Interview with Stephen Cenatiempo on 2CC Canberra

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‍Subjects: One Nation, Labor Party, Fuel Security, Housing Policy, Productivity Commission, National Construction Code

E&OE........

Stephen Cenatiempo

All right, well, one bloke I think knows where he sits is the Liberal Senator for New South Wales and the Shadow Housing Minister, Senator Andrew Bragg. Andrew, good morning.

Senator Bragg

Hi Stephen, how are you?

Stephen Cenatiempo

Good, I think you know what side of politics you're on, don't you?

Senator Bragg

Well, I would imagine so. I certainly would hope so.

Stephen Cenatiempo

Although, there seems to be a bit of consternation within the Liberal Party about dealing with One Nation. Now, you've come out and – and I won't say said the quiet bit out loud, but a lot of people would think that it was fairly sensible to say well, once the votes have fallen, well, then we'll determine who we'll actually deal with to try and form a government, and that may very well be One Nation. But Angus Taylor seems to have poured cold water on that.

Senator Bragg

Well, I mean, look, these are all hypotheticals. I mean, as I said, preferencing and who's going to give who supply and confidence in the event of a minority or a hung Parliament are all hypotheticals. The main point is that we want to get rid of the Communist Labor Government, which has been a disaster for Australia and has established an economic model which has put Australia into the slow lane. So, like, that's the most urgent and important objective here.

Stephen Cenatiempo

Yeah, that's right. But is there enough discipline on the Coalition side? Because I mean, we've seen a number of your front bench colleagues come out and say something that then has been contradicted by the leadership. Doesn't there have to be a unified message?

Senator Bragg

I think we're all saying the same thing. We're all saying we want to get rid of this bad government. And then, you know, we don't set the seats, the Australian people do that. They'll determine what seats are allocated where. And then obviously, after the election, the objective is to get rid of the terrible government, which has almost destroyed the economy, but also has exhibited very low levels of leadership for Australia. And now we're in this terrible situation.

Stephen Cenatiempo

I want to – and I hate talking about One Nation because I think, you know, they should be out doing their own promotion. But there's been a lot of attacks from the government on Pauline Hanson for her association with Gina Rinehart. And Gina Rinehart has supported all sides of politics over the years, and was previously a big supporter of the Liberal Party. But apparently, if you deal with an Australian billionaire, you should be criticised for it, but if the Prime Minister has a private dinner at the Point Piper mansion of a Chinese billionaire, that's okay, and there's nothing to see here.

Senator Bragg

Well, I mean, you'd have to pay most Australians to have dinner with Anthony Albanese. I can't believe anyone would want to actually pay to have dinner with him. But that aside, look, I mean, I just think that all these parties are not really serious. I mean, the Labor Party has had their National Conference and they are in coalition with the unions and the super funds, and their policies are just to give more money to vested interests, and to destroy small business, and to destroy individual ingenuity. Then the other parties, all the other minor parties, have frankly uncosted policies, crazy policies, policies which would bankrupt the nation. So, I mean, our role here is to present a detailed set of policies that is going to arrest our economic decline, because I think we're at risk of becoming a very, very weak and dependent nation. As we've seen in the last few months, with the Prime Minister going cap in hand trying to get petrol from other countries, when we could have been getting oil out of the ground here, gas out of the ground here. We could have been doing more to electrify houses.

Stephen Cenatiempo

I want to talk about that – well, let's talk about fuel policy for a moment, because the government has announced, in conjunction with the Western Australian government, that they are going to explore the possibility of building our first fuel refinery in 60 years. The Coalition would support this, I would imagine?

Senator Bragg

Well, look, we'll look at the detail. We've already announced a Fuel Security Plan, which would take us to almost 90 days of liquid fuels. This is something that Angus has already announced, which is very important, because we understand that in the Age of the Tyrant, we have to have more self-sufficiency. We of course are big believers in free markets, but we also understand that the world has changed, and so there are some things now that need to be done that are looked at through a more – more like a security prism, if you know what I mean. So I think these ideas are reasonable, but let's look at the detail once it's been announced.

Stephen Cenatiempo

I want to talk about your housing policy, that is, your portfolio. Now, the Coalition has announced that you're going to cap migration to less than the number of new homes we build each year, which makes sense. You're going to invest in cutting red tape, etc., and getting services to greenfield sites. But not a single one of these policies is going to increase supply. I mean, there's got to be more to it than just saying, "Not enough" – you know, cutting the number of migrants, because that policy isn't going to solve the current housing crisis, let alone what might happen if we keep bringing vast numbers of people into the country.

Senator Bragg

Well, the infrastructure fund that we've announced would provide more than – well, tens of thousands of new houses. Okay? And that's because it would fund last mile infrastructure. So water, sewerage, roads. These are the things that are often holding back new supply, because one of the biggest problems with housing, and this is something that you never hear the government talk about, is it's very hard to make a buck out of housing in Australia. So people are doing other things. So we need to remove the cost of building houses and reduce it. By doing that. Then we've also announced that we will investigate a way of cutting the National Construction Code. Now, this was flagged by the Productivity Commission overnight as still a big problem. I mean, it's just too expensive to build houses in Australia. It is illegal to build a cheap house. We think that's wrong. And next month we're going to hand down a Senate report which is going to detail some of the ways that we think we can cut the costs of housing by cutting the National Construction Code.

Stephen Cenatiempo

Well, it's – I think there's still a lot more to – a lot more meat to go on the bones there, but Andrew, I do appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for joining us.

Senator Bragg

Thanks, Stephen. See ya.

Stephen Cenatiempo

Senator Andrew Bragg, the Liberal Senator for New South Wales.

[Ends]

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