SUBJECT | THE VOICE | 19 June 2023
PETE STEFANOVIC: Joining us live now, is Shadow Immigration Minister Dan Tehan. Dan, lots to do before the winter break. Starting off this morning, the Voice is likely to pass through the Senate in the next couple of hours, which then sets it off for a public debate. Polls show, and there's been a few of them, that it will not be successful: is that how you see things ending up this year?
DAN TEHAN: Well, I see Labor's Voice as something that is taking the Australian people as, or treating them, as mugs. They will not provide any detail. Anthony Albanese will not commit to a bipartisan approach. We could have constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians done on a bipartisan way, but he won't do that. He wants his Voice. He's trying to ram it down the throats of the Australian people without telling them any of the detail. And when you treat the Australian people like mugs, they will tend to treat you like a mug. So Anthony Albanese really has to think about what he's doing here because it's not in the interests of Indigenous Australians, and it's not in the interests of the Australian people as a whole.
STEFANOVIC: Also this morning, Dan, the Greens are to decide on the Government's Future Housing Fund and its position on that. Any chance the Coalition comes around on that and actually gets behind it, without the Greens?
TEHAN: We think it's bad policy, and the Government seems incredibly desperate now. Not long after their budget, their whole housing policy seems to be a complete mess. They're now saying to the states, here’s $2 billion, and just come to us and tell us how you're going to spend it. We think that is a way of them trying to get the Greens on board. And once again, we just seem to be Labor throwing money at a problem without any sort of plan. The states and territories haven't come to the Albanese Government said this is how we're going to spend it; this is how you get value for taxpayers' money. They’ve just gone to them and said here's a $2 billion blank cheque; come to us and tell us how you're going to spend it. This is not the way you should conduct government and especially conduct a government housing policy.
STEFANOVIC: The Coalition's definitely out?
TEHAN: Unless the Albanese Government comes to us in good faith and says we are happy to rip up our existing policy and sit down with you and work out what would be a policy that would deliver immediate outcomes, like our superannuation policy. Then we'd be prepared to talk to them - absolutely. But while they're putting forward bad policy, we're not going to agree to it.
STEFANOVIC: Isn't something better than nothing, though?
TEHAN: Well, what we need is something that's actually going to work and produce dividends on the ground. You know, to start with, what they could do is be upfront with the Australian people and say, we're bringing 1.5 million people in this year and over the next four years, we don't know how we're going to house them. We don't know what this is going to do to rents. We know that there have been warnings that it will drive inflation up, so why don't we sit down and work out, okay, where is a plan for what we're going to do to address housing shortages so that young Australians will be able to benefit from it? If they did that, then absolutely, we'd be prepared to work with them and make sure that we get a policy that delivers on the ground for young people right here and now.
STEFANOVIC: David Van has resigned from the Liberal Party. He did that on the weekend. Do you think he should also be kicked out of the Senate as a whole?
TEHAN: Well, that ultimately will be a decision for the Senate. But can I say this, Peter Dutton has said that he thinks it's in the best interest of David Van if he did leave the parliament. So I think what we need is, is David needs to think about the advice that Peter Dutton has given him. He's obviously got time to think about that over the winter break, but that's the advice that Peter Dutton is giving to him after some fairly lengthy and detailed discussions.
STEFANOVIC: Okay. Closing off in your portfolio, Dan, would-be asylum seekers whose claim of persecution was found to be illegitimate. How so?
TEHAN: Yes, so Labor's big Australia it just keeps getting bigger. We're now seeing a record number of people coming in by air, claiming asylum under this Labor government. It's now reached 2000, and they've only managed to boot seven out. So we've seen 2000 people come in over the last month, seven of them booted out, and Labor seems to have no plan to be able to deal with this. So it seems like their Big Australia policy is just going to get bigger and bigger because, as we pointed out, Labor has no plan when it comes to immigration and the impact of the 1.5 million people coming this year, and over the next four, are going to have on housing, on rent, on infrastructure - when they've cut infrastructure spending in the budget – and the pressure that this is putting on inflation.
STEFANOVIC: OK, Dan Tehan, good to see you.
