PATRICIA KARVELAS: For more on this and the rest of today's issues, including what's going on with the Sydney Swans. I spoke to Tanya Plibersek, who's the Minister for Social Services, a short time ago. Minister, welcome to afternoon briefing.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Great to be with you, Patricia.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: We've heard from the Sydney Swans today. Their chairman says by making a decision, as he puts it, to effectively torpedo our season, it tells you how seriously they take this. What do you make of that language?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, the first thing I want to say is I want to be very careful not to speak about any of the allegations or investigations underway in specific terms because obviously that's a matter for the police and courts and I don't want to prejudice any potential investigation. So, I'd say a few things in general terms. Sporting codes, teams like the Swans have an incredibly important role in our community. They are the people who boys and young men look up to, they're their heroes, they're role models. And I am really pleased to hear some of the measures that the club's taken today. I think it is important to show that sporting clubs, schools, other institutions take allegations of sexual assault seriously. It is really important that in any discussion we centre victims and survivors of sexual assault. And hearing the club, you know, take strong measures is a really important step forward. I think some of the language that we saw yesterday, some of the, you know, commentators focusing on the footballing elements of this, rather than starting with how serious the allegations are and how seriously they should be taken, I think that was disappointing. But the club's taken strong steps today and I congratulate them for that.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: It's not suggested that any of the players are being accused of sexual assault and none of the banned players have been formally interviewed by police. That's according to the club. The decision to ban the players, they say, is solely related to the breaches of the club's standards and expected behaviour. The behavioural issue around, obviously the late night drinking and those issues is what they're talking about here. Should the AFL follow the NRL in adopting a no fault stand down rule? As it stands, as you know, the AFL deals with these issues case by case.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, Patricia, I do want to be very careful not to stray into the territory of dealing with individual cases and individual instances. I think it's important that sporting codes understand how powerful their voice is and that people look to them to set a standard for behaviour in public life. So, I'd say in general terms, it's really important that the codes use the authority and the power they have to send a very strong message that sexual assault, family and domestic violence are never acceptable, will never be tolerated, and that the strongest possible measures will be taken. And that, again, it's always the victims and survivors that are centred in any decision making.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, you weren't happy with the way that they were talking yesterday, you think today they've rectified that and dealt with the issue the way you think is appropriate.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don't want to be, you know, examining every word of, you know, each of the statements that's been made over the last 24, 48 hours. What I'd say is it's important that codes recognise that what they do and what they say is very powerful. The players are heroes and role models for a lot of young people. That comes with a great deal of responsibility and, you know, I'm very pleased to see that they are, you know, taking those responsibilities seriously.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: The stories have unleashed a torrent of abuse on social media towards women who come forward or jokes about violence against women. What role do social media companies have in addressing these comments? Because I've seen some of it, it’s revolting.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, it's disgusting. And isn't this, you know, just one of the reasons that so few women actually come forward? Whether it's family or domestic violence or sexual assault, we know that only a fraction, we believe, probably 92% of assaults are not reported to police. And then when someone reports to police, about 85% of those reports don't end up with charges. And then even if a perpetrator of sexual assault is charged and goes to court, only a fraction of those receive a guilty verdict and very few actually end up suffering any real consequences at all. I mean, it is one of the great problems at the centre of sexual assault in this country. It's not pursued appropriately by police and courts to the extent that it should be, for the damage that it does to victims and survivors. And one of the reasons that people don't come forward is exactly the sort of social media backlash that you're talking about today, where we've seen shocking instances of misogyny and victim blaming on social media. It is incredibly disappointing. And that's when our institutions need to stand up the most, when they are, you know, in a position to say that any allegations like this will be appropriately dealt with and investigated. That sends a very strong message to those people, those cowards online who are there to belittle women who make complaints.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Let's move to some other issues if we can. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has called on your government, the Albanese government, to rethink your approach to the tobacco excise. He's essentially backed the idea of One Nation’s push for the tax on cigarettes to be cut, slashed. Isn't that what you need to do to stop motivating people to go to the black market where it's much cheaper?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think Chris Minns is a great premier who is absolutely 100% wrong on this issue. I think the states and territories should do a better job of policing the sale of illegal tobacco. As a Commonwealth government, we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars on strengthening our borders and trying to stop the tobacco coming into the country. But when it's being sold in plain sight, then state governments have a role in preventing that. We should not let criminals run our health system. We know that tobacco excise increases have been one of the most important tools we've had for reducing smoking rates in this country to some of the lowest in the world. I was the Health Minister when we began this regular ratcheting up of tobacco excise and I'm proud of the fact that we've got some of the lowest smoking rates in the world. How cheap would, like, how much tobacco excise would you have to drop? How cheap would you have to make legal tobacco in order for it to compete with illegal tobacco? It is impossible --
