Interivew with Peter Stefanovic. First Edition

1 July 2024

PETER STEFANOVIC: To politics back home now, and today is the first day of the new financial year. Joining us now is the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Jane, good to see you. Thanks for your time. Happy financial year, new financial year to you so we've got tax cuts, pay rises, energy bill relief extra super from today, lots of goodies. How are you feeling about it all?

JANE HUME: Well, it's extraordinary isn’t it that Anthony Albanese and Labor Party are now promising that things will be easier in this new financial year. But it sounds like we're back to the future here. This is exactly what they were promising over two years ago and yet Australians are worse off under Labor. We've seen real wages collapsed by around 9%. Living standards collapsed by 8%. The people's standard of living has gone down and because of that, if you are feeling poorer, there's a good reason you actually are poorer. Housing has gone up by over 11%, rents have gone up by around 14.2%, food has gone up by around 11%, health, education have gone up by around 8% or so. This is an extraordinary period of time and Australians are doing it really tough. Anthony Albanese said two years ago that he thought he had all the solutions you'll recall before the last election, he was snapping pictures on his phone of petrol bowsers, petrol pumps and the price of petrol saying he had solutions for that. I don't think that Australians are convinced that Anthony Albanese has the solutions to really bring inflation back under control and I'm not entirely sure that the RBA does either.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay so back to these assistance measures that start from today. Do you think they will help folks at home or do you think those measures will just get swallowed up by increased costs?

JANE HUME: Well, certainly if inflation continues to rise, those tax cuts will be eaten up very quickly indeed. And people will not feel their real disposable income increase which is what they're crying out for because it's gone backwards so far. Under the last two years of his government, it's gone by around 8%. So that's why you're feeling poorer. And you will continue to do so unless the government can tame inflation. And it can only do that using its fiscal levers not simply relying on the Reserve Bank to keep Do you think interest rates.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Do you think these measures that start today will be inflationary that will add to the problem rather than fix it?

JANE HUME: Well, certainly these are questions that we asked of the Treasury Secretary during estimates.

PETER STEFANOVIC: What do you think though?

JANE HUME: Well this is why we asked the Treasury Secretary. It was the Government and the Treasury that asserted that there were no inflationary measures in this Budget but it remains to be seen. Certainly the RBA seem to be unimpressed. And as they see inflation rise, that unexpected rise in monthly inflation that we saw last week, not just the 4% headline inflation, but the 4.4% underlying inflation that jumped up such a long way. That's what the RBA is going to concentrate on when it next meets its decision.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay just a different topic. Now, Jane, the Prime Minister has indefinitely suspended Senator Fatima Payman from Labor caucus meetings. Have you got a view on that this morning?

JANE HUME: Well, it certainly took long enough. I mean, I think this is a sign of a weak Prime Minister, the fact that it Senator payment defied him directly defied him, not once, not twice, but three times first with a press conference, where she said that hateful phrase that I'm not going to repeat here, but something that the Prime Minister himself had said, is antisemitic and incites violence. Then she crossed the floor and then after being hit with the wet lettuce of a suspension from one caucus meeting, which is quite frankly, more reward and punishment. Only after she then went on Insiders and made a goose of the Deputy Prime Minister, did the Prime Minister finally act to suspend you can understand why his Caucus are so furious. I can remember Bill Shorten saying when he was Prime Minister that if you cross the floor that equals expulsion in the Labor Party. Well, obviously the rules are different under Anthony Albanese, but this is the first time since 1986 that anybody has crossed the floor and when that happened, Bob Hawke immediately suspended them.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, so was the PM right to do it in your view, staring across the aisle?

JANE HUME: Well, I think that's a decision for the Prime Minister. It's his party's rules. It's not my party's rules. But quite frankly, the fact that he took so long to act as a demonstration of the respect in which he is held clearly by Senator Payman and a sign of the weak leadership that he's shown particularly on this issue of Gaza, of Israel and Hamas, Gaza since October the seventh.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, we'll have to leave it there. Appreciate your time. I will talk to you soon.