TRANSCRIPT - Sky News NewsDay with Kieran Gilbert

PAUL FLETCHER MP

Shadow Minister for Science and the Arts

Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy

Manager of Opposition Business in the House

TRANSCRIPT

SKY NEWS NEWSDAY

16 October 2024

Kieran Gilbert: Joining me is the Manager of Opposition Business Paul Fletcher. A lot of focus on the beach of Copacabana this week. What’s your assessment of the house purchase?

Paul Fletcher: Well Kieran, the Prime Minister is free to spend his own private money as he chooses. If he and his fiancé, Jody Heydon, are preparing themselves for life after politics, well, good luck to them. The Liberal Party is much more concerned about the many Australians who are not able to get into the housing market, and the very poor job that the Prime Minister and the Labor Party are doing of managing this issue. You know, the number of new housing starts are at a ten year low, down 8.8% in 2023-24, on the previous year. And at the same time, while the number of new homes available to buy is reducing, the number of people coming into Australia is hitting record levels. We had 463,000 long term and permanent arrivals in the year to July 2024. That’s almost 60% higher than the comparable period just before the pandemic. So we’ve got supply coming down. We’ve got demand going up and that is leading, unsurprisingly, to higher prices. You add to that 12 mortgage interest rate increases in a row. I think there are many Australians who are very keen to get into the property market, but finding it very hard to do so. Now the Liberal Party has got practical plans.

Kieran Gilbert: So do you think the optics are the issue here? It’s not so much the purchase, but as Jane Hume put it, it’s tone deaf. Is that your argument as well?

Paul Fletcher: Look, I wouldn’t disagree with Jane at all, but the point I’d make is the real issue for Australians is a lot of people who want to be able to buy a home, but they’re finding it very, very difficult. And the current government is doing a very poor job of getting the policy settings in place to make it easier. Now we’ve got clear proposals, for example, allowing people to draw on their superannuation balance towards the cost of a deposit for a home. Now, Labor will never do that because their marching orders from the union dominated big industry super funds who hate that idea because they want to maximise the amount of your money that they get a management fee on. We say it’s your money, and if it can help you buy a house and help set you up for life, but also for your retirement, we think that’s good public policy.

Kieran Gilbert: Sure. You don’t think it diminishes one’s retirement? The super industry argues that you’re taking away the people’s retirement wealth to try and bolster the property market.

Paul Fletcher: The super industry do argue that But of course, they’re not disinterested. They get fees out of the amount of money people have invested in super. The fact is, the number one priority for retirement is owning your own home. Certainly, we want people to have the biggest possible superannuation balances or other saving for their retirement years. But if people go into retirement without owning their own home, it’s much more difficult. So there are very good reasons to allow people to draw on their superannuation balance towards the deposit for a home.

Kieran Gilbert: A week and bit till the Queensland election. Looks like the LNP is going to break that drought up in Queensland. But if Labor was to hold on, they’re talking about holding a plebiscite wo see whether Queenslanders want nuclear. Is this a challenge that you might have to face if you win the next election, the state based opposition to the proposal that you’re taking to the election on nuclear?

Paul Fletcher: Well, Kieran, what’s interesting is we’ve seen this proposal from Queensland State Labor to have a plebiscite. We’ve seen the proposal from Federal Labor to have a parliamentary inquiry. The premise for both of these seems to be that if people find out more about nuclear, they’ll be pushed back against it. Well, on the contrary, we believe that when the case is made to Australians about nuclear as an emissions free fuel, about the role it plays in countries like the US, UK, Canada, Sweden. France, all of which rely heavily on nuclear and have it as an important part of their plans to achieve net zero by 2050. And when people understand just how poorly Mr Bowen and Labor are doing on executing their plans, we believe that there is a real readiness in the Australian community to look at this. And it’s interesting when we announced the proposed locations around Australia, you know, we had the ABC and other journalists going around trying to find people in those locations who were hostile to the idea, but quite a lot of people indicated they were interested in learning more. We believe that the Australian people are open to considering this idea. That’s of course why’ve we’ve put it up. And just as we don’t have a problem with scrutiny or the parliamentary committee that was kicked off last week, we want to make sure it’s fair dinkum. But we would say the same thing about the plebiscite.

Kieran Gilbert: So the more info, the better. Okay. Paul Fletcher thanks. Appreciate it.