Interview with Andrew Clenell, Sunday Agenda

20 October 2024

ANDREW CLENELL: Joining me live is the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Jane Hume, thanks for your time. Let me start by asking you about this. I know it's a state by-election, but there were real hopes in the Liberal Party that Pittwater could be won against a Teal candidate. There's now a Teal in the New South Wales Parliament. Is this a bad sign for the Liberal Party that the Teal wave isn't receding?

JANE HUME: Andrew, there were three by-elections held in Sydney on the weekend, and two liberals were returned. That's obviously a good sign. I think that Pittwater was very unusual circumstances, considering the circumstances in which the previous member left that seat, and that probably played out. So I don't think that we could use this as a bellwether.

ANDREW CLENELL: Well, let's talk about this big housing policy that Peter Dutton announced yesterday, $5 billion for Greenfield sites. How would this money be distributed? How quickly Could it make a difference? And what do you make of Katy Gallagher saying you're basically ripping off their policy?

JANE HUME: Andrew, the dream of home ownership for many Australians is becoming further and further out of reach. Under Labor, we know that while they have promised 1.2 million houses, they're going to fall around 400,000 homes short, and that's going to leave a lot of homeowners, potential homeowners, out in the cold. This particular project is one that is going to create enabling infrastructure. We know that there's hundreds, thousands even of Greenfield sites that are ready for development right now, but they're just lacking the funding for that enabling infrastructure. The roads, the pipes, the communications, the electricity, the water, the sewage, all those things that need to be ready so that you can build homes on top. This funding, through concessional loans and also through grants, is going to create those Greenfield sites, make them shovel ready, so that the building can start immediately. Most importantly, it's time limited funding, and it's a use it or lose it mechanism. So that means that while the funding is there, unless the local councils, the developers, the utilities, see some progress, unless we see some progress, the funding disappears. That's a really important safety and integrity measure to make sure that things actually happen. The program that Labor have identified there that Katie Gallagher mentioned is, in fact, very different. That 1.5 billion, one billion of that's just gone directly to the States and has stalled, and the rest is for plans, not for shovel ready projects. This is about additionality. 500,000 additional homes that would not have already been built.

ANDREW CLENELL: Sure but they would say, you know, the funding that the states is tied to results for them, and it forces them to produce results. They would say, and have said this morning, that you're taking $19 billion out because you want to get rid of all their programs in favour of yours. So to say, ‘Oh, here's $5 billion’ is a little bit misleading. What would you say to all of that?

JANE HUME: Well, the ten billion Housing Australia Future Fund is actually yet to produce a single house, and yet it's costing Australians so much to borrow that money that build to rent policy isn't going to suit everybody. We want to make sure that we get people the opportunity to buy their own homes and to do it, owning it outright themselves, as opposed to sharing it with Anthony Albanese as their Help to Buy scheme would do. This is about the great Australian dream, building and owning your own home and making it a reality. This is the bottleneck that enabling infrastructure on greenfields and brownfields site will make those new home builds a reality and will make it affordable for ordinary Australians to get out there and buy their first home. That's what we want to see.

ANDREW CLENELL: Is there more to come from the Coalition on housing? And do you see this as almost a number one issue in terms of the election fight?

JANE HUME: Well, we've already announced part of our housing policy in the past, we've met commitments to migration levels. We've also said that foreign owners would have a pause on foreign ownership of home ownership in Australia. And of course, there is the opportunity to access superannuation for first home buyers so that they can find that deposit to get into their first home, because we know that the biggest indicator of economic security in retirement is owning your own home. This is one more part of the Coalition's housing policy, and you'll be hearing more from us.

ANDREW CLENELL: Your decision is, or your announcement already on housing policy to stop banning temporary residents from overseas from buying homes for two years. Has the Opposition done work on how many more houses that will lead to people of Australian descent owning?

JANE HUME: Well, I think that the combination of winding back the migration program, and also the temporary ban on foreign owners of Australian homes is expected to free up around 300,000 homes. That was Peter Dutton's announcement back at the budget and reply last year, this new policy is expected to have to provide an additional 500,000 This is all about additionality…

ANDREW CLENELL: Okay Jane Hume, who's done the modelling on those two figures? Where do they come from?

JANE HUME: Well, these policies have been acknowledged and supported by the Property Council of Australia, by Master Builders Association, by the Urban Development Institute. This is not something that the Coalition have done on their own. We've done it in conjunction with the experts. This is what they are telling us that they need. That's why we're doing it, to make sure…

ANDREW CLENELL: So do the figures come from them?

JANE HUME: homeownership a reality for more Australians.

ANDREW CLENELL: Jane Hume, sorry to interrupt. Do the figures come from those two…

JANE HUME: That's alright.

ANDREW CLENELL: Do the figures come from those two bodies?

