Interview with Craig Reucassel on ABC Radio Sydney

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Subjects Housing Affordability, Federal Budget, Taxation, Housing Supply 

E&OE......... 

Craig Reucassel

Top of 23 in the city, 24 degrees in the west today. Well, interest rates went up yesterday, making it harder again for people to buy houses. There will be some changes potentially to our tax regime when it comes to property next week. Will that make it easier to buy houses? Or do we just need to make it cheaper to build them in the first place? Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg thinks it's time to scale back housing to make it simpler and cheaper.

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Senator Bragg

[Pre-recorded clip] It seems bizarre to me that if you want to build a cheap house, you're not allowed to build a cheap house. You shouldn't have to have gold-plating in every single dwelling. We should have a graduated system. The idea that everyone is disabled, or everyone wants a super-duper energy-efficient house, is just insane.

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Craig Reucassel

Yes, he joins us now. Morning, Andrew.

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Senator Bragg

Craig, how are you?

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Craig Reucassel

Yeah, good. So look, you want us to go back to just building a bit of a simple fibro that dad knocked up over the weekend?

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Senator Bragg

Well, as you know, it's pretty hard for young people. You've got higher interest rates, you're going to have more taxes in the budget, so we need to do everything we can to try and make it cheaper to build houses. One of the reasons that not many houses are being built right now is because it's hard to make a buck out of it. And I think the level of gold-plating, and the level of stuff you've got to do to build a new house in Australia now, has just gone too fast. We need to pare it back a bit.

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Craig Reucassel

Yeah, it's interesting though, because it's a tough one, because you've got to find that happy medium. I mean, you talk about disabled access there. You don't have to put disabled access into a normal house when you're building it, do you? Unless I've missed something that's changed?

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Senator Bragg

Well, you've got to have certain width sizes in the corridors, you've kind of got to have walls that can take grab rails, you have to have the ability for someone to access the house if they are disabled. Now look, of course, this all sounds good in theory, but I mean, the idea that young people have to pay for these things if they want to build a first house in the outskirts of Sydney, for example, I just think is another tax on young people. I mean, if people need these things, they can be added later. And I just think, like, we're living in a country that has kind of gone crazy, like everything's compulsory.

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Craig Reucassel

But it's interesting to use the example of energy efficiency, because it's really a cost upfront to cut long-term costs. If you build an inefficient house, I mean, if you do go back to your good old-fashioned fibros, absolutely boiling in summer, absolutely freezing in winter, you're spending an enormous amount of money on heating and cooling the whole time, which energy itself is also expensive nowadays. So is it really a short-term win but a long-term pain?

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Senator Bragg

Well, I just think, like, when the National Construction Code started in 1988, the houses that were built then are still standing now, and a lot of them are very good houses. So we've gone from 200 pages in '88 to 2,000 pages in 2025. The government want to make it even more complex. I just think, like, every rent-seeker has stuck their nose into this thing, and they've made home building so complex that the average home builder couldn't read the National Construction Code. 

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Craig Reucassel

You can barely actually even get access to it, you've got to pay for it. 

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Senator Bragg

It just tells you, like, we've become a country that loves rules and regulations, but a lot of them are unenforceable and unreadable, and it's just creating a barrier to entry, I think. And I think right now in a housing crisis, we should just let people build a house that's not going to burn down, not going to flood. Just get the basics right, and if they want bells and whistles, then let them have them.

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Craig Reucassel

Well, it's interesting to say not going to burn down, not going to flood. I mean, we had in New South Wales the previous Liberal government brought in new rules to allow us to still build in flood zones, and we still do see building in flood zones in Australia. There's a first example of something you're saying we shouldn't be building in flood zones.

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Senator Bragg

Look, that's a different issue, as you know. I mean, I'm trying to work out how we cut the cost of building right now, because everyone has given up on that, and they're just going for tax grabs.

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Craig Reucassel

So what are you saying we should take out then? What do you think are the unnecessary things in our building code at the moment?

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Senator Bragg

Well, right now, we're doing a Senate inquiry into this. We've taken hundreds of submissions, we've done public hearings, and we're looking at what we can pare back. And, as I’ve said before, my view is we should have a graduated scheme, you can have a basic, cheap house if you want one, and then you build the additional things on top of it, but not everything would be mandatory. So we're just working out exactly what those will be, and we'll be reporting back to the Senate in the next couple of months.

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Craig Reucassel

Yeah, somebody on the text line says, 'Craig, this guy wants us to live in dog boxes that have such small uninsulated rooms you can't have a life. He's best ignored.' I mean, you've got to have minimum standards, otherwise it's an absolute nightmare. I mean, we don't want to build houses that people don't want to live in. We've seen this with some of the apartments that have been built in Sydney where really people aren't wanting to live in them. We saw a debate about even having bedrooms that don't have light in them, natural light in them. Isn't this long-term going to cause more problems than it solves?

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Senator Bragg

I'm not saying have no standards, but I just don't think we need 2,000 pages and all these other additional things that assume that everyone's disabled and everyone wants a super-duper efficient house. I mean, not everyone wants that, not everyone can afford that. And I just think it's all well and good for people who are rich to say that every house should be, you know, gold-plated, but not every house needs to be for an entry-level. I mean, you talk to the builders, you talk to people who are in the industry, I mean, they can't even understand the Code anymore. So something has gone wrong. I just wanted it to go back to a sensible kind of middle ground. I'm not saying have no standards, I'm not saying people should live in dog boxes, but like, let's at least talk about it without all the rent-seekers taking over the debate.

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Craig Reucassel

Yeah, all right, well thank you, we will continue this conversation, Andrew, it's an interesting one. Thank you.

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Senator Bragg

Okay, thanks Craig, cheers.

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Craig Reucassel

Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg there.

[Ends]