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Sunrise host Nat Barr has delivered a blistering comeback during a live on-air segment about Australia’s housing crisis.
The popular star was talking to Federal Labor minister Clare O’Neil and Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume during Sunrise’s Hot Topics segment to discuss today’s National Cabinet meeting.
WATCH VIDEO ABOVE: Nat Barr takes on Clare O’Neil over housing crisis
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At the conference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will call on state leaders to come up with a better deal for renters and a solution to the nation’s housing problem.
In a fiery debate, the politicians clashed with one another over claims that the Coalition is blocking Labor’s attempts to spend $10 billion on building new houses.
“Jane and her friends in the Liberal Party and the Greens are holding us up from doing that at the moment,” O’Neil said.
“So we’re trying to do everything we can but we need some of the other political parties and political actors to come with us here.”
But Hume accused Albanese of not doing enough to address the issue since coming into office.
“It’s amazing that it’s taken this long to call a National Cabinet, particularly when you’ve got wall-to-wall Labor Premiers,” she said. ”The Prime Minister could have just picked up the phone.
“Unless he walks out of this National Cabinet today with a realistic plan to open up supply, he would have failed. He will have failed.”
She added: “If he just throws more money at the states to do business as usual, and that seems to be what we’re hearing about in the media today – well, that’s not a plan. That’s just a hope and a prayer.”
Hume and O’Neil then spoke over one another with a series of angry claims, where the Labor minister accused the Coalition of “10 years of inaction” and Hume said the government “can do better”.
Nat then stepped to challenge O’Neil over her claims in a fierce comeback.
“But Clare, you’re the government now and you’ve been in for 18 months,” she said. “We do need something to happen and we need less red tape.
“Ask any developer – they can’t build more houses if we have this current blockage at council and state level.
“So besides … tinkering around the edges now, what are you going to do about it?”
In response, O’Neil denied that the government was “tinkering around the edges”.
“Actually, what you’ve got is a federal government that has already done a lot about this problem and has a plan for doing a great deal more,” she said.
“We’ve had a decade of the federal government absolutely tapping out of the housing conversation. That’s not our approach.
“We’ve had the increase to rental assistance, we’ve had the $2 billion that went to the states, we’ve got the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
“We’ve got the discussion about trying to give a fair deal for renters that will happen at National Cabinet today.
“At the end of the day, Nat, the federal government is in this debate.”
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