Interview With Richard Glover’s Monday Political Forum on ABC Radio Sydney

[](https://www.abc.net.au/sydney/programs/drive/drive/102290032) **Subjects:** The Coronation, Cost of Living, Housing ‍ E&OE……… ‍ ##### **Richard Glover** It’s time for Monday Political Forum. Charishma Kaliyanda, New South Wales Labor MP for Liverpool, is here with me in the studio. Good afternoon. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Good afternoon Richard. ##### **Richard Glover** Ahead of her first day in Parliament tomorrow. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Yes, it's all happening. ##### **Richard Glover** Very interesting. We'll talk about that. Get you some advice from our other colleagues here. Andrew Bragg, Liberal Senator for New South Wales. Andrew is with us on the line. Good afternoon, Senator. ##### **Senator Bragg** G'day, Richard. How are you? ##### **Richard Glover** Yeah good. And another Senator, too. David Shoebridge, Greens Senator for New South Wales. Senator Shoebridge, good afternoon. ##### **David Shoebridge** Yeah. G'day, Andrew, good to speak with you. ##### **Richard Glover** Now, ludicrous but marvelous was one review of the coronation of King Charles the Third. What did you make of it, or were you too busy watching the footy? Andrew Bragg. ##### **Senator Bragg** Well, I was at a mate's 40th birthday, and so I missed the whole thing, sadly. ##### **Richard Glover** Was it a good 40th birthday? ##### **Senator Bragg** It was outstanding. He's an outstanding bloke, and there were very few mentions of whatever was happening in a foreign land. ##### **Richard Glover** [laughs] ##### **Richard Glover** Was there a stone of... What was it called? The Stone of Mystery or the Stone of Honour? Was that involved? ##### **Senator Bragg** No, it wasn't. And as I say, it's a very different world than what we are used to here in Australia. ##### **Richard Glover** So your view, good luck to them, but nothing to do with us? ##### **Senator Bragg** Pretty much, yeah. ##### **Richard Glover** David Shoebridge, did you watch it? ##### **David Shoebridge** Yeah, well, I was actually up at Mardi Gras, up at Nimbin. They have their own rituals. ##### **Richard Glover** What a Greens answer, David. ##### **David Shoebridge** It's a little bit stereotypical, I'm sorry, but they have their own interesting rituals. They've got the bong throwing competition and they've got the very regal combi convoy. I think actually I did at about 10:30, at the place I was staying at, they had it on to have a bit of a chuckle late at night. But they're very strange rituals up in Nimbin, but they're even stranger what happened over in London. And it felt very distant, totally unrelated to our lives and totally disconnected from our lives. It felt like something that was from decades or centuries ago. So the small bit that I saw seemed vastly weirder than the combi convoy. ##### **Richard Glover** Okay, because he was trying to make it very eclectic and having lots of people from other cultures. He was trying to make it modern. That was his view. ##### **David Shoebridge** Yeah. Well, all I saw really was I saw the golden carriage and I saw a bunch of people with bearskin hats where they kill all the bears for their hats. ##### **Richard Glover** No, you're confusing it. That was at Nimbin. ##### **David Shoebridge** That might have been after the bong throwing competition. But no, it seemed totally unrelated to our lives, completely unrelated to our lives. And I suppose a bit to the little bit similar to what Andrew says, it felt a very real disconnect. ##### **Richard Glover** Now, Charishma , I need at least one loyal royalist here. Surely it's you. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Sorry, Richard, I have to disappoint you. I was actually at a couple of community events and we were handing out medals to kids. So still celebrating talents and things like that. Although the best part of the coverage that I saw over the weekend was the irony of Katy Perry singing Fireworks at the coronation concert. People were thinking that the irony of Guy Fawkes. ##### **Richard Glover** Yeah, exactly. It's off with the heads for all three of you after that disloyal comment. Charishma Kaliyanda is with us, the new, New South Wales Labor MP for Liverpool. Andrew Bragg, Liberal Senator for New South Wales. And David Shoebridge, Greens Senator for our State. Now, onto the Budget, more serious matters. Jim Chalmers is talking about giving cost of living relief, but in a way that won't add to inflation, as well as a bottom line that hovers somewhere close to surplus. They haven't actually said surplus yet, but maybe they're hoping for that. How possible are all those ambitions? I particularly mean giving relief, but not adding to inflation. What would be on your wish list for tomorrow's Budget? David Shoebridge. ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, I'd love to see a reversal of the tax cuts for the wealthy, which is inflationary, giving a whole bunch of money to the wealthy, and serious investment in the housing crisis, the billions of dollars needed in the housing crisis. Genuinely lifting a million or more Australians out of extreme poverty. That is just like a crying social justice. There's the capacity to do it in this Budget. We're looking for it. And then, of course, the serious action on climate and redirecting those billions and billions of dollars of public money that are still going into fossil fuel projects and putting it into that exciting renewable energy future. If that would be the Budget, I'd love to see my lot delivering, and that'll be the test we put over Labor's Budget. ##### **Richard Glover** Okay. I mean, you mentioned the business of lifting people out of poverty, which I guess is a reference to JobSeeker. What if the case is, and these are the rumours that there'll be a very small increase for most people on JobSeeker, but there will be a bigger increase for people over 55 in acknowledgement that it's harder for them to get work, that there's so much homelessness among particularly older women. Is that fair enough? ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, absolutely. There's a housing crisis amongst older women. But there's also a housing crisis amongst young people. And giving people, what, maybe $2.80 a day, and pretending that's dealing with the food crisis, the housing crisis, the energy crisis that people on JobSeeker are getting every single day of their lives. And the many young people that I talk to in politics feel like their future has been sold and mortgaged from them. They can't get a house, they don't have the job security. And to then to say to those people, actually, you're going to get less than the over 55s feels like a real slap in the face from politics. And it's part of a pattern that they're feeling that politics is just literally cutting this generation out. ##### **Richard Glover** Is there a legitimate economic point, though, in that if you're overly generous, and I know generous is an odd word to use when you're talking about the paucity of JobSeeker, but if you give out too money, whether it's to JobSeeker or other programs, and end up fueling inflation, which means that in the end, the Reserve Bank has to put up interest rates by even further, then you're just giving someone $10 bucks, which is then going to, in terms of rent or whatever, be claimed back by higher interest rates. That's a pointless exercise, isn't it? ##### **David Shoebridge** If poverty and homelessness is our way of dealing with inflation, we have an even more broken political system than I thought. We cannot allow poverty and homelessness to be a tool to deal with inflation. Let's tax the profits of corporations. Let's tax people who already have too much, but we can't use tools of poverty and homelessness to tackle inflation. I think that's an obscene political answer. ##### **Richard Glover** Andrew Bragg, first of all, is it possible to give cost of living help without adding to inflation? The Treasurer seems to think he has a way of doing it through helping people with their energy prices. And what's on your wish list for tomorrow? ##### **Senator Bragg** Well, I think the main point here is that the government is massively fueling inflation, and it's been doing that since it was elected. It spent over $110b since the election, which is making the Reserve Bank's job so much harder. So last week, again, we saw another Reserve Bank increase in interest rates because the government in Canberra is incapable of pulling back the spending lever. So the real test will be how much of the additional revenue that government is going to collect will be banked, and where the government can look for additional savings because they are running an inflationary Budget. There's no doubt about it. And they're making the Reserve Bank's job so much harder. ##### **Richard Glover** It's one thing to criticise people for spending money, but where do you find the savings? Do you say, well, this idea of giving single parents a little bit more help so that you support them until the child's a bit older, do you get rid of that? Do you make JobSeeker even tighter? ##### **Senator Bragg** There's a whole lot of things they can do. They could look at removing the compulsory super increases. That will not only be a boost to people's wages, but it would also assist the Budget. There's a whole lot of things they could do. As I say, the first test is how much of the revenue upgrades are they going to bank? Will they be able to bank all of that? I think that is a starting point. In terms of what I'd like to see, I want to see incentives for the private sector to invest more, to create more jobs. I'd be looking for investment allowances, opportunities to look for tax cuts, particularly for small businesses. And then in relation to super, I think that the government should cancel the increased 12% super because that is just eating away into the wages that Australians really need. I mean, 80% of the wages increases that are built into the Budget over the forward estimates are consumed by compulsory super. And the super funds basically own the Labor Party now. And the Labor Party just does whatever the super funds basically ask. ##### **Richard Glover** It's true to say, and we should say you're a long term critic of super. You've even written a book about what you think, what you see as the problems with it. ##### **Senator Bragg** Well, it's a broken system. I mean, it doesn't get many people off the pension. It costs the tax payers a bomb. And I think it's destroying opportunities for young Australians because it's making home ownership so much harder. But as I say, it is consuming 80% of the wages increases in the Budget, according to the Treasury Secretary. So if the Labor Party was serious about wages policy, then they would be pulling back on the compulsory super increases. ##### **Richard Glover** I think cynics believe that you're only so mad about super because so much of it is controlled by union operated funds and it just gives too much power to the union sector. Your critics say that's the source of your animus, I suppose. ##### **Senator Bragg** Well, maybe you can tell me why doesn't it get more people off the pension? And why doesn't it return a saving to the taxpayer? I mean, who could conceive of a private pension scheme which costs the taxpayer more than it saves? I just think that the Labor Party is captured by vested interests, whether it is the trade unions or whether it is the super funds or a class action law firms. It's basically a government for vested interests. ##### **Richard Glover** Andrew Bragg is with us, Liberal Senator for New South Wales. So is David Shoebridge, Greens Senator for New South Wales and Charishma Kaliyanda, New South Wales Labor MP for Liverpool. What are you hoping for in the Budget? What's on your wish list, Charishma? And do you think it's possible to help people with cost of living without adding to inflation? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** I think it's a really tough balance to strike. And I, for one, am pleased to see that there's a focus on assisting some of the more vulnerable people within our community, especially because there was an article today talking about the impacts of the cost of living crisis on some of the people within my community. So the article was talking about how in parts of Miller and Sadleir and Busby, which is within my electorate, the number of people who are relying on food banks and other social supports in order to meet basic needs has shot up over the last few months. And I think that's not a situation that we can abide by. The focus on supporting some of our most vulnerable community members is really important. But I think we also have to look at the increases to aged care worker wages. We've been talking about the aged care crisis as well as the impact of older people staying in their family homes for longer because they're not keen on going into aged care and the impacts of the aged care workforce on that situation. We know that the wages are some of the barriers to people staying within that profession and increasing those wages can hopefully help address some of those issues. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** During the course of the election campaign, I was speaking to a worker in my electorate who works in aged care and was relying on food banks and other social supports in order to make ends meat. This is someone who is caring for older people within our community, has a full-time job, and yet is still relying on social supports. And that's not a situation we can continue to. ##### **Richard Glover** That's that real thing from America, isn't it? Where people have got full-time jobs and yet still are in poverty. Absolutely. And using food banks. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Yeah. And as a former youth mental health worker, I know there's a lot of work currently going into reviewing our Medicare system as well as the NDIS. I'm really hoping to see measures that would improve access to mental health care as well as disability care for vulnerable people within our community. ##### **Richard Glover** There you go. There's a wish list from all three Charishma Kaliyanda, Andrew Bragg, and David Shoebridge in the Monday Political Forum. Now, the Greens are still demanding more be done for the homeless as they refuse support for Labor's $10 billion Housing Future Fund. Critics say that puts in peril the minimum 1,200 affordable houses in each Territory and State over five years promised by the program. Everyone knows, especially in Sydney, about the scale of the housing crisis. So what's your answer to it? And should this scheme be at least part of the solution? David Shoebridge, the party is as late as this afternoon. Your leader is still saying, yeah, happy to talk about this, but we're not going to support it in its current form. ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, that's the situation. We've said repeatedly to Labor, we're happy to sit down and talk with you about actually investing in affordable housing. This is, if they were putting $10 billion into affordable housing, we'd vote that through tomorrow. But they're actually putting $10 billion, they're investing in everything but housing, they're putting it on the stock market, gambling that on the stock market. And if there's a positive return, they'll put that into affordable housing. The only commitment we get for New South Wales is a minimum 1,200 homes over five years. That's like 240 homes a year, not just for Sydney, but for the entirety of New South Wales, the same number they're offering for Tasmania. To pretend that that even comes close to a solution for a national housing crisis, we will see homelessness grow. We'll see the housing crisis get vastly worse. Meanwhile, Labor's $10 billion fund is not actually invested in housing, it's been gambled on the stock market. It's a dreadfully inadequate, embarrassingly inadequate response from a national government to a national crisis. ##### **Richard Glover** The 1,200 of course, is a minimum. If you put $10 billion and invest it well in terms of something like the Future Fund, you'd expect to be able to build more than that. ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, last year, the Future Fund was negative. ##### **Richard Glover** We are with the bond market and so forth. These have been very unusual times, right? In most cases, if you've got $10 billion, you can make some money, right? ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, maybe enough to maybe get 1,200 homes over five years. That's all they're promising. And literally, you think of the size of Sydney, 240 homes for all of New South Wales, not just for Sydney. That would be a solution, maybe for Canterbury-Bankstown or for Blacktown, for a local government area, to pretend it's a solution for a state the size of New South Wales or Queensland or Victoria. I can't believe that Labor is actually trying to persuade people that this is an answer to the housing crisis. ##### **Richard Glover** Okay, let's nod and say we agree it's imperfect. You're still, by saying no to it, meaning none of those houses, they're real people who won't get a roof over their heads because of your decision. ##### **David Shoebridge** No, what we are saying to Labor is come and talk to us. You've got $10 billion to put in housing? Let's put it in housing. You've got a solution that's going to build thousands of homes? Let's talk about that. But if you are pretending that this is job done from the Federal Government on housing, it's what they're saying, job done tick for the next two years, that would actually be a betrayal for the hundreds of thousands of millions of people who desperately need a home. That would be a betrayal by the Federal Government. ##### **Richard Glover** David Shoebridge is with us from the Greens. So is Andrew Bragg, Liberal Senator, and Charishma Kaliyanda, New South Wales Labor MP for Liverpool. Charishma, David's right, 1,200 over five years in a big State like New South Wales doesn't sound much. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Richard, I look at this situation as similar to 15 years ago when we were having very similar discussions on what to do about climate change and what to do about addressing the problems our environment was facing. And my fear is that we let the perfect get in the way of the good. And like David said, $10 billion investing that into the housing crisis, that is no small matter. That's a huge start. And my fear is that we let some of these things get in the way of actually having a solution on the table and going forward with it. Because I can tell you, a lot of my constituents who are at the pointy end of the housing crisis, if you went out there and said, well, we rejected this, we rejected the proposal of putting $10 billion into addressing the housing crisis, that's not something that they would support. And they would actually be quite flabbergasted by the position that the Greens are taking. And I also think that this has to be part of the solution because obviously housing is an issue that crosses the Federal-State divide. So we also need to be looking at how this is a start to a broader solution to the issue. ##### **Richard Glover** Andrew Bragg, you and the Greens are in bed on this one. Why aren't you supporting this proposal? ##### **Senator Bragg** [Laughs] ##### **Richard Glover** Sorry, I've given you an image of being in bed with David. That's going to keep you awake. I understand that. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** I think it will keep all of us awake. ##### **Senator Bragg** Yeah, I think that's right. Well, look, we are concerned that the government, again, is just playing to its vested interest here. A lot of this money would actually go off to the super funds so they could build houses and then rent them back to people. We believe in home ownership. We think that's a fundamental bedrock of the Australian settlement. And we would like to see more people, particularly younger people, be able to buy a home. And that's why we've advocated for the opening up of people's own money to be used for a first home. The Labor Party wants the super funds to own your house and then rent it back to you. So we think that's sort of warped universe stuff. Again, this is fundamentally a State issue, so the Commonwealth has decided to enter into this field in this way for reasons which are unclear to us. The other point I would make here is that ultimately, we need to also think about what we're going to do for renters in the Liberal Party. And I think we have thought very carefully about how we try and improve first home ownership. But I'd like us to spend some time in this term thinking about how we could also support renters. ##### **Richard Glover** But isn't a measure of social housing, whether we agree with David this is not enough, or we agree with Charishma that it's a start. Social housing has got to be helpful considering the scale of the crisis, doesn't it? ##### **Senator Bragg** Of course it's important, but it's ultimately the responsibility of the States. ##### **Richard Glover** But it's a national problem and it's linked to the 400,000 migrants that the country is allowing in for good or bad. So the Federal, the Feds have got some responsibility for this, don't they? ##### **Senator Bragg** Well, we are a federalist party and we believe in the States taking responsibility for themselves. And I think one of the things we failed to do is set clear lines of responsibility. I mean, the average person has no idea who's doing what. Everything is a mix of State and Commonwealth responsibility. Unless you're an expert in government and public administration, you've got no idea who's actually accountable for which public service. So my preference would be we have cleaner lines here. But I accept that there could be a role here for the Commonwealth to support the States in a funding mechanism to build public housing because it is important. ##### **Richard Glover** Okay, let me squeeze in one last question. Charishma Kaliyanda is here, Andrew Bragg and David Shoebridge. It's Charishma's first day in Parliament tomorrow as the newly minted MP for Liverpool. Andrew and David, what do you