TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
CHANNEL SEVEN
MONDAY, 14 APRIL 2025
SUBJECTS: Housing Policy; Tax Policy; Campaign Launch.
NATALIE BARR, HOST: Both Labor and the Coalition unveiled major new policies tackling housing and tax relief on Sunday, when officially kicking off their campaigns in Perth and Sydney. But neither side showed any spending restraint, with a whopping, combined sum of $24 billion, with a ‘b’, in spending, making it one of the costliest days in election campaign history. To make matters worse, the policies for both major parties have been slammed by economists who argue they are either inflationary or even quote “dumb”. For their take, let's bring in Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek and Nationals MP, Barnaby Joyce. Good morning to both of you. Tanya, many of the reports this morning are calling out both sides for spending big. How can you be sure your policies won't add to inflation?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Well, we know that people need help with the cost of living, Nat, and that's why we announced additional help with people's tax at the launch yesterday. We said that if you don't want to keep your shoe box full of receipts from under the bed or scroll through your electronic banking and work out your tax deductions for the year, you can just claim a one off $1,000. That means that the average taxpayer will be able to put their tax return in with just six clicks online. Makes life a bit easier, a bit simpler. This idea has been around since the Henry Tax Review. We also had a terrific new policy to help young first home buyers into a home of their own sooner. Be able to get into a home of your own with a 5% deposit - means you're not saving up to a 20% deposit, means you're also not having to pay thousands of dollars of Mortgage Lenders Insurance. So, you save money, you get into a home of your own sooner. You're paying your own mortgage off, not your landlord's mortgage, but we also want to build 100,000 extra homes that can only be sold to first home buyers, because we know, unless we're building more homes, the price for first home buyers will continue to be out of reach. So with our fee-free TAFE, where we're training more tradies, and these policies that will help young first home buyers into a home of their own sooner, we know that we're taking a bit of pressure off those young people and their parents who really worry that their kids are never going to be able to afford a home of their own.
BARR: So, economists are worried this morning that there'll be so much money pumped into the economy which we’ve been trying to take out, that it'll be inflationary. But I want to go to Barnaby. I actually went back to your Shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor, on January 6, who said, you know, Labor is spending so much money. It's terrible. They're spending so much money. And this quote, he said, “This Treasurer has only one tool in his tool kit. Spend more.” And now it sounds like the Coalition wants to spend more too. How can you do that? How can you afford that when you've been nailing Labor for doing this as well?
BARNABY JOYCE: I suppose the first thing is we want to make sure that we, too, acknowledge there’s a cost of living crisis. I suppose the way we're going about it is different - that we're helping people right now and are helping people every time they go to the fuel bowser because they don't pay the excise they used to pay, so that's more money in their pocket. It's a very, very, very clear difference. Now on the repayment side, we've got to make sure that we have an economy, an economy that's driving ahead and gives us the capacity to increase the tax receipts, to increase our capacity to service the debt. Now, the way you do that, of course, hate to say it, is go back to issues such as energy, and you make sure that the energy prices, which is one of the fundamental underpinners of our economy, and wage rates. Nobody wants a reduction in wage rates. We all want people to get paid well, commodity prices, material standard world prices. Only one advantage, it's energy. So, you can't go forward with 82% of intermittent power, because you just won't have an economy, or certainly not a manufacturing economy. I mean, you'll have a part-time, administrative economy, and that is how there's a fundamental difference. Because what underpins it, the end is the fundamentals of economics, cheaper energy.
BARR: Okay, let's go on to the housing policies, because this is what everyone's talking about this morning. As you mentioned, Tanya, you're reducing the required deposit for a first home buyer to just 5%, building those 100,000 new homes. But these need workers. They need red tape to be cut. They need councils to relieve land. They need the red tape to be cut by councils. Can you guarantee that you will be able to build more houses because you're already way under what you predicted you would do when you came in the 1.2 million.
PLIBERSEK: We've said 1.2 over the course of five years. We've been in government for three years, and in three years, we've seen 400,000 homes built. And one of the reasons we've been able to start to get those numbers up is because we're training more tradies. We've got a policy of free TAFE that trains more tradies. And the Liberals and the Nationals have said all of this is wasteful spending. They said they'll cut the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is doing exactly what you're talking about, Nat - working with council, State and Territory government to unlock more land to make sure that it's available for new housing to be built. That's the problem with the Liberals and the Nationals’ housing policy. Like they're talking about accessing your super early, that just means you push up the price of existing housing. You're not building any more housing, so there's more money going into the same system, the same number of homes. They say Housing Australia Future Fund is wasteful spending. They say fee-free TAFE is wasteful spending. In fact, they've opposed all of our cost of living measures and the things that actually help us build more homes right now.
BARR: Barnaby, that is the criticism of your plan this morning that economists are saying it might be great to be able to write off some of the costs in your tax but it's not addressing supply. We need housing supply in this country. What are you doing to address that?
JOYCE: Yeah, the crux of our policy is that new home owner buyers, young new home buyers, basically say in their own job get a tax deduction for the interest paid on their first home. And of course, that is something that we hope assists them in making the payments. Everybody else doesn't get it apart from that. So, it shouldn't be a major effect on the price of the housing stock, because there's only a section that are getting it. What we say quite clearly is the Labor Party's plan, although well-intentioned just hasn't worked. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a housing crisis. If their plan was working, the housing crisis would be finished, not getting worse, not getting worse. And you can see the people that are basically under bridges and even out in regional cities now, homeless people like we've never seen them before, people living in parks. This hasn't worked, and what we have to do is, once more, is make sure we have a fundamental change in how the economy works, and you're not going to get that if you continue on with the Housing Australia Future Fund, as is currently prescribed, because it's just not delivering the outcome. Otherwise, we wouldn't have homeless people. You go down to parks and you you're going to see Australians living in tents. I don't think you ever saw that before. That is not a success or -
PLIBERSEK: Ten years Barnaby you built no social housing, ten years you built no social housing or invested in homelessness. For ten years you did nothing about that, you are pretending that this happened two minutes ago.
JOYCE: Tanya you're always saying that you're not the government. If you want to be the opposition, you’ll get a chance in a few weeks’ time. You are the Government -
PLIBERSEK: And when we were last in Government, we did the first 35,000 National Rental Affordability Scheme properties, you killed that program. When we were last in government we built 80 new homelessness services. When we were last in government we built public housing, you built none.
*cross-talk*
BARR: Before we go, both sides launched their campaigns yesterday - one in Perth, one in Western Sydney. Tanya, the cameras at Labor's launch caught a bit of an awkward moment between you and the Prime Minister. Samantha Maiden has done a write up on NEWS.com this morning. It looks like you're going in for the hug. Here we go, going in, but he's kind of just grabbed your hands, done the awks thing, where he's done the double shake - we put in the sound effect – just was that a bit awks? What happened there?
PLIBERSEK: Do you know what, I reckon we should still all be elbow bumping, because during an election campaign, the last thing you want is to catch a cold from someone. So that's on me. I should have done the elbow bump, I reckon.
BARR: So, you two still getting along, yep?
PLIBERSEK: Yeah, of course.
JOYCE: Oh yes, of course.
BARR: Friends, buddies? Just checking.
JOYCE: We’re buddies
BARR: Yep? That’s a yes is it, Tanya?
JOYCE: That’s convincing.
BARR: Yep.
PLIBERSEK: Yeah. I said of course.
BARR: Why didn’t he want to hug you when you went in for the?
JOYCE: I'm glad you’re not my barrister on that one.
BARR: Okay left me hanging, okay thank you, we’ll see you next week. Bye guys. Happy campaigning.
ENDS
