Interview with Greg Jennett, ABC Afternoon Briefing

GREG JENNETT: Assistant Energy Minister Jenny McAllister joined us shortly after question time, and we began our discussion on that home buying scheme, which is meant to help up to 10,000 people a year, but itself is still a long way away from being delivered.
 
Jenny McAllister, welcome back to the program. Can we start talking this week about Help to Buy, the shared equity scheme that was – I wouldn’t call it a signature election commitment, but it was on the books for Labor. Debate is underway in the Reps and will soon head to the Senate where I think it’s fair to say it’s well short of requisite support. Is the government committed to bringing this to a vote in the Senate?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: Look, we are seeking support for this initiative. And you’re right – we took it to an election. The public supported it, and we want to see support for it in both of the chambers in this place. This is a scheme that will help as many as 40,000 people who would otherwise not be able to enter homeownership, get themselves a home. And this is such an important issue for Australians. I am yet to hear a credible reason from either the Greens or the Liberals for opposing this. The truth is that they should get out of the way and let us get on with the job of helping people with their housing needs.
 
GREG JENNETT: I’m interested in the inevitable comparisons with the urgency and commitment to this with the housing Australia Future Fund, where there was a standoff and eventually that was resolved through compromise. Whether this measure, Help to Buy, was blocked or halted by procedure, would the government treat that as a failure to pass with all the consequences that go with that and the constitution?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: I’m not going to speculate about a failure. I mean, our hope is that we get this through the parliament. And the reason for that is because there are so many Australians that are depending on us to bring in really strong housing policies. This is just one of those issues that people talk to us about all the time, and our government is really committed to addressing it. So we have, as you know, an ambitious national target for new supply, but we also have programs like this that seek to support people into the market.
 
GREG JENNETT: So committed that you would be prepared to negotiate any of the publicly stated sticking points that the Greens have? Obviously negative gearing is one of those, they want it abolished or phased out, as are rental caps and more public housing.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: Well, none of those represent credible objections to the piece of legislation that is before them. There is a piece of legislation before them that will help people get into homeownership. And, as I said, I am yet to hear a credible reason for voting against it. Really, this is just playing politics with something that’s actually quite important.
 
GREG JENNETT: All right. Well, that’s got a way to go through your chamber there in the Senate. Let’s go to those gender pay gap figures released for the first time yesterday as a transparency measure. I think it’s broadly been supported. There were a few quibbles from an LNP senator, but would you like to see further granular detail here? I notice one criticism being made today is that rather than comparing, you know, company to company against a benchmark of equity, why not go right down to like-for-like – like a male and a female worker in the same company doing the same job? Would that be a better measure of the pay gap?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: We’re trying to bring about a national debate about the pay gap. The publication of the details yesterday of the gender pay gap of large Australian companies is a consequence of our legislation to make this data transparent, that we took into the parliament last year. And our purpose is to create more transparency so that boards can see what’s going on in the companies that they administer. So that employees can see what’s going on in the companies that they work at. And so that women’s organisations and the community more generally can make an assessment about the companies that they’re engaging with and their commitment to gender pay.
 
I think the system as legislated is already doing a good job at those things. The debate over the last 24 hours I think has been extremely positive. We do need to have a conversation about why men and women’s lifetime earnings are so different. A conversation about the roles that they’re performing in all of these workplaces is absolutely essential for that – to that end.
 
GREG JENNETT: But that’s not necessarily accounted for in these figures as they’re aggregated around each company, are they? I mean, these indexes don’t account for the fact that typically a woman but not always a woman will choose to do part-time work.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: Well, choice is an interesting destruction of the situation, isn’t it? Because many of the jobs that are the most highly paid are not available on a part-time basis. And I’m not talking simply about very senior roles in white-collar jobs; I’m actually talking about some of the well-paid jobs in a range of sectors like the construction sector, where the amount of availability of part-time work is quite limited. What we are seeking is for companies to think carefully about the steps that they can take in their own organisations to make a wider range of roles available to women and to ensure that some of the gender pay gaps that we’re seeing in the statistics that have been published can be improved.
 
GREG JENNETT: Yeah.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: And I think the public conversation about this over the last 24 hours has been extremely positive.
 
GREG JENNETT: It has generally been, and I guess the proof now will lie in the behavioural response by these companies around recruitment and promotion. But I guess that’s going to take some time to measure. Let’s move on to climate matters in your portfolio, Jenny McAllister. A poll out this week showed levels of support – some might say surprising levels of support – for nuclear power with – across the board, regardless of your voting background or, in some cases, age – about 50 to 51 per cent support. How do you explain that? And do you agree that it’s higher than would generally be perceived in this country?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: Look, I think the issue here is whether or not the technology is actually going to meet the challenge that’s before us. And the conversation that I’m having with the community, when people talk to me about it runs along these lines: AEMO tells us that we need substantial investment in new generation between now and 2035 to replace ageing coal-fired power stations that are coming to the end of their life. Nuclear is unlikely to be available under the most optimistic estimates until well after that time frame. It is not a technology that suits Australian circumstances. It is expensive and it’s also a technology that I think many Australians, notwithstanding the polling that you’re pointing to, do feel anxious about. This is not a technology that suits our specific circumstances. And, frankly, the obsession with this technology by the Opposition represents a distraction.
 
GREG JENNETT: You don’t think there’s a generational shift here? Because obviously younger people in their 20s, for instance, won’t be as aware or haunted by the Cold War 1970s nuclear power reactor meltdowns that happened in the US and a bit later in Russia. Do you think there is a failure, a lack of appreciation around that, that it just doesn’t register with younger people?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: From my perspective the issues are time, cost and, in particular, relative cost next to the technologies that we know will work in the Australian context. I mean, the advice is very clear: nuclear energy exceeds the costs of renewables that are firmed by something like four times. This is not a sensible cost choice for Australians, and nor will be it ready in the time frame that it is available, as I said.
 
GREG JENNETT: It could make it ahead of 2050, though, couldn’t it? I mean, that’s broadly asserted by the Coalition. But it’s not a help to 2030 and it’s not a help to 2035 targets, but it could be by 2050?
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: I think we’re looking at the cost profile. When you’ve got one technology that costs four times as much as firmed renewables, why would we go down that path? And the answer is because Peter Dutton is looking for any opportunity to distract from the fact that despite having 22 energy policies whilst they were last in government, they have got none at the moment.
 
GREG JENNETT: All right. Well, we await details of their forthcoming policy. We’re told it’s a work in progress, which means we’ll be able to take a look at that with you at a future occasion when it emerges. Jenny McAllister, you’ve got a bit on at the moment with parliament sitting – thank you.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: It’s a pleasure.
 
ENDS