remember of your first days in Parliament? What surprised you most about how it operates once you get inside the door? And then I'll ask Charishma how she's feeling about tomorrow. Let's start with you, David. What surprised you about the situation? Now, either when you were here in New South Wales or when you came to Canberra? ##### **David Shoebridge** Well, I remember very clearly my first day as a New South Wales MP. I got sworn in, in a casual vacancy, and my first day was actually Budget Estimates. And I had Ron Woodham, who was the former Commissioner for Corrective Services, and he was like a big bullfrog of a man and completely controlled the prison system in New South Wales. He was like the last feudal Lord. I was a barrister. I went into Budget Estimates and there was about a two hour session. I remember peppering him with questions about getting computers for prisoners, respecting the human rights of prisoners, all these issues. He kept getting angrier and angrier and angrier in the Budget Estimates session. At the end of it, he stormed off. There's tea and coffee that you have afterwards with the officials. I didn't know what to think of it. I had a cup of tea with some of the officials who remained around. One of them, a very senior member from Corrective Services, came across and saw me and said, Oh, Mr. Shoebridge, that was very interesting. I said, yeah, well, my first time here. He looked at me and gave me a half smile and said, I hope you don't have to go to f***ing prison. ##### **David Shoebridge** It was like a little lesson in the reality of New South Wales politics. But it was a lesson that you just need a tough skin. ##### **Richard Glover** You need a tough skin. ##### **David Shoebridge** You need to be willing to ask the hard question. ##### **Richard Glover** Charishma , write that down. You need a tough skin. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** I'm taking notes as we speak. ##### **Richard Glover** Andrew Bragg, do you remember your first time in Parliament? What surprised you about how it really operates? ##### **Senator Bragg** I guess I was disappointed about how contrived it all was and about how fake so much of the day to day business is. I felt that was the way in government, and I feel the same way about opposition, that most of it was stage managed and a huge waste to taxpayer funds and resources. The bulk of the good work is done in the Committees where there's actually policy formulation and scrutiny of government. But to say that most of the Dorothy Dixers and all the theatrics in the Chamber really are quite degrading. So I guess I was a bit disappointed about all that. But as I say, it's a great honour to be part of it, but you've got to channel your efforts into things that are productive. ##### **Richard Glover** Okay. Channel your efforts into things that are productive, says Andrew. Have a thick skin and ask tough questions, says David. What are you expecting tomorrow, Charishma? What's filling you full of fear? What's filling you full of thrill? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Well, we've had about three days of orientation, or as some people call it, MP school, to walk us through what we should be expecting on the first day. ##### **Richard Glover** There's the tuck shop and there's the toilets. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Those were the first things that we covered. But today, we had a little bit of training in terms of what some of the processes for tomorrow are. There is surprisingly a lot more ceremony than I expected for the first day, but it just goes to show the significance and the honour it is to be chosen by your community to represent them. ##### **Richard Glover** Well, you'll be sworn in, won't you? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Yes, that's right. ##### **Richard Glover** How are you going to do that? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** In terms of? ##### **Richard Glover** Are you going to choose the Bible? What are you going to do? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Because I'm Hindu by faith, I've chosen to be sworn in on the Bhagavad Gita. ##### **Richard Glover** Like the Treasurer? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** That's right. And I'm reliably informed that I will be the first person in the Lower House to do that. ##### **Richard Glover** Because Daniel Mookhey is in the Upper House? ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** That's right. So that will be quite exciting. But again, it's quite a humbling thing because when you think about it, less people have been elected to Parliament than have represented Australia in the Ashes. So to be part of a group of people who can have such a profound impact on people's lives within our community and as you can see… ##### **Richard Glover** I've got to think about that Ashes figure. I don't know about that. We'll have to do some math's on that. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Are there any fact checkers that can check for us? ##### **Richard Glover** I don't know. All we want to say, and I'm sure Andrew and David will agree with me on this, is have a great day tomorrow. And what an honour and congratulations on joining our democracy as one of our representatives. ##### **David Shoebridge** Absolutely. Charishma. Enjoy it. ##### **Charishma Kaliyanda** Thank you so much, everyone. ##### **Richard Glover** Thanks, Andrew. ##### **Senator Bragg** No worries, see you. ##### **Richard Glover** And thanks, David, and thanks, Charishma Kaliyanda. ‍ **[Ends]** ‍ ‍