E&OE

TONY JONES:

So, to break it all down, we're joined by the Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor. Good morning to you, Angus.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Good morning, great to be with you.

TONY JONES:

Yeah, well thanks very much for coming on. Just take us through this step by step if you can, because as I said, it's bold, it's unique. I'm damned if I know how you can afford it but take us through it.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, look, it's a very targeted policy on first home buyers, buying new homes and this is not just about making sure that we can help new first home buyers into the marketplace, make it more affordable for them. It's also about getting new houses into the marketplace because we know builders and developers need to know there's a customer at the other end when they build a house, and this will ensure exactly that. The way it will work is to be eligible, you've got to have an income of less than $175,000, but importantly…

TONY JONES:

That’s a couple?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, $250,000 for a couple. What you'll be able to do then is to take the interest payments, let's say they're around 6% and deduct them from your tax. So, if you've got a $650,000 mortgage, which is what the limit on this will be, you'll get about a $12,000 a year benefit in affordability and serviceability of your loan. So, the key to this is to make it more serviceable to pay off, to pay your loan. At a time when we know higher interest rates have really had a big impact on affordability for Australians, but the other point about this is it's focused on new homes, and we know what this will do. It'll help developers, builders to get more new homes built focused on those first home buyers into the market. So, we've got more supply as well as more affordability and that's what's so crucial about this policy.

TONY JONES:

Well, how can you guarantee affordability because it’s the whole supply and demand thing, which is the most basic of economics.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Exactly, which is why this is focused on new homes, and we know from the advice we've been given by the experts, by the Housing Industry Association, that this will get new homes into the market. They expect it'll give us about 30,000 extra homes a year that we otherwise wouldn't have had. And that's on top of, can I say, that's on top of a number of other policies we've announced, including a $5 billion infrastructure busting policy. We know a big part of what's holding back new home supply is infrastructure that's not being built.

TONY JONES:

Well, I would say a lack of tradies. We'll speak with the HIA and I want to find out where they're getting these tradies from because if you're suddenly building all of these homes and on face value it's going to be sort of affordable for you to do that under your policy for the first five years, I'll get to that in a moment, but where are the tradies coming from?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

That’s spot on, which is why we’ll provide additional incentives to employers to take on extra tradies, 400,000 extra tradies, so we need to have those tradies in the market.

TONY JONES:

You're talking apprenticeships?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Exactly, apprenticeships. The other point here is that one of the things that's holding back our construction sector, and this is particularly true in apartments, which we know is an important part of the first home buyer market, is we've seen the unions with deep links to the criminal underworld making it harder to build things in this country and not a little bit harder, a lot harder.

TONY JONES:

Okay, what are you going to do about that?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, we'll de-register the CFMEU, we'll establish racketeering laws as there are in other countries to make sure that corrupt organisations are held to account, we'll bring back the ABCC and those combined measures we think will deal with the deep links we've got between the CFMEU and the criminal underworld which we've seen on full display in recent years.

TONY JONES:

Alright Angus, can I just ask you couple of things? Where are you getting the money from? You and Jim Chalmers have obviously been to Bunnings and bought money trees or something because you've got a $42 billion deficit at the moment and you've got a gross debt of, we're talking a trillion. Where's the money? What are you saving on? What are you skimping on to pay for this?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

The question is the right one and that's why we've opposed over $100 billion of bad Labor spending over this term of Parliament. There's been a lot of criticism.

TONY JONES:

But what are you cutting back on? What will you cut back on?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, we won't be building 28,000 kilometres of power lines. We won't be growing the public service because we know, we know you don't need to have a bigger team to have a better team. We won't be pursuing manufacturing policies where the money goes to West Coast Quantum Computing Company, American companies based out of the West Coast that are focused on quantum computing. That's not manufacturing. I mean, this is waste that is absolutely not necessary. Now we have opposed in the Parliament, votes in the Parliament, over $100 billion of bad Labor spending. That means, just like a household squirreling away, making sure there's money available when it really counts, that we can restore the dream of homeownership, and we must restore the dream of homeownership in this country. Australia is not the country I grew up in if we don't have that. We are losing it right now in front of our eyes. This is an absolute priority and critically, it's about getting our housing market moving again on the supply side and making sure that young Australians can afford to buy a first home and get on that journey of home ownership, which we know has such benefits for raising a family, for retirement, for everything in the great journey of life that is in this country of Australia where home ownership has traditionally been so important.

