Hume & McAllister, Sky News
2 June 2023
TOM CONNELL: Welcome back to our weekly Friday show Hume and McAllister. Each week Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume and Assisted Climate Change and Energy Minister, Jenny McAllister, face off and fire up on all the big news and political developments. Jane and Jenny Welcome to you both. We're back at our regular time slot at 11am not being interrupted for once. I can’t guarantee that I won’t interrupt you but that's just my nature. Jenny, your go first of all. You do get your one minute with the talking stick. What’s firing you up this week?
JENNY MCALLISTER: Yeah, thanks, Tom. Well, from the first of July, childcare will be cheaper for many families across the country. So the average family on $120,000 A year will have childcare costs cut by around $1,700 a year. This is a really important change coming at a time when we know many households are looking at their budgets. And looking at how they can really find a space for the things that they want to do for their families. But it matters for the economy to investment in early child could set our kids up for the best possible start in life, creating the space for women and let's face it it's usually women to return to work when they choose to helps with our labor force. But of course for women who want to earn and who want career continuity. These investments are incredibly important for their economic participation. This is all part of our government's determination to return the economic interests of women to the center of our policymaking because it's good for women. It's good for families, and it's also good for the economy.
TOM CONNELL: All right, Jenny, thank you. I can tell you becoming a parent that late nights for a shop childcare bills trapdoor that giant you've been in estimates this week, so you must be thrilled to be out. And on the other side. What have you been focusing on?
JANE HUME: Tom you’re right, two weeks of Senate Estimates have confirmed really what we already knew that Labor has no plan to tackle inflation, no plan to balance the books and no plan to bring down debt. And some of the accounting that we saw in the budget was as rubbery as the chicken course at a wedding. Let me start with the NDIS. The biggest save banked in this budget was a reduction in the spending growth of NDIS from 14% down to 8%. But when we scratched the surface and asked which policies were supporting that considerable reduction in spending growth, the answer was, we're working on it. We're working on it. That's not good enough. And the second one that I want to talk about is the National Reconstruction Fund, which was a signature election commitment of the Labor government. But when we asked about the national reconstruction, when we found that they are in fact borrowing $5 billion of taxpayers money borrowing on their behalf, at considerable cost of debt, and to interest repayments, but in fact, they're only forecasting to earn a rate of return that you or I could get, less than you or I could get on a term deposit from a bank. Now that's simply not good enough. But the most frustrating thing for me was the removal, the active removal of the objective of reducing inflation from the budget, and that means that Australians will pay a price.
TOM CONNELL: Well, we've had a lot of economic data this week, of course minimum wage decision today, inflation data on Wednesday. Treasurer is defending the figures economists do predict a surge in inflation, though, could mean another interest rate rise. This is how the week kind unfolded.
(excerpt)
TOM CONNELL: There you go Jane, made an appearance there glasses in hand. It’s your usual pose in Estimates in case people don't watch it. We've got the Fair Work decision as well today. An interesting one. 5.7% increase that will actually be higher effectively a bit of a jump up for that 180,000 on the national minimum wage. What's your reaction to this decision today, Jane?
JANE HUME: Well, I think that, you know, the Fair Work decision, makes its decisions based on an awful lot of data. And, you know, I think it's obviously, I think everybody's come out and said it’s a little bit disappointing and doesn't matter whether it's industry groups or whether it's the union groups, tends to be that some, if somewhere in there in the right vicinity if everybody's disappointed. The big concern, of course, though, and Philip Lowe made the comments this week at estimates is the risk of a wage price spiral. Now, he said we're not there yet. But he wanted to make sure that those pressures on the economy were minimised in order for that not to happen. Where that is I will find out next week, I suppose when the RBA makes its decision.
TOM CONNELL: So Jenny, I guess by definition, Labor's disappointed 5.75% below inflation did you want to see this higher this decision today?
JENNY MCALLISTER: Look, this is actually an incredibly important decision for low wage Australian workers. And it is actually an enormously significant change to their wage. Some of the technical changes introduced by the Commission making this decision mean that the increase in fact will be practically significantly higher than 5%. I know my colleague, Mr. Burke is up shortly to talk about the implications of that decision. That's real world effects. Of course, these are some of our lowest paid workers. They are majority of them are women are very high concentrations of women in these sectors. A lot of young people, a lot of casual workers. These are people for whom inflation really hurts, and this will be a very, very important and significant increase for those workers.
JANE HUME: It’s a reminder isn’t it, I mean, you know, real wages, real wages are going backwards. I mean, that was a big promise prior to the election, Jenny, that your party made that real wages were going to get moving again. Well, they are moving, they're just moving in the wrong direction. So I can imagine that there'll be a lot of people that are pretty disappointed that you guys haven't been able to live up to your promise of keeping real wages moving.