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, you're saying that--
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: -- to compete on price with illegal tobacco, what we need to do is get rid of the illegal tobacco on our streets and in our shops and that's a policing job. You know, tobacco--
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But is that ever going to happen? Let's be realistic here. Look how much it's proliferated.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Hang on, that's like saying, Patricia, we should just give up on policing ice and heroin because it still exists on our streets. I 100% reject that approach to illegal tobacco. Illegal tobacco sales support illegal alcohol sales, support other types of crime in our community. They fund a whole lot of illegal behaviour. They fund criminals who engage in all sorts of other violent crimes. I don't think we should surrender to that. And I'll say this to you, tobacco is the only legal product that kills over half of its regular users. I'm not prepared to run up the white flag.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, it's interesting you talk about this illegal tobacco proliferation. I mean, there's not a day I don't walk past an illegal tobacco store. It does make people think, how is that in plain sight happening? There is a massive failure, isn't there here, of regulation, of dealing with this.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, and state governments that have introduced stronger laws have been cutting, have been cutting illegal tobacco in their states, have closed down hundreds of stores that are selling illegal tobacco. I think one of the problems here is there's a state-by-state approach and some states are not doing what they should to police illegal tobacco in their streets. And that's a real problem because it funds other types of illegal activity as well. It's a, it's a great cash cow for those criminals who are selling illegal tobacco products to our kids.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Just on rents, which is a huge issue in question time, you might dismiss some of the dimensions of the Ray White modelling on rent increases absolutely. But isn't it clear that rents will go up higher than $2 a week?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, isn't it clear, Patricia, that housing costs are always linked with the fact that we haven't built enough homes in Australia for many decades? And right now we've got, for the first time in many years, a government that is serious about building more homes and that helps first home buyers. We've seen, as you know, 260,000 people get into the housing market through our 5% deposit scheme. Building more homes also helps renters. On top of building more homes we've worked with the states and territories to give renters more rights and more certainty. That's something we did as a government when we came in. Liberals and Nationals never did that when they were in government. And we're also investing $1.2 billion in crisis and transitional housing. That's thousands of people, like the women and children escaping domestic violence that I'm so concerned about, thousands of extra people that will get housing because of the investments.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: When you talk about that, it's about owning a home, I mean, I understand some renters will become buyers, but that's, they're small numbers. There'll still be a lot of people who are renting.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: And Patricia, those people who have investment properties now that are renting them out have experienced no difference to their circumstances because of the budget. They can still negatively gear. They'll still be capital gains tax exemptions available for those people or capital gains tax reductions for those people. There's nothing in the budget that changes the situation for existing landlords. And if new landlords want to be able to negatively gear and get capital gains tax reductions, they need to invest in new properties. And what we've seen is a jump in investment loans going to new build and we've seen a jump in loans going to construction. So, I would say those two things are positive. We've seen a tapering off of the very sharp increases we saw in building costs in recent years. So, building cost increases have somewhat moderated, which of course again is very welcome. We've got the states and territories on board. We're seeing, you know, in my home state of NSW, some great work going on with, you know, approved developments. If you use a pattern from the pattern book, you can get a house plan for $100 I think it was, you know, something incredibly cheap like that. And if you're building in an approved way, you can get your approval much more quickly. We're seeing increased density around transport orientated developments. There's a lot of work going on to see a shift in house construction. That's how we ultimately fix a broken system where it's been impossible for first home buyers to get into the market where rents have been increasing. I actually heard some of the Liberals and Nationals complaining about homelessness today. That is from people who abandoned Labor's target to halve homelessness the minute they came into government last time they were in government. They built 300 social housing dwellings when they were in government over 10 years, we've built 7500 homes--
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Sure, homelessness has grown—
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We've got another 22--
PATRICIA KARVELAS: --as an issue with the cost of living crisis.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: --we've got another 22,000 of them under construction. Takes a while to build a house. We're the ones who are getting on with those changes after a decade of inaction and denial.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us, Minister.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's a pleasure.