Canberra Conversations that we would like to have with our Shadow Minister for Immigration, Senator Paul Scarr. And when you look at everything that’s happened in the last week, you know the RBA, whether we’re in their target range tomorrow for anything to do with interest rates, you’d think not, they’ll either stay on hold. They’re certainly not going to go down, go up, well god hope not. Tomago Smelter under threat, questioned over the reliability of critical systems like Triple Zero. It seems we can’t even put our faith in the Bureau of Meteorology with their $4.1 million website, which is very, very unpopular. Just so many things went wrong last week, and you think, well, are we going to hell in a hand basket? Well, here is our Shadow Minister for Immigration, Senator Paul Scarr, morning to you.
Senator Scarr
Good morning. Tim, great to be with you and your listeners.
Tim Webster
One economist called that inflation data last week a shocker, dashed any hopes of a Melbourne Cup day rate cut, probably stay on hold. The RBA says it’s because of the reckless spending. Is that where you lay the blame at the Labor Government, because they don’t mind spending.
Senator Scarr
Absolutely Tim and the first point to make is there are so many people out there struggling now, just holding on by their fingernails in terms of making those mortgage repayments. We know, on average, mortgage repayments under Labor have gone up by $1,800 a month, which is just an extraordinary amount. So, my thoughts are really with those families out there struggling to make ends meet, and the fact of the matter is, we do have record spending under this Labor Government, and that is putting pressure on inflation. We know when inflation gets outside of that Reserve Bank of Australia band of 2 to 3%, that means it’s more likely interest rates go up. I hope that doesn’t happen, but that’s the direction we appear to be heading.
Tim Webster
That Housing Australia Future Fund that we know about is now under audit and facing, you know, some serious questions, as it should, about transparency and delivery. Are we dealing with pink bats 2.0 here? We’ve got all this money, why aren’t we using it properly?
Senator Scarr
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I mean, this is billions of dollars of taxpayer money that is going into this Housing Australia Future Fund, and it’s built hardly any houses. In fact, as we previously discussed, it went on to the market to buy houses. So, it was competing with everyday Australians trying to buy their first house. It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, the Australian National Audit Office, the Auditor General, an independent body, an important part of our institution, they’ve now decided independently, so independently of the political parties, to audit how this was working. I think that’s an important step, and it’ll be interesting to see what we find.
Tim Webster
I told the listeners the latest report that came out from Totality, which is formally Core Logic and Paul, you just don’t know when this is going to stop. You know, Median Price for Sydney is now 1.25 million. Where you are – Canberra, you’ve overtaken Melbourne – $877,000 for a home there, and nationally, you add them all together, the capitals, the regions, it’s $872,000 and prices have gone up by seven and a half percent over the last year. I don’t know where all that stops, and I have to say, I don’t know how people afford it. Where does the Government fit in with all of this? It’s all very well to let first home buyers borrow at a low deposit rate and borrow one and a half million dollars. But I mean, I’m just seeing, and I don’t like to be negative, this all coming to a head eventually it must.
Senator Scarr
I really feel for young people out there in the market trying to get their first home. I feel for people who are renting as well, because they’re under pressure as well, and a lot of them are renting at the same time they’re trying to save for them for their first home. So, there is a lot of pressure on so many people. The government keeps missing its housing targets. Last year we built 177,000 dwellings, and the target was 240,000. We didn’t just miss it; we missed it by 63,000. I know you’ve got connections in the building industry, and they’ll talk to you about the costs or supply chain issues, all the red tape, the green tape, etc., we’re just making it harder.
Tim Webster
I’m sorry to hit you with all of this, but they all happened last week, and you do feel like – where are we heading? We spoke to the Shadow for Resources, Susan McDonald last week, and to the Energy Users Associations, CEO Andrew Richards, about this announcement re Tomago, the Aluminum Smelter that may not be there beyond 2028 with soaring power costs and that inflation figure, it quoted energy prices as one of the problems we’ve got. So, how should Australians be concerned about their future and whether we’re going to manufacturer anything here, and how much it’s going to cost us to buy it?
Senator Scarr
This is an issue all over Australia, in terms of these large smelters and refineries. In my home state of Queensland, the copper smelter at Mount Isa and the copper refinery at Townsville, the government’s had to inject hundreds of millions of dollars of funds to keep those open. Now we’ve got the same issue at Tomago. Basically, Tim, what they said was they went out to the market to get a long-term electricity supply contract, and they couldn’t get a price that made it work. They just couldn’t get the price that made it work. So, what’s their option? This is the issue we’re seeing all over the country, which is why we really need to focus on getting those electricity prices down.
Tim Webster
We’ll be hearing a bit later the program too from the Opposition Spokesperson, Melissa McIntosh, about the parliamentary inquiry that’s getting under way today. But just another thing, isn’t it? The Triple Zero failures, which were just horrendous from Optus, and raise serious questions and concerns about emergency call reliability. I mean, is there anything more important than that? Is the government being tough enough with Telcos in relation to that?
Senator Scarr
Absolutely not. I really congratulate Melissa McIntosh on how she has prosecuted this issue. She’s a wonderful woman from Western Sydney, doing a great job. The fact of the matter is we wanted higher fines to be applied to Telcos if they failed to provide that emergency service. Labor voted against that. We wanted an independent register so we could keep track of whenever the triple zero emergency line went down, wherever it went down around Australia, we wanted an independent register so there was complete transparency. They voted that down as well. In my own home state of Queensland, we’ve had issues with the Bureau of Meteorology radar in recent times.
Tim Webster
I was going to ask you about that. I mean, I sort of initially made light of it. I shouldn’t have, because, as a broadcaster, we love the old web page because it gave you a seven-day forecast, so we’re making fun of it. But those storms that absolutely lashed Southeast Queensland, terrifying photos and that new website, $4.1 million crashed – goodness me.
Senator Scarr
I got hit by the storms as well where we live. Your instinct is to go onto that BOM radar site and see what’s happening and see where the storm’s heading. A lot of people did that with this new website, and they couldn’t make any sense out of it, and the colors had all changed. People were misled by the website, and that’s just not good enough. You know, Tim, we had people go to hospital over the weekend in Queensland because they got absolutely smashed by golf-sized hail balls. It’s a really serious issue.
Tim Webster
I was watching one of the bulletins last nights, and the hailstones were more like cricket balls rather than golf balls. They were huge.
Senator Scarr
We’ve had three of those storms now in the last seven days, so it’s a really serious issue. I do note the BOM has reverted to its old radar style with the same colors. So that’s good news, but you got to ask about, well, why didn’t they do the testing? Why didn’t they get this right before they went live? That’s what you usually do when you implement a change like this.
Tim Webster
I’ve got my computer in here, and I’ve got it up. You know, I can get there, but you have got to negotiate around it. I thought to myself, $4.1 million, so somebody saw them coming. All right, mate, it’s always good to talk to you. Talk to you next week.
