Interview with Chris Kenny on News24

08 September 2026

Subjects: Victorian One Nation leadership scandal, super for housing, Canadian immigration model and housing supply.

E&OE....

Chris Kenny:

Let's go to Canberra and catch up with Shadow Housing Minister Andrew Bragg. Thanks for joining us, Andrew. I want to get onto housing in a moment, but first up, I want to ask you about the breaking news this afternoon with the One Nation leader in Victoria, Warren Pickering, reacting to allegations made by a former partner of his about drug-taking and all sorts of things. He's made astonishing confessions about his own drug use in the past. Here he is.

[START GRAB]

Warren Pickering:

So I had utilised illegal drugs in my twenties. Never would I have ever said that I was somebody that was a drug addict. I did use them as a young man, and I'm not proud of that.

Journalist:

What drugs are we talking about?

Warren Pickering:

We're talking about speed, amphetamines, ecstasy, and marijuana.

[END GRAB]

Chris Kenny:

There we go. Andrew Bragg, do you believe that those admissions disqualify him from leading the political party in Victoria?

Senator Bragg:

No, and it's not really a matter for me to comment on about his personal arrangements. I just make the point that I think that the Victorians have had enough of that terrible government down there, and I think people will look very favourably upon Jess Wilson, who's a serious and credible person and appears to have a good team behind her. So I think the Liberal Party has just got to focus on being the best party it can be.

Chris Kenny:

Look, he made other confessions about his personal arrangements, but those were confessions about illegal drugs. Do they not call into question his suitability for parliament?

Senator Bragg:

Look, I mean, the One Nation vetting system has been well known to not be a particularly strong machine, and they've had these issues in the past. But I just think that the Liberal Party needs to be in a position to present its own policy, its own ideas, rather than focusing on other people making mistakes.

Chris Kenny:

All right, let's get onto housing and superannuation. Now, the Coalition took a policy to the last election where people could access, under certain circumstances, some of their superannuation to get into the housing market. One Nation have gone further with another plan announced in the last few days. Here's what Jim Chalmers has got to say about it all.

[START GRAB]

Jim Chalmers:

Coalition spokesman today has made it really clear that instead of rejecting One Nation's superannuation madness, they want to photocopy it. It's hard to understand what the point of the Liberal Party is if it's just to photocopy One Nation's policies. Whether it's One Nation, the Liberals, or the Nationals, they are now indistinguishable from each other.

[END GRAB]

Chris Kenny:

Well, that's the Labor strategy, to lump you all in together, but it sounds like One Nation have done more photocopying of Liberal policies than vice versa. When are we going to hear more detail from your party on these issues?

Senator Bragg:

I mean, Jim Chalmers has to be the most desperate politician in Canberra. If he was a CFO of a company, he would have been sacked ages ago. All his tax policies have collapsed on unrealised gains, and his latest Budget has gone the same way. He's got no right to really give any credible analysis here. The One Nation policy is a short-term issue that will help people with cost of living, potentially, but it doesn't deal with the long-term structural problem here, that we are going to be a country that's going to have a lot more retired renters over the next couple of decades. That's going to change the character of the country, and that's why it's important that we have a debate about the retirement system and the housing system and how they intersect.

Chris Kenny:

All right, well, we'll wait to hear more policy from you on that in the future. I just wonder whether you saw what I had to say about Canada at the top of the program. Their cuts to immigration have certainly slowed down house price growth, and they've seen rents reduce dramatically. Is that the approach Australia should be adopting?

Senator Bragg:

Definitely, and we've looked closely at the Canadian model. I think reducing migration will help on the demand side, but ultimately we have a very acute supply problem in Australia where the government has spent billions of dollars to build fewer houses—30,000 fewer houses a year under this government—while they've massively increased the population. You don't need to be a Rhodes scholar or a particularly smart person to work out that if you collapse supply and you increase demand, you have a worse housing situation, and that's the pain that people are feeling today. So you need to have a supply-side response and a demand-side response.

Chris Kenny:

Thanks for joining us, Andrew, I appreciate it. Senator Andrew Bragg there, who's the Shadow Housing Minister for the Coalition.

[Ends]

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