Interview with Richard Willingham on ABC Radio Melbourne

‍

01 October 2025

Subjects: Housing supply, Home Guarantee Scheme, superannuation

E&OE………

Richard Willingham
Senator Andrew Bragg is the Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness. G'day Andrew.

Senator Bragg
Richard, how are you?

Richard Willingham
Very well, thanks. Do you agree with the Minister there that this is going to help younger people get into the housing market?

Senator Bragg
I mean, this is all too silly for words. The government inherited a housing system when it was elected back in 2022 that was giving the nation 200,000 houses a year on average, and now they've collapsed housing supply back to 170,000 houses a year on average. And they've spent $60 billion of taxpayers' funds on bureaucracies, only to provide fewer houses. So, this is sort of a band-aid today. It's a pretty ugly band-aid because it will make the problem worse.

Richard Willingham
So, they've admitted that it will send prices up. How do you get prices down?

Senator Bragg
By building more houses…

Richard Willingham
But the cost of housing is going up—materials, labor, that's all part of it…

Senator Bragg
Sure, but one of the big issues is that we've never had a bigger population than we have right now in Australia right?

Richard Willingham
Correct.

Senator Bragg
Never. And we have had a housing construction collapse, and that has made the problem so much worse. So, Labor have built all these bureaucracies in Canberra—Housing Australia Future Fund, housing targets, everything else—and none of them have paid off. So this demand-side solution today, which is unmeans-tested and open to everyone, will make the problem much worse. So it's really, as I say, it's too silly for words, frankly.

Richard Willingham
Do you think it should be means-tested? If it's going to exist—it exists, you know, it's a policy, it's enacted—should it be means-tested?

Senator Bragg
For sure, and it was under us. And when it was introduced, it was designed for lower-income earners, and that's the whole point of taxpayer funds. I mean, they shouldn't be provided to everyone who doesn't need them. The government's got its backside out of its pants in terms of the Budget position. It's got 10 years of deficits. This is something that really can't be afforded. But the principal point here is that it's papering over the cracks of a massive supply failure. I mean, the only way to solve the housing crisis in Australia is to build out of it. And this government has massively failed to build supply, which is why the Reserve Bank Governor herself has said that the government's policies won't work for two years, perhaps. And by that time, we will have had six years of Labor government.

Richard Willingham
Do we need to get—I mean, you talk about barriers to building—do state and federal governments all need to come together to take this on? Because you've got different layers of governments doing different things.

Senator Bragg
Well, one of the major cost problems that we're seeing is the fact that the CFMEU add a 30% premium to new apartment builds. Then you've got access to skills and labour. The government have brought in more yoga teachers than they've brought in builders. And then we've got a whole generation of apprentices that we need to push into the building sector. So, there's a whole lot of things you can do to make the building of houses more economic. One thing we shouldn't be doing is adding more taxes and more regulation. This government has put in place 5,000 new regulations, and many of those have actually been in the housing space itself, which has made the whole thing even harder.

Richard Willingham
You've got a big focus on super, as part of your housing policy. How do you see that stimulating people going out and building? If you're focusing on getting people access to money, a bit like the deposit scheme is giving people more access to money, how does that pull those levers?

Senator Bragg

As you know, we're sort of going through a bit of a character-building phase after the election, and we did have a number of policies, they're all under review. Look, what I can say is the bulk of our policies going forward will be on the supply side because we recognise how critical it is to get the houses built. I mean, there's no other way. We have to build our way out of this crisis. You can have targeted demand side solutions potentially, but the bulk of the policies ought to be on the supply side, and that's where you'll see the Coalition focusing over the next couple of years.

Richard Willingham
So your super policy won't return?

Senator Bragg
Look, in that form, I don't think so, because there are frankly better ways to do that. And I think we really want to focus on the supply. I mean, this is the critical element - that the government inherited a housing system which was supplying 200,000 houses a year. They've crashed that down to 170,000, despite all the bureaucracy and all the billions of dollars. And we need to get it up towards a quarter of a million houses a year to house our bursting population. That's got to be the focus.

Richard Willingham
It goes back to my question before, though. Do we need states and federal government to come together? Be it Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, whatever colour it might be, to actually work together because planning is local, state laws and you're talking about supply, etc. Do we need something to come together to have a proper go at this?

Senator Bragg
I don't think you can come together because I think a lot of the states and a lot of the councils are NIMBYs, so they actually don't care about people under the age of 40. And every time an apartment block gets vetoed in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, it's a nightmare for under-40s because that's their housing being deleted, basically.

Richard Willingham
So do you support then the State Victorian Government's push to build more apartments in places like Brighton in the seat of Goldstein?

Senator Bragg
Look, I think that any policy that's going to provide more supply is good. Personally, where I live in Sydney, there's a proposal to build stations and the like around there, and I've been very open about that. And I think that politicians have to understand that they are perpetual custodians, and we have to make sure that we get these houses built. We can't play this 'not in my backyard' game business because it just means that you won't get any progress. So, I just think, I mean, I'm not in state politics, right, but clearly the federal government have done nothing to push the states on their NIMBYism, and I think that's been a big failure again of this particular administration, this Albanese government. I think they should have been much stronger to make sure the states actually do build because frankly, none of the states or territories are on track to meet their own federally prescribed housing targets. None of them, they're on a duck, all of them.

Richard Willingham
Senator Andrew Bragg, thank you so much for your time.

Senator Bragg
Okay, thanks.

[ENDS]

‍