Q: We’ve seen a survey in Nine newspapers this morning saying Labor’s housing policy is getting more cut-through with voters. Why isn’t yours?

Jane Hume:

I’m actually surprised about this, because at the last election, Labor committed to building more houses. Their signature housing policy built zero houses – doughnuts. Now, they’re pledging $10 billion – 100,000 homes, at $100,000 per house. You can’t build a granny flat for $100,000. The coalition are offering a comprehensive housing policy to deal with Australia’s housing crisis. We want to make sure we reduce net migration to sustainable levels, to reduce the demand on housing. We want to make sure that we build enabling infrastructure to boost supply. That could unlock 500,000 homes over the next few years. We want to make sure that we incent haves have new home-buyers with deductible interest on new builds, and also allowing young Australians to access their superannuation to help with their deposit. And we want to reform the industry by making sure we de-register the CFMEU which has pushed building costs up so high particularly over the last term.

Labor’s policy has converted existing homes into liveable homes, or into more homes as the first part. There are more homes under construction. Not defending Labor’s housing policy here – of course more could be done, but it took Curtin and Chiefley years to get the post-war building going as well. At one point, they kept Australian soldiers overseas for longer because they needed to have the jobs and projects ready for them on their return, so they kept men in the defence forces, stationed overseas after the war, until they had stuff ready for them back home.