Sydney Live

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – Sydney Live with Ben Fordham and Anthony Albanese
Wednesday 24th February 2016

SUBJECTS: Senate Voting Reform, Tax debate;

BEN FORDHAM: A warning for Anthony Albanese, Christopher Pyne is doing FebFast at the moment so he’s been without a drop for 24 days now, not long to go but he may just be in that cranky stage. Albo good afternoon.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m through that.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: He’s always a bit cranky.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I’m through the cranky stage; the first week was hell, hell! The last two weeks have been much better.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s going to be a bender next week.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Imagine what March is going to be like, no it’s going to be good.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s going to be a bender next Wednesday which is my birthday.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Ahh! Well we might have to share a drink for your birthday, we’ve done that before.

BEN FORDHAM: Well Albo you do have your own brand of beer.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And it’s a good drop actually, a good drop.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: He’s such a show off isn’t he?

BEN FORDHAM: Has Albo sent you any of the free beer Christopher? Because I’m yet to receive any.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No he’s sent me nothing; he just uses me and then chucks me overboard.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It’s not free! The company that’s doing it, Willy the Boatman’s have put in a free ad there, they-

BEN FORDHAM: I noticed that!

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I didn’t even get any; I didn’t even know they were doing it.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s the same thing with my book, A Letter to My Children published by Melbourne University Publishing, they only gave me 4 free books, and I had to buy all the others.

BEN FORDHAM: This is not a plug-a-thon thank you very much.

[Laughing]

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Available in all good bookstores!

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: [Laughing] A plug-a-thon…

BEN FORDHAM: Now, let’s just move on for a moment, the veteran Labor front bencher Gary Gray has admitted that he lost the debate in his party on Senate voting reform. Now this is of course the Government’s legislation to weaken the ability of these annoying micro-parties to win Senate seats. The Government is all for this with the help of the Greens, the Labor Party is opposed to it, Gary Gray the veteran Labor frontbencher says he was the only one I think who wanted to speak up against the Labor policy on the whole thing, Mr Albanese why don’t you want to support these voting reforms that would clean up the Senate? We all know what happened after the last election, everyone was shaking their heads thinking how did all of these nobodies get in?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well we’re quite happy to support sensible reform and I think personally the issues that were looked at such as having a threshold so you had to get a certain percentage of the vote, below that automatically preferences got distributed would have been one thing worthy of looking at, the joint standing committee on electoral matters made recommendations, but that’s not what this legislation is, this legislation is a deal, a dirty deal between the Liberals and the Greens to help Liberal party and Green party candidates get elected to the Senate. It got presented to the Parliament on Monday; it’s being debated and pushed through as we speak right now. Through the House of Representatives and it’ll be pushed through the Senate in March without any proper scrutiny at all.

BEN FORDHAM: Christopher who would have thought, you teaming up with the Greens, but is it all for a good cause?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well Ben it’s fascinating hearing Anthony talk about this and I admire his chutzpah but unfortunately Labor’s position has been exposed as having no clothes because Gary Grey who’s one of their most senior front benches who was on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, he says their claim that 800 000 votes would become informal under this Bill is nonsense. Their central claim that they are opposing this Bill because of an increase in informal votes he says is nonsense. In terms of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the Labor party submission to it which I just happen to have in front of me says that they support optional preferential voting for the Senate above the line which is what we are introducing so Labor thinks that this is going to pass and that they’ll benefit from it but that they can cosy up to the micro parties, let’s remember that Ricky Muir got elected with 497 votes, he got half a per cent of the vote and he’s supposed to get 14 per cent, he got half a per cent. Labor’s going to cosy up to them for their preferences at this election, while they know it’s going to pass because hopefully the Greens and Nick Xenophon will support it in the Senate.

BEN FORDHAM: Aright, let me move on to Kelly O’Dwyer, the opposition has used Question Time to hammer the Government over confusion between the PM and one of his Ministers on Tax Reform. Malcolm Turnbull has been claiming that under Labor’s Negative Gearing policy housing prices will go down. But the Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer was on the Sunrise program this morning on Channel 7 and she said the policy would increase the cost of housing for all Australians. And I noticed in Question Time today there were Labor members saying well you can’t have it both ways is it going up or going down?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well it’s very simple Ben, it’s very simple-

BEN FORDHAM: Well it sounds very confusing.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No there are two types of houses and everybody in Australia knows that, there’s new houses and there’s existing houses.

BEN FORDHAM: No but Kelly O’Dwyer said increase the cost of housing for all Australians.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: She was talking about new houses.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: No she wasn’t-

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Ben read out the quote directly.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: She’s talking about new houses, now obviously the public understands demand and supply even if Labor doesn’t understand it. And if you take a third of the investors out of existing housing and remember in December a third of the people who bought existing houses were people who negatively geared those properties, if you take a third of them out because you abolish negative gearing on existing houses and you push them in to the new housing market then the prices for existing houses go down, because there’s less demand and the prices for new houses go up because there’s more demand.

