Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg has been grilled on his past claim that blaming migrants for the housing crisis is “morally wrong”, after the Coalition confirmed its new immigration policy would bar non-citizens from accessing taxpayer-funded housing support.
Mr Bragg will deliver a speech on Tuesday where he will reportedly link low levels of new housing with high migration, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
His comments follow the Coalition’s proposal to exclude all people except Australian citizens from eligibility for the federal government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme for first home buyers. Permanent residents would also be barred from participating in the scheme.
Ahead of his speech, Mr Bragg was asked by ABC Radio National what had changed since his November comments, where he said blaming migrants for the housing crisis was “economically and morally wrong”.
At the time, he had added the approach was one taken by “some fringe parties”.
Mr Bragg responded on Tuesday: “Well, nothing has changed. And as I would have said in November to you, it is an input on the demand side, that is migration, and migration has been too high.”
“ … So it is a factor, but it isn’t the only way to solve the housing crisis,” he said.
“And as I said in November to you, if you cut migration to zero, you still have a whopping housing problem.”
He later denied the Coalition’s approach to housing meant it had adopted the tactics of a “fringe party”.
Mr Bragg was also scathing of any prospect to changing the capital gains tax (CGT), after Nine Newspapers reported Labor was weighing up a return to the Keating-era CGT model.
This would mean reverting the CGT discount to its pre-1999 iteration, where it would only tax assets on their real rise in value, an approach that takes into account inflation.
“It’s just more gimmicks … ultimately, more houses will not be built with higher taxes,” Mr Bragg said.
While Housing Minister Clare O’Neil would later not be drawn on potential changes to the tax system, she told the same program the Albanese government was “fiercely pro-supply” when it came to the housing crisis.
She said the government acknowledged “a manifest injustice” facing young Australians, namely “wildly different housing opportunities than their parents and grandparents”.
“But there’s no question we need to do more to help them,” she said.
“This is a long-running problem for the country, and we have a fierce commitment to address it in the interests of young people.”
