Interview with Chris O’Keefe on 2GB Drive

Subjects: The Greens’ housing policy, negative gearing, capital gains tax, housing targets

E&OE………

Chris O'Keefe

Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg is on the line for us. Senator, thanks for your time.

Senator Bragg

Chris, how are you going?

Chris O'Keefe

You're the Coalition's housing spokesman. You're happy for your home to be valued less, devalued?

Senator Bragg

Well, the good thing about this is it makes it very clear that there'll be a clear choice between The Greens that want a socialised housing system, the Labor Party that want a futile system where the super funds own the houses, and the Liberal Party where individuals reign supreme.

Chris O'Keefe

Do you buy it, availability over affordability. That's what I think we should be talking about. And why then would The Greens say that private development is all about greed?

Senator Bragg

Well it's crazy. I mean the only way to solve the housing crisis is to get the builders and the developers to actually build more houses. And if you increase taxes, you'll have fewer houses. So the whole plan is kind of quite crazy. I don't really understand what he's talking about when he talks about the US property market, as you said before. The major banks have very low levels of delinquencies, so there's no comparison there. But the point is we need to build more houses rather than socialise the system.

Chris O'Keefe

Do you think that the Labor Party is tempted by the idea? Elements of the Labor Party are tempted by the idea?

Senator Bragg

Well, if you were to play around with negative gearing and capital gains tax, I think anyone who's normal knows that that wouldn't make very much difference anyway. I mean if it was that simple, I mean I wish it was that simple. So I don't think that even they would be tempted to play around with these taxes, although at times they have talked about it internally. And then in terms of socialising the property market and then having price controls, I think The Greens are on an island there. I don't think anyone else is going to take that policy on board.

Chris O'Keefe

Do you think that there is a role at all for governments to build hundreds, hundreds of thousands of homes, given that the financial situation at the moment is; the truth is, with interest rates, with taxes, with the time it's taking for councils to rubber stamp developments, private developers themselves, they just can't make these things financially stack up. So, they're not doing them.

Senator Bragg

Well, Chris, I hate to break it to you, but the government's not very good at building houses. In 2018, we were building 230,000 houses. Now, with all these Housing Australia Future Funds and everything else Labor set up, we're only going to build about 160,000 houses this year. So we're going in the wrong direction despite Labor having erected a huge housing bureaucracy. So the only way to solve the housing crisis is to get the private economy to build more houses. Now, that's not going to happen if you increase taxes. So, we've got to make it easier, not harder. And this plan sounds like communism, but also it will be much harder to build houses.

Chris O'Keefe

Andrew Bragg, as always, I appreciate you coming on.

Senator Bragg

Thanks Chris.

[Ends]