Chris Kenny: Let’s catch up now with Liberal MP from Victoria, Zoe McKenzie, joining us in Melbourne. Good to speak to you, Zoe. What do you feel about the Prime Minister’s $4.3 million beach house purchase?
Zoe McKenzie: Well, you know, good luck to him and Jodie. It’s an exciting time in their life. That said, it was an exciting time for me this morning when I saw this news and I thought, ripper, he’s planning to retire. And then I thought, well, maybe if he’s not retiring, he’s just trying to get in before Jim Chalmers bans negative gearing once and for all. So maybe it’s an investment property and he wants to put the architecture in place to negative gear it for a few years before they move into it upon retirement. I’m not sure, but I found it interesting, you know, that he’s buying in New South Wales, because right now he could get good value for money down here on the Mornington Peninsula. We’ve got so many taxes courtesy of the State Government. Land tax is through the roof, a new Airbnb tax of 7.5%. Basically, you can’t blame him for choosing New South Wales, because the disincentivisation caused by the Allan Labor Government down here is massive.
Chris Kenny: I thought you’d get a plug in for the Mornington Peninsula, but it’s too bloody cold down there, you can only swim in summer! At least up on the Central Coast, you can swim all year round. But seriously, isn’t this politically blind, deaf and dumb? I mean, shouldn’t he realise it’s a housing crisis and he doesn’t need to be the owner of three properties of the moment and living in the Lodge and Kirribilli, he should have just waited at least until after the election?
Zoe McKenzie: Look, the timing is terrible, but I am mindful that he’s about to get married in December, so I do understand, and it is where Jodie is from. That said, I didn’t hear him talking much today about people who face an extra $25,000 a year in interest payments alone, not touching the principal, for their average $800,000 mortgage. I didn’t hear him talking about people who face rents which have increased by 25% since he was elected. So, tone-deaf, terrible timing, that said he probably thought he was entitled to some privacy and not to have it splashed all over the pages. But I think when you buy somewhere called Copacabana, kind of asking for it, right?
Chris Kenny: You are asking for it, and it’s not as if he’s going to live there. He’s going to stay in politics. His electorate is inner-city Sydney. So it’s a holiday house. It’d be no good for me, that one. It looks pretty specky, but it’s the sort of place that, by the looks of it, close to the cliff there. If the kids hit a six over the back fence, you’d lose the ball, you’d never get it back. It’d be in the marine environment. Staying on the serious side of the housing crisis, I noticed that some of your colleagues are now talking about new arrangements that would allow women, in particular single women, to access some of their super, to get into the housing market. Now, that seems sensible, but why does it have to be gender based? Surely all people, after a certain age, whether it’s in your thirties or forties, we should allow people to access at least some of their own forced savings to get into a house of their own.
Zoe McKenzie: Yeah, look, I think this is an argument that Maria Kovacic has put forward, and she is a powerful voice for the economic empowerment of women, particularly women who might find themselves in difficult circumstances later in life. So I greatly admire her for taking this forward. That said, obviously, the difficulty in getting into the housing market is across the board. It’s young people, it’s old people. You know that we had RedBridge polling out yesterday that showed just how pessimistic people are about whether they can get into the market. And the main reason for that, my friend, is all about supply. Michael Sukkar was on the radio this morning explaining that we have now the lowest number of house starts on record, 158,000. Labor’s plan assumes there’s going to be well and truly, well over 200,000 a year. I think they promised 1.2 million in just four years, and they’re running, at this point, 400,000 short. Their plan is pure fantasy. We’re not seeing the homes being built. As I said, we’ve got so many taxes down here in Victoria that it’s a really big leap of faith for a builder to buy land and to start to build, knowing full well that it’s going to have a huge cost blowout before you even get to the CFMEU tax on top. So the challenge, getting into housing is ubiquitous, but it’s largely due to the lack of supply. And frankly, no one has confidence in this Albanese-run economy to take a risk.
Chris Kenny: Yeah, and the demand, of course, exacerbated by high record immigration rates. Just extraordinary. Thanks for joining us, Zoe. I appreciate it.
