E&OE

SIMON BEAUMONT: Angus Taylor is the spokesperson on opposition Treasury matters and joins us now. G'day Angus.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Good to be with you, Simon. Thanks for having me.

SIMON BEAUMONT: Explain your pitch to first home buyers and their families.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well, there's three parts to what we're doing. One is to make it more affordable. The second is to get more supply into the market. And the third is to take away unnecessary demand. On affordability, we've announced over the weekend that we'll allow first home buyers to deduct the interest costs of their mortgage. So, if they go into a mortgage, say, worth $650,000, they're paying 6% on that. They'll save about $12,000 a year by making those interest payments tax deductible and that'll mean it's much more affordable for them. The focus on this is on new homes, so we get more supply into the market and that's alongside our policy of busting infrastructure bottlenecks. Roads and water and electricity, which we know is holding back getting houses built. We will also take away unnecessary demand, so foreign investors won't be able to buy existing homes for two years. And we're also getting our immigration rate back to where it should be and where it has been historically to take some pressure off housing. So, all of those things combined, we think, can make a real difference, particularly for first home buyers. That's the focus of the policy over the weekend, to give them a chance to get into the market, to get started on that journey, which is, I think, absolutely central. The great Australian dream of owning a home is disappearing in front of our eyes and some of your listeners answers this morning and comments this morning reflect that and I understand that completely. We have to fix it. This has got to be a priority and it's absolutely a priority if we are elected to government at this election.

SIMON BEAUMONT: I've got four kids and I'm pretty sure you've got four kids. I worry about my kids being able to buy their own home. And I don't know about your situation, but they're going to be leaning on the bank of mum and dad. Ultimately Angus, and particularly in WA, we've only got 3000 homes on the market. We haven't got enough builders; we haven't got enough building apprentice people in the different trades. We just can't get stock moving in the Perth home market. Are you aware of that? Are we different to the rest of Australia?

ANGUS TAYLOR: We're seeing this across the board. I was at a brick manufacturer in NSW just the other day, and they're selling half the number of bricks that they were. Half. And that gives you an indication of how much building is going on so that the developers and the builders can't get them built. And that's why giving affordability incentives to new home buyers, first home buyers, to get into the market with new houses, it gives those builders a pipeline that they know they can build into. We do have to make sure that infrastructure delays are not getting in the way. That's happening right across the country, which is why we've put $5 billion aside to do that. This can be fixed. It can be fixed. My whole background is in business and economics. I know what's got to be done to fix it. But you've got to have resolve. You've got to care about it. You've got to want Australians to own a home and be in their own home. I know how important that is to raising a family. As you say, I've got four kids aged from 19 to 25. They're in exactly that age group that is losing hope and losing a sense that the great Australian dream of home ownership is something that's accessible to all Australians.

SIMON BEAUMONT: So, I'll ask it in a slightly different way. You do have that background in economics, I acknowledge that. But what a macroeconomic policy towards building new homes looks like as compared to what it looks like on the ground, you know, at a brickworks in the Swan Valley or a building company that's based in Myaree in Perth. That's very different, Angus. The macroeconomics doesn't necessarily mean these blokes and women can build more houses.

ANGUS TAYLOR: No, I totally agree with that. And that's why putting our builders and developers in a position where they know they've got a market for what they build, it's affordable to their customers. I mean, you are dead right about making sure that we've got enough apprentices and tradies in the market. That's why we've already announced policies some time back for 400,000 additional apprentices, by giving incentives to businesses to take those apprentices on. That is absolutely central. So, this package of policies I've described… You got to understand, for the Liberal Party, I think this is absolutely existential. If we don't have an Australia where home ownership really counts, we're not the Liberal Party of Robert Menzies. Where home ownership was central to the party from day one. We have to rebuild this. There's deep resolve on our side. We know we've got to get it right on the ground. We know we've got to make it commercially viable for builders and developers to actually build and develop houses in a timely way. And that's why this package of policies is focused as it is. Getting new houses out, making it affordable, taking unnecessary demand away, all of those things we know can make the real difference. It's failed under Labor, they promised 1.2 million houses. They'll be lucky to get to 800,000. Their housing programs haven't delivered a house and they doubled down with another 10 billion, which is not delivering. And it won't deliver. You've actually got to deliver in the private sector to make sure that builders have an incentive to build, developers have an incentive to develop.

SIMON BEAUMONT: But talk to me about these… A number of our listeners have talked about immigration levels and a number of people moving to Australia in the last two to five years. Talk to me about what the target is for you guys.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Absolutely right. So, what we've seen is over two years, over a million people coming into the country. That is way higher than we've ever seen before, more than double what we've ever seen before. Some like to argue, well, they don't need houses. Well, they do. I mean, people live in houses. We don't want them living in tents. And so those numbers are just too high. So, we've said we'll reduce the permanent immigration by 25%. We'll get the humanitarian visas back to where it was when we were last in government. It's important we do that, but it's got to be manageable. And we'll impose caps on the number of international students coming into the country, particularly with the big universities that have seen as many as 50% of their students coming from offshore. We've got to get the balance right on this stuff. Now, that'll see an extra 100,000 houses in the market available for Australians that otherwise wouldn't have been available. And that'll make a big difference. But that's on top of making sure we bust those infrastructure bottlenecks. The roads, the power lines, the water supplies that are necessary to get new houses into the market. We’ve put aside $5 billion for 500,000 additional houses by doing exactly that. And that's on top of what we announced over the weekend. First home buyers buying new houses, and that means a developer and a builder will know that they have a customer ready to go who can afford to buy the house.

SIMON BEAUMONT: One more from me on this. And I know there are a lot of election issues around at the moment and social issues around regarding the election. You mentioned big projects. So, as you know, over here in Western Australia, we've always got a big project or 10 on the go. Are you saying we're trying to divert workers, builders, tradies away from the government projects. Have you talked to Rita about that?

ANGUS TAYLOR: No, no, no. At the end of the day, we need more apprentices and more tradies, not less. I do think, by the way, that we've lost some serious capacity and productivity in our construction sector because of the behaviour of some union officials. And the CFMEU in particular has meant that we are paying a lot more for our infrastructure projects around this country than we need to. And that is having a big impact on our construction sector. They will be deregistered under a Liberal government. This is costing all Australians, including the housing market. We've got to get our construction sector to be the best it can be. And it can't be that when you've got a key union in that sector, the construction union of course, that has deep links to the criminal underworld. It's acting in a way which is completely unacceptable and we're all part paying for it. So, that is why they'll be deregistered. We'll bring back the strong cop on the beat, the ABCC, to keep that sector where it needs to be. I think most people in that sector want to do the right thing, they really do.

SIMON BEAUMONT: We'll have to leave it there, Angus. We have run out of time but thank you for talking to us on Perth. Good on you.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Great to be with you.

ENDS