JANE HUME: So the Master Builders Association, the Urban Development Institute, and also the Property Council, have told us that this $5 billion fund will make all the difference to making sure that we can, we can leverage those greenfields and brownfield site at sites with enabling infrastructure, and they can start building straight away. They've also told us that they can build houses within 12 months, within 12 months, which is why it's so important that we create a process whereby that enabling infrastructure is built, all the money disappears, and that way we can get more homes built faster, and Australians can get into their homes.

ANDREW CLENELL: Do you think Anthony Albanese’s $4.3 million house purchase will hurt him?

JANE HUME: Look, everybody's entitled to own a home, and of course, everybody's entitled to plan for their retirement. Clearly, that is what Anthony Albanese is doing here, and we wish him well for that. For me, this is a question of judgement. It was a question of tone at a time of a cost of living crisis, at a time of a housing crisis, to make this decision, knowing full well that it would be a very public one, that his colleagues would have to go out and clean up after, I think calls into question the Prime Minister's judgement.

ANDREW CLENELL: Peter Dutton has owned a lot of very expensive homes, though, hasn't he?

JANE HUME: I don't know Peter Dutton's personal circumstances. I don't know really any of my colleagues personal circumstances. What I do know is that Peter Dutton has his eye on the problems of ordinary Australians, and they are telling us that home ownership and the cost of living are their two big issues right now. Everything that the Coalition Opposition is doing in terms of its policy development is focused on them, on their issues, not on our issues.

ANDREW CLENELL: What's your reaction to the stripping of Michael Pezzullo’s Order of Australia Medal?

JANE HUME: This is a decision of the Governor General on advice of the Council, and obviously that advice is not public, so I find it very hard to comment. Suffice to say that I think that Mr. Pezzullo's own comments speak for themselves. He's been a public servant for many, many years. He agrees, he admitted that he made an error of judgement in his behaviour and his communications with people within the government. However, he has served both sides of politics very well for many, many years, and in fact, was a Labor staffer at one point in time. I feel that perhaps, if we're going to create integrity and trust in the merit system, well, perhaps these decisions should be made transparent.

ANDREW CLENELL: The unemployment figure during the week, there's speculation This means we'll have to wait longer for a rate cut, and the fact so many of these jobs are public sector jobs, does that concern you? Would you be determined as a government to cut back on that? Produce more savings in the NDIS airspace, cut public servants, etc?

JANE HUME: So the unemployment figures that were out this week were encouraging in that they remained low, because, quite frankly, that's the only thing that's keeping Australians head above water right now. But when you dig a little deeper, you see that the public sector growth is much faster than private sector growth, and that's an unsustainable phenomenon. We want to see growth in jobs in the private sector, and the only way we're going to be able to do that is to create a sense of opportunity and productivity in the private sector that seems to have been sucked out of the economy by the Labor government, who has an anti-productivity agenda. We have to make sure that we do things like lower energy prices by injecting more supply into the system, just as we're doing with housing. We want to see a reduction in red tape and regulation. We want to see industrial relations work for both employees and employers, and a lower and simpler, fairer tax system, that's what's going to turbocharge productivity and private sector growth. Because the only way that we're going to grow the economy, rather than simply cut the pie up differently and grow the pie, is by improving productivity to look towards just on that only for growth is a mistake.

ANDREW CLENELL: Just on that, the ACCI called during the week for the definition of a small business in terms of a fair dismissal would be lifted from 15 to 25. Do you support that? Is that something in government you'd try to introduce?

JANE HUME: Well, I think we'll certainly be looking at the requests of the business sector, because the private sector is where the growth and prosperity comes from. There are lots of different definitions of small businesses out there, and I know that that can be confusing. There's some for the tax system, there's some for the industrial relations system, and I can understand why that would be a concern, but I want to make sure that at the same time, we're not disadvantaging small businesses by changing the definition too.

ANDREW CLENELL: Just finally, Peter Dutton said a red hot crack at a couple of press conferences now at ABC journalists obviously a competitor of ours. Both were women, as the other side of politics has pointed out to me, kindly or unkindly in terms of the situation, do you? Would you caution Peter Dutton just to watch it here, that he doesn't carry this on through a campaign, going the journo?

JANE HUME: Look, I think that the questions that have been asked of Peter Dutton potentially come from a more activist position, an ideological position, and particularly from the national broadcaster, we would expect a level of balance in not just their reporting, but in the way that the questions are framed. I don't think Peter Dutton distinguishes between male and female journalists. Every journalist is entitled to ask any question they wish, but I think we would expect a balanced approach, rather than an activist approach.

ANDREW CLENELL: Do you have plans then, given you think they're biased to cut the ABC?

JANE HUME: I didn't say that I thought that they were biased. I thought that they were activists. That's very different. Andrew and no, there are no plans to make cuts to the ABC.

ANDREW CLENELL: Jane Hume, thanks for your time.

JANE HUME: Thanks Andrew.