TOM CONNELL: Just on that Jane, was it the promise that was the problem, though? I mean, inflation was clearly coming down the line when Labor got into power. You wouldn't really be blaming them would you for the inflation that was about to kick off when they came in.
JANE HUME: Absolutely Tom. This is why we've kept talking about this. That's why we keep talking about this time the government needs to be doing all it can do to lower inflation because that's really the only way you're going to be able to get real wages moving again, without having artificial means that can potentially make the situation worse. So that's why the government is doing everything in its toolkit in its toolkit to get inflation down and it's failed to do so which is why the RBA keeps having to push up rates.
JENNY MCALLISTER: A couple of things here, Tom, I mean, firstly, we're not going to take money from people who were clear that in their time of government, low wages were a deliberate design feature of their economic policy, secondary real wages, to in relation to inflation. There have been very significant global pressures that have washed right across the global economy arising from the war in Ukraine, and constraints and supply chains following the COVID pandemic. Everyone understands those and those pressures have manifested themselves internationally and also here in Australia. The budget that we delivered is deliberately constructed to provide targeted relief where we can to take the sting out of the year that we accept will be really difficult for Australians, and those Australians are at the front of our mind when we're putting together our economic policy. But the budget is deliberately also very, very measured in this regard. The measures we took to take the sting out of cost of living, targeted and spread over time, significant upgrades to revenue returned to the budget in stark contrast to the approach taken by our predecessors. You can keep saying these lines, Jane, but I'm just not actually sure what it is that you propose ought to be done differently.
TOM CONNELL: Just quickly on that yet this committee looking into cost of living, was there a magic silver bullet solution that the budget could have had that didn't?
JANE HUME: Well, the biggest thing the budget could have done is reduced spending and it failed to do so it failed to reduce spending. In fact, its spending trajectory keeps continuing to rise over and over again, not once. In fact, the spending compared to the revenue in this budget is two to one, two to one. And we proved that this week, and there was no way that Treasury could deny it. So they're not doing what they can do to reduce inflation. Yes, the cost of living committee is still going on. It's been traveling right around the country. It's returned an interim report, which is not one with recommendations. They will come later you hear but there's been some pretty good evidence. increasing competition, downward pressure on inflation and the government is doing failing to do so.
TOM CONNELL: Got to get to a break when we come back. We're gonna talk artificial intelligence. Maybe it's great technology or the end of the world stay with us.
(ad break)
TOM CONNELL: Welcome back. Well the Albanese Government is set to regulate artificial intelligence. It follows concerns flagged by tech experts that unregulated AI could lead to, oh, just a little thing called human extinction and also damaging disinformation. Industry Minister Ed Husic, as long as the discussion paper and the future of AI, Australian could be one of the first countries to make a stand on AI ethics and principles. I'm particularly concerned about the implications for cyber security and disinformation in our democracy.
(excerpt)
TOM CONNELL: All right, what do we think about this panel? Jenny, is this a grand new evolution in technology and we'll get rid of all the boring things in our life or are the machines coming and we should hide in terror?
JENNY MCALLISTER: Very extreme version of the question. But I mean, I think, isn't it this that technology does need to work for us? And the way that we use technology is always a social choice. I think the point that government is making here is that this is a conversation that needs the broadest possible involvement of the broadest possible segments of the community. So we welcome the tech community's interest in how these matters are to be regulated and organised. But of course, we actually also want ordinary Australians to be able to participate. And so a few months ago, my colleague Ed Husic asked the Australian Science and Technology Council to provide us with a brief about their assessment of the state of the technology. Bear in mind, it's just seven months since ChatGPT launched into our lives. And we're now actually starting a conversation with the Australian people. About where they see the risks, where they see the opportunities and what they think the optimal pathway is to landing the right kind of arrangements for this tech.
TOM CONNELL: Yeah, it's interesting. There's the really deep debates on machine learning and whether they do things such as figure out that humans are just getting in the way of them taking over the world and I say that slightly facetiously, but this is sort of what we're talking about. And then there's the here and now I guess, Jane, I mean, deep fakes. You can fake voices and you could get a situation where, you know, you could have an election campaign and someone puts out something of Jane Hume saying, ‘I love unions’, you know, something that really cruel your hopes in an election for example. What do you think in terms of how much is being done?
JANE HUME: That wasn't the example I was thinking of I have to admit, Tom, I was more things that AI has done for us.
TOM CONNELL: Well go on, what were you thinking?
