, Prime Minister. As we go in, you know – some time away – but into an election period, are you saying negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions are absolutely off the table for you?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they’re tax policies.
KARVELAS: Yeah, but are those tax policies completely off the table for you?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Patricia, I don’t answer those sort of questions in the way that –
KARVELAS: You mean good ones?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they’re not good.
KARVELAS: It’s a good question! Are you going to say no to those, or not?
PRIME MINISTER: They’re not clever. They’re things that journalists – the next question is, when will the election be?
KARVELAS: That’s not my next question.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, well, they’re not terribly clever questions. You ask all of that. We’re interested in the tax policy that we are implementing, not the ones that we’re not. And we have been very clear about that.
KARVELAS: So, you’re not interested in those ideas?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, people voted in 2019 on some of those ideas. They were rejected. And what we are interested in when it comes to housing is things that will increase supply. Now, there is – a whole lot of economists will tell you that the measures that you talk about will not increase supply and the danger is they will decrease supply. The key to housing affordability is to get more homes. That’s why all of the measures that were put in place. Be it in social housing, with the housing ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Agreement on Housing and ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾lessness, the Housing Australia Future Fund for the private sector, the Build to Rent scheme for home ownership, the First ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Guarantee scheme and the Help to Buy scheme are all aimed at those three things. The theme that is there is supply, supply, supply, and that is what we are focused on. At the same time as tomorrow, there will be the second major increase, a 10 per cent increase in the maximum rental assistance for the Commonwealth being put forward. That is the largest increase that has happened for 30 years, because we understand that renters are under pressure as well.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister, a double dissolution election would mean Senate quotas –
PRIME MINISTER: See, you have got to the next question!
KARVELAS: I was always going to get to my next question. I do delight in our conversations. A double dissolution election would mean Senate quotas are halved. Wouldn’t that lead to an even more difficult to manage Upper House, Prime Minister? Do you really want one?
PRIME MINISTER: I haven’t – journalists raise it with me, Patricia. What I’m interested in is governing. I’ve not raised –
KARVELAS: Well, you’ve kept on the table a trigger.
PRIME MINISTER: Because you get asked these hypotheticals. As I said to you about the last hypothetical –
KARVELAS: Couldn’t you just say, “nah, not interested,” though?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’re governing. We’re governing, Patricia. We’re governing. The election will be held on a day when I get in the little car with the flag on the front and visit Yarralumla. What I’m interested in isn’t elections, isn’t the nature of those elections. What I’m interested in is getting things done. And I just wish that the Senate would do something more than talk to each other for three days without having a vote on any legislation. I think Australians deserve better and they need to know that there is a vast difference between what the Greens political party say they will do and how they actually vote when they team up with Peter Dutton to block funding for housing.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister Bill Kelty, former leader of course of the trade union movement, says that your Government is mired in mediocrity. What’s your response to that?
PRIME MINISTER: Bill Kelty was a great secretary of the ACTU. I’m governing in 2024.
KARVELAS: But that perception of mediocrity, it must worry you.
PRIME MINISTER: What we have done is avoid a recession up to this point, unlike the UK, Japan, New Zealand, so many of our partners. We have gone through global inflation. There’s been a global downturn. We’ve gone through that while producing up to a million new jobs have been created on our watch. Real wages are increasing. We’re delivering for the care sector, in aged care and child care. We’re seeing increases in business investment. We’re transitioning the economy in the most significant transition in the global economy, to net-zero, since the industrial revolution. And we’re doing that in a way that is using market based mechanisms, such as the safeguard mechanism. My Government is delivering in very difficult economic times. It is difficult to have a soft landing after what we have seen globally. Not all economies are being able to achieve that. My Government, up to this point, has been able to achieve that –
KARVELAS: But it’s taking a long time and people are in a protracted period of pain.
PRIME MINISTER: That’s correct. And that’s a global phenomenon, Patricia.
KARVELAS: Well, in the US, they’re cutting rates.
PRIME MINISTER: Because the economy is so slow. That’s why they’re cutting rates, Patricia –
KARVELAS: Their economic growth is higher than ours.
PRIME MINISTER: Inflation peaked higher in the United States and interest rates peaked higher in the United States than they did here. They’re cutting off a higher rate. Here, we’re peaked at 4.35 . In most of the Western world, it exceeded 5 per cent and far above. And that is what they were dealing with after – in places like the UK, we had inflation which was double digit. So, what we have done is attempt to manage the economy in a way that looked after people on the way through. You can have a let it rip approach – rip money out of the economy – which is what the Coalition say, that $315 billion of government expenditure for things like indexing pensions and making these payments and investing in child care and Fee Free TAFE and energy bill relief and our tax cuts, is all waste. We don’t regard that. We think that has been vital for making sure that people are looked after, which is why we made the bold and difficult decision to change the tax cuts so that every Australian got one, including reducing that first marginal tax rate from $0.19 to $0.16.
KARVELAS: Was that the best decision you’ve made in government?
PRIME MINISTER: It was a very good decision.
KARVELAS: Would you say it’s been your best decision in government?
PRIME MINISTER: I’m not the commentator, you are, Patricia. But it was clearly at the time, if you go back and look at the first 48 hours after that decision, every front page of the paper was not exactly lauding us and saying that we were a mild Government. That was not the terms that were being used. It was the right decision made for the right reasons, but it was a tough decision that we made, and it certainly was one which was not the politically safe decision to make.
KARVELAS: And what did that teach you, though? What has that taught you? Because you are being accused, Prime Minister, and others are saying, of timidity. So, what did that decision, what does it say in terms of shaping your decision making for being bolder going into this election cycle?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, have a look at that decision. There was nothing timid about it. And many people will look back at the past and romanticise the past. What my Government has done is dealt with the present and set us up for the future. That’s been our job. But there’s nothing timid about that. There’s nothing timid about reforming the NDIS so it’s sustainable. There’s nothing timid about the largest reform to aged care in 30 years. There’s nothing timid about putting forward a $32 billion plan for housing. And there’s nothing timid about intervening into the gas and coal markets to control prices in order to put that downward pressure on energy costs for families and importantly for businesses, including for manufacturing. That was an incredibly significant intervention into the market which delivered and which has been incredibly successful.
KARVELAS: So, let me go with this list of lack of timidity. On gambling reforms, are you prepared to be brave and stare down the advertising and the big business lobby and say, “we’re going to ban it”, a blanket ban. That’s what Peta Murphy wanted.
PRIME MINISTER: It’s not a matter of doing something in order to satisfy a perception of boldness. It’s a matter of –
KARVELAS: It’s better policy, though, isn’t it? But it is better policy, I mean, that’s what the experts say.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they don’t all say that at all. The experts say that the problem here with this debate, Patricia, is the problem isn’t advertising. The problem is gambling. That’s the problem. And when you look at what the fact is that, overwhelmingly, almost 70 per cent of problem gambling is about poker machines, an additional about 15 per cent is about lotteries and lottos and those things. I haven’t seen a campaign about advertising in lotteries and Lotto, which is a far bigger problem than sports gambling. Now, sports gambling ads, I find them annoying –
KARVELAS: Yeah, they’re very annoying, Prime Minister, but –
PRIME MINISTER: I’m not a gambler. We need to get the policy right rather than – I think it’s the opposite of what you say. Sometimes things that are characterised as being bold are actually the easy options. The easy option is just to do that, not worry about the consequences for sporting codes, junior sport, all of that.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister –
PRIME MINISTER