BEN FORDHAM: So that would be attractive for people trying to get in to the housing market would it not?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It’s not attractive for anyone! Because if you’re trying to get in to the housing market you don’t want housing prices going up for new houses.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Ben, we were promised when Malcolm Turnbull knocked off Tony Abbott that there’d be more mature debate, that he’d treat Australian’s like adults. What we’re seeing is a Government that has no tax policy of its own that floated the GST and then went away from doing anything about the GST, that on this, floated doing something itself about negative gearing and capital gains tax but are now saying prices will go both up and down.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You just don’t like your policy being held up to the light,

ANTHONY Albanese: It is completely absurd and embarrassing for a Government that is simply all over the shop when it comes to tax policy.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What’s embarrassing is that Labor’s front bench doesn’t understand the rules of demand and supply which are basic economics.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: This is a cheap two bit scare campaign where

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well you’d know all about that

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Malcolm Turnbull yesterday at one stage said if you vote Labor you’ll be poorer I mean for goodness sake,

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well if you own an existing house-

ANTHONY ALBANESE: For goodness sake, what absolute nonsense.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, if you attack house values-

ANTHONY ALBANESE: These are minor-

BEN FORDHAM: So if you own an existing house Christopher, then the value’s going to go down therefore anyone who’s trying to get in to the existing house market will be able to get a cheaper price for their real estate.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Let’s look at the other side of the coin, if you own an existing house-

BEN FORDHAM: Can you just look at this side?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, well that’s not what Labor’s claiming but if you have an existing house and you have a mortgage on that house say its worth $900 000 and the house value falls, because of Labor’s policy which it will, it must according to the rules of economics, the bank will move in if the value of your house starts getting close to the mortgage. We all know that’s what will happen.

BEN FORDHAM: What the banks are going to start seizing homes?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s what they’ve done! They’ve done it before, if the house price falls, the bank says we can’t let this fall any further, your mortgage is now more than the house price and we’re going to have to close in and sell this house from underneath you, that’s Labor’s policy! And that’s why this is a really serious misjudgement on Labor’s part, they’ve swallowed a pig and they don’t, and they’re recognising the damage they’ve done to their own brand by showing they don’t understand basic economics.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Who knows what that analogy means, but-

BEN FORDHAM: What does ‘swallowed a pig’ mean?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It means they’re trying to digest something that is impossible to digest. You should have seen their faces in Question Time today.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Nonsense Christopher, but what Australians know either themselves young people or people who have kids or hope to have grandkids one day is that the young person fronting up to an auction at the moment is competing against people who get an advantage, against investors get an advantage from the taxpayer, as opposed to people who are just-

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Just like any other investor.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Who are just trying to get into the housing market-

BEN FORDHAM: But they can negatively gear as well.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: And everyone knows, I mean my-

BEN FORDHAM: But new people getting into the market can negatively gear.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yes but not if they’re going to live there and what-

BEN FORDHAM: Alright Albo let me just jump in on that, let me jump in on that, just on the new houses, on the new houses right, if everyone’s going to flock towards new houses because you can still have the benefit of negative gearing. Let me finish the question, if the benefits of negative gearing are still there on new homes only you are going to have more investors who are going to try and buy these newly built homes therefore if you’ve got young couples who are fronting up on the outskirts of Sydney to try and get their home and try and get in the housing market, instead of competing with 19 other people at the auction they’ll compete with 60 other people at the auction?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That’s exactly right.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well Ben the fact is, that my staff, of the younger people that are under the age of 35, all of them are renting. All of them, who are in a reasonable job paid more than a lot of your listeners as research officers or electorate officers, can’t get in to the housing market.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But you’re not going to help them!

ANTHONY ALBANESE: The idea that we will just ignore those issues is frankly absurd; this government has nothing to say about housing affordability-

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But Ben, the reason why house prices are high in places like Sydney is a lack of supply. Labor’s policy’s not going to help people get in to the housing market. It’s going to mean that they’ll be competing with investors who previously would have been investing in the existing housing market, prices will go up for new houses and those young people Anthony talks about will be even further away from buying a house!

ANTHONY ALBANESE: If you have negative gearing for new houses there will be more new houses and units built.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: And they’ll be more expensive!

ANTHONY ALABESE: Called more supply, supply and demand.

BEN FORDHAM: We will continue to discuss this gentlemen next week.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You don’t understand supply and demand.

BEN FORDHAM: Is Parliament sitting next week?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Stick to the piggy analogies.

BEN FORDHAM: Is Parliament sitting next week?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: It is indeed, it’s my birthday!

BEN FORDHAM: We’ll talk next week Albo, happy birthday for next week.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well you can, send a, we’ll have a virtual cake or something on air.

BEN FORDHAM: We’ll do something like that, thank you Christopher.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Good bye.

BEN FORDHAM: Thank you Mr. Albanese, they are the odd couple.

[ends]