Liberals were too focused on homebuyer help and urban sprawl, says Andrew Bragg

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a day ago

The Liberal Party's reliance on urban sprawl to fix the housing crisis was "misguided" and the opposition could prioritise supply by threatening state governments, new spokesperson Andrew Bragg has said.
Previously an assistant in the housing portfolio under Peter Dutton, Senator Bragg was promoted on Wednesday to shadow minister by Sussan Ley, who said he would also have "economy-wide" responsibility for productivity and deregulation.
"You should have some policies which help prioritise first homeowners, but the thrust of your policy should be on the supply side," he told the ABC in an interview.
"We need to look very carefully at how we ensure that the states are going to meet their end of the bargain … We need to look at the carrots and the sticks."
Senator Bragg also declared himself a supporter of working from home and suggested he would focus on slashing paperwork for small business owners, whom he said Labor had neglected.
Economists panned Mr Dutton's housing platform, which would have allowed first homebuyers tap into their super, secure easier loans, and enjoy tax deductions on their mortgages.
Senator Bragg said it was "possible" the approach he helped to craft did too much on the demand side and could have pushed up prices.
"We need to find demand-side policies which do tilt the scales in favour of first homebuyers, and which do ensure that the bank of mum and dad is not going to be the only way that a young person can get a house. [But] the supply side is very important."
The main Coalition supply policy at the last election was to fund sewer pipes and connecting roads to build new homes on the urban fringe, which then-housing spokesperson Michael Sukkar said should be the location of the "Australian dream".
But Senator Bragg said supply policy should not be fixated on outer suburbia.
"Our policies going forward will be reviewed, but my disposition is … if we have a housing supply policy it would be deployed everywhere, in the inner city, in the regions, in the outer suburbs.
"You need to infill. You need to build up where the transport infrastructure is, and the idea that you would have a scheme that would only apply to outer suburbs, I think, is very misguided … People live everywhere, frankly."
Senator Bragg said Labor's proposal for the federal government to build homes itself via grants was "one of the craziest ideas I've ever heard" and would be opposed.
Instead, he said the focus should be on knocking down barriers to private sector supply at state and local level and left the door open to withholding GST or other payments from states that don't do enough, an idea he floated as assistant spokesperson.
"In NSW for example, Chris Minns talks a big game on housing, but the Rose Hill complex has fallen over, he's had a number of disasters under his premiership … Maybe we look at league tables, we look at working out how exactly we rank states."
In his newly created portfolio of productivity and deregulation, Senator Bragg said the priority would be to advocate for unlocking more private investment.
"The most jobs created in Australia in the last few years are non-market jobs. The size of the state is getting larger and larger … [but] we haven't even seen from the government discussion of what you can do to get private investment moving."
He said Labor had "vacated the field" on stimulating investment and that Australia should focus on "national competitiveness".
"We are in a global race to attract more investment into our jurisdiction because that will result in more jobs," he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has named productivity as a priority for Labor's second term and tasked the independent Productivity Commission with proposing reforms. Senator Bragg said he would "do a lot of listening" to the commission and others.
He added the Coalition would prioritise regulation busting for small businesses.
"My sense is that most small businesspeople feel like the government doesn't imagine that they are people," he said.
"When they finish their job at the end of the day they go home and they do their compliance tasks for the government, and so they lose their recreation and family time. And so we want to free people up to have their lives back."
For larger businesses, he said the federal government's standard process for assessing the impact of regulations was not a "serious process".
"I think we've got to be much more rigorous about how we assess the cost of new regulation."
Senator Bragg, a leading moderate, made a pointed defence of Australia's target of net zero emissions by 2050, set by the Morrison government as part of the Paris climate accords but opposed by some Nationals.
"We're looking at how net zero can best be deployed in Australia as part of our policy review. We are committed to cutting emissions and that can only be done as part of an international framework, so that's our starting point," he said.
Ms Ley has declined to confirm that net zero will remain Coalition policy at the end of the review, but Senator Bragg said it was the "starting point".
"We signed Australia up to net zero in 2021 … There are different ways of doing that and that's a process now that [energy spokesperson] Dan Tehan will lead," he said.