Interview with Natalie Barr, Sunrise
Transcript, E&OE Subjects: Migration, housing supply. 03 June 2026 Natalie Barr, Host: Live now to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. Good morning to you. Tell us what the plan is when it comes to our population.
Penny Wong, Foreign Minister: Good morning, Nat. Good to be with you. First, can I just comment on the shoe and just say, well, I've never drunk out of a shoe, so I can't comment on whether it was ceramic or not but it did have big shine on it, didn't it?
Would it be an international incident if they had in fact faked the shoey, Penny? Foreign Minister: Well, I don't know that it would qualify for that, but I certainly think it'd be an incident on social media. But anyway, back to the population and migration.
Look, I'll say first that we are actually working to lower migration from the growth that we saw when we first came to government. You see that in the Budget papers that there has been less migration than was occurring than when we first came to government. A lot of that, of course, is also international students or people who come here as visitors.
But what is important is, particularly for Australians who are seeking to get into their own home, is to ensure that we add to housing supply. And you've seen in this Budget and in previous budgets, the Government's plan to add to supply and of course, our changes to negative gearing, which I know this show has spoken about, but they are about trying to ensure that first home owners, first home buyers get a fair go when it comes to entering the housing market.
Look, we're a big country, we don't have an endless amount of resources. That's being spoken about a lot on this issue. We've had some bad droughts in the past.
Has there been any modelling to see how many people Australia can actually handle? Foreign Minister: Look, the Government always looks at what is a sustainable migration pattern and where we need skills. And let's remember that we also look to migration to deal with particular skill and labour shortages that enable our economy to grow faster.
But the area where migration is most in people's mind is in the area of housing, which is why we have focused so much on additional housing supply and on ensuring our tax changes, which are about working to add to supply. I think we're down, the NOM, the net overseas migration, is about just over 300,000. Would you think of reducing it down to under 200, which I think Angus Taylor is saying, and tying it to the amount of houses we have?
Foreign Minister: I think it's pretty interesting that Mr. Taylor, who was part of a government that did not invest in any new housing, I think they built about just over 300 social houses in the time that they were in government, is now talking about linking migration to housing. Now that we've got this problem here - Foreign Minister: What we are doing is we want migration at sustainable levels and we want to add to housing supply and that's what the Budget does.
So, you wouldn't tie it to the number of houses we're building? Foreign Minister: We're adding to housing supply and of course we want sustainable migration. And what we are doing is to ensure that we have reduced the number of international students from the levels that Mr.
Morrison and others had place, and we will continue to look at what the labour force needs. We want migration in areas where we have skill shortages. You want migration where you can contribute to growing the economy and for example, building houses.
Ok. Penny Wong, thank you very much for your time. Foreign Minister: Good to speak with you.