TONY JONES:

I guess one of the things that concerns me about your policy is that it's, I mean, to me, it looks like a sugar hit in the sense that it's great, I mean, on paper. On paper it looks fantastic to get those tax reliefs, but it expires this deal after five years, so what happens after that five years? Suddenly your sort of lumbered with like a greater cost.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Yeah, the individual home buyer has access to this deduction for five years and they're the hardest five years. I mean, it's a first home buyer getting through those first few years, it's always the most difficult time and that's why we're providing relief through that time period, and we think that's the crucial time period to help people through to buy their first time. Over time, of course, what you see is people, as they get older, their incomes tend to rise, but the mortgage payments will fall over time and critically, this is all about making sure we can get them through that really difficult time period, not just the deposit, deposit's important, but crucially those early years of mortgage payments.

TONY JONES:

Because, I mean, based on the figures that you're giving this morning, from year six onwards, you're to be hit with an extra $12,000.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Yeah, but that's $12,000 you'd be paying anyway. This is allowing you to get through that first five years in a way that you might not have been able to. I mean, everyone's still got a budget and make sure that the home is affordable, but we're confident this gets people through that toughest time. It gets more supply into the marketplace, crucially and importantly. Look, we've seen a halving of the supply of houses in recent years. I mean, I was at one of the key brick provider manufacturers not long ago, they're selling about half the bricks that they were. We've seen a collapse in supply. That's why this is a measure focused on new houses alongside the infrastructure busting initiatives that we're pursuing. Making sure there's more apprentices, making sure that the criminal underworld doesn't have control of construction work sites. I mean, all of these things are crucial to making sure we get the balance right. The balance hasn't been right, and I think Australians really understand that.

TONY JONES:

Why are you on the nose? If you look at the polls, you know, it was there to be won for the Coalition and now it's an absolute battle. Peter Dutton's on the nose. The Coalition in general is on the nose. And Anthony Albanese is just coasting along at the moment.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, I’ve got to say that when I'm on the ground around Australia, I tell you who's on the nose. It's Anthony Albanese and the Labor Government and the Greens.

TONY JONES:

Not according to the polls.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, you know, I listen to people. I listen to people over pollsters, and I hear this everywhere I go. I was in Melbourne on the weekend, and I heard it, I would have heard it a hundred times. Labor, the Greens and the Teals are not what we need, and we are, it's true, we're heading for a Labor-Green-Teal Coalition, the likes of which this country has never seen before, and I think it would be a disaster for the country. I think Australians have seen the impact of a bad Labor government in the last three years. I don't think there's any love for this government. I think that's very clear. They have seen the biggest or overseen the biggest hit to our standard of living in history. They’ve seen 21 consecutive months of GDP per person going backwards. We've seen homegrown inflation, which has stayed higher for longer than any of our peer countries around the world and Australians are suffering as a result of it.

TONY JONES:

Did you just say that we're destined for a Labor, Green, Teal Government? Are you almost conceding there?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

No, not at all. What I'm saying is, know, Labor winning outright is not all that likely if you ask the polls.

TONY JONES:

I mean, if you guys were to get over the line, I mean, can you win outright?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, I think we have to. I mean, I think that's the point. We cannot afford a Labor-Green-Teal Coalition. I think it would be a disaster.

TONY JONES:

Would you work with the Greens and the Teals?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

No, we are absolutely... Our goal is to win outright because I think that's what Australians need and if we stumble through, you know, if over the next three weeks we get to a point where we have a Labor, Green, Teal Coalition, I think it would be an absolute disaster for this country, and I think Australians understand that.

TONY JONES:

But would it be acceptable for you to work with the Greens and the Teals and have a Coalition Greens-Teal Government?

ANGUS TAYLOR:

You know, to be honest with you, the likelihood of the Greens wanting to work with us is about zero and none. I think that attitude is mutual. I don't think that's a likely coalition. But the Greens and Teals have worked together before, sorry, the Greens and Labor have worked together before. Many in the Labor Party have views that are not very different from the Greens and I think that the prospects for this country of that coalition forming and the danger that would create for our economy, for all Australians, for the sorts of things we're talking about now, home ownership, small businesses, the biggest collapse in small businesses in our history, 30,000 small businesses going under, people whose livelihoods have been absolutely smashed, their dreams shattered by a Labor government that simply doesn't understand what it takes to make an economy work properly.

TONY JONES:

Alright Angus, thanks very much. Good to talk to you. Look, it’s certainly going to be music to the ears of lot of young people in particular who want to get into the market. There's no doubt about that. I mean, I do wonder where you're going to get the money from, but both sides are sort of promising the world and hopefully delivering more than just an atlas. So, I appreciate your time and good luck over the next few weeks.

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Good to be with you.

ENDS.