JANE HUME: Okay, spell check. That's AI isn't, that's machine learning, but then so is driverless vehicles out on the Pilbara which are amazing leaps in productivity. I think the most important thing though, is that we adopt this technology as a country and make it our own. Turn into a core competency. Because let's face it, countries that invent the technology that are the developers of the technology also embed their own values within that technology. So they're part of the dissemination around the world. And those AI ethics and principles were already well underway under the last government. I was the Digital Economy Minister, I had a fair bit to do with this. There's so important leading that conversation from a very Australian perspective. So artificial intelligence should embed our values of things like transparency and privacy and accountability. Making sure that artificial intelligence doesn't discriminate, for instance, is really important. But the most important thing, I think, is that when you engage with AI, you should understand that that's exactly what you're doing. You're engaging with AI and whatever its outcomes are, they should be contestable. Computer says no is not good enough. You should be able to go back and challenge. In order to do that, you've got to know that there are people behind it that are responsible. So there has to be transparency certainty, certainly, but there also has to be accountability. Somebody's behind the technology. A person is behind the technology that takes responsible for the decisions that are made.
TOM CONNELL: Yeah, I guess the interesting element in terms of workforce as well journey is that we need to be careful to not be too alarmed at every bit of technology. The fear is people lose jobs, but technology always creates jobs as well. Is that an important thing within the union movement as well? That we don't always just need to fear and think of the jobs that go but the jobs that arrive will generally be better ones here, we want to get rid of the boring stuff.
JENNY MCALLISTER: A couple of things here. I think, Minister Husic, I heard the other day characterise this as we shouldn't be evangelists, but we shouldn't be catastrophists. You know, we we need to understand that these technologies done in the right way can assist us I think some of the information we have before us about how it might interact with the world of employment is that many of the business cases for the development of AI rest on enhancing the work that an existing person is doing rather than entirely substituting it or replacing it. So there are opportunities potentially to create to create productivity enhancing changes in workplaces that let us do more of the things that we like to do. Less of the things we don't. But again, all of these things are social choices. None of it is inevitable. And one of the reasons the government is embarking on this process of consultation about the regulatory arrangements is that we need lots of people in the Australian community to start engaging with the technology what it might mean for them. What the possibilities are, what the risks are, and what we're going to democratically decide to do about it together.
TOM CONNELL: All right, let's get the show on something that I could never possibly mimic. And that is just a real moment of bad luck. I guess we're not sure whether to laugh or cry because I've wandered out Monday morning, pretty cold sort of morning. And I saw on the street two cars had been broken into the windows smashed and they were both of our cars. So it's been a scramble this week. And yes, I know. No one really feel sorry for me, a journalist, and that's fine. But what about a moment if you had a moment like that, Jane, maybe it was it said at Senate Estimates last week and you thought ‘Why did we lose that last election?’.
JANE HUME: No look, it wasn't at Senate Estimates, but it was a couple of weeks ago I did have a moment I was in Perth, talking to a large group about the cost of living and how serious it was. When one of my staff sidled up to me and said, ‘boss, just don't panic. Don't be alarmed, but you have an enormous rip in the backside of your trousers’. Now, the good news was, I had made some judicious underwear choices that day. I think we can all be pleased about that. But, you know, the combination of the irony of the fact that I'm talking about the cost of living while my ass is hanging out of my trousers was not lost me. Fair dose of humiliation.
TOM CONNELL: Well, replacing pants is more expensive now, Jane, so full sympathy on that front. Jenny, what have you got for us? Well, you
JENNY MCALLISTER: Well you know, I spend as much time as I can when I'm on holidays, camping. I'm a kind of outdoors person. But camping of course is one of the great tests in all relationships and few years ago. It requires a measure of communication between two people in a partnership you know about who exactly is doing what and bringing what and the realisation upon arrival after dark in a small coastal town in New South Wales that we neither had tent poles, nor food and that all of the relevant outlets in that small town, which was quite a long way off the beaten track, were at that time closed. Was quite disappointing. You know, a mix of emotions, rage, tears and ultimately laughing so you know all the things.
TOM CONNELL: As long as you ended up laughing.
JANE HUME: Sounds like a good excuse for five stars for me. You need to go five star just to recover.
TOM CONNELL: Glamping ever since Jenny. I mean, I always debate this with my wife. We're gonna take the kids camping or do we just sort of not pretend that we've got any dirt under our fingernails?
JENNY MCALLISTER: No, we're hikers, we like a bit of overnight camping.
TOM CONNELL: Very impressive
JANE HUME: Where do you put the hairdryer?
JENNY MCALLISTER: There's no hairdryer Jane, I can promise you.
TOM CONNELL: All right, I'm not sure Jenny and Jane would have the same idea of the best holiday but that's that's why we like this panel, a different viewpoint. Jenny, Jane, we’ll talk next week.