Interview with Andrew Clenell, Sunday Agenda
2 February 2025
ANDREW CLENELL: Well, joining me live from Melbourne, is Shadow Finance Minister. Jane Hume, thank you for your time. Jane Hume, let me start by asking after the inflation figures out last week, which showed quarterly underlying inflation had risen 0.5% a quarter or a 2% annual increase and quarterly inflation had risen just 0.2% in the quarter. Has the Government achieved a soft landing? And should there be a rate cut?
JANE HUME: Andrew, it's too little too late for many Australians who have seen their standard of living go backwards by 8.7% in the three years of this Labor Government. Cumulatively, prices have risen by over 11% in that time. Food by over 12%, rents by 17%, housing by 14%, electricity and gas by over 30%. So, you can understand why Australians are feeling it in their hip pocket. Inflation is only part of the problem, but it is causing so much pain to ordinary Australians. The number of Australians out there that are on financial hardship programs, for instance, for their electricity bills, has gone up by 66% under this government. Their mortgages have gone up. An average mortgage now requires an extra $50,000 a year. That's not the kind of money that you find down the back of the couch. And the number of Australians that have had to take on a second or even a third job has increased by 130,000 so under this government. Standards of living have collapsed, and Australians are feeling the pain. Moreover, Deloitte Access Economics is saying that they expect that standards of living won't be restored to pre pandemic levels until 2030 so this is cold comfort for Australians that have been feeling the pinch, that have had to wind back their own expectations, make tough decisions around their kitchen tables about their budget, because the Government has failed to do the hard yards with its Budget.
ANDREW CLENELL: Have they failed to do the hard yards, though? Because the US had this problem, the UK had this problem, Canada had this problem. New Zealand had this problem. Unemployment here is lower. We haven't gone into recession. It is terrible for people out there. There's no question about that, but it has been the case in all developed nations, hasn't it? I mean, haven't they actually achieved the soft landing here?
JANE HUME: And in all developed nations, interest rates have come back faster and sooner they were higher, which we haven't seen here in Australia, and unemployment is higher today than it was when the Coalition left government. Moreover, economic growth in this country is a stagnant point 8% over the last 12 months, and we've been in a per capita recession for seven quarters in a row. If it wasn't for the incredibly high migration figures, over a million people in just two years, well, we would be in a recession…
ANDREW CLENELL: So, what should they have done?
JANE HUME: I don't think there's anything for the government to crow.
ANDREW CLENELL: That's for sure. But what should they have done? Should they have spent less? Is that, is that the bottom line here?
JANE HUME: Well, certainly, the Government spent an additional $347 billion that the Coalition would not have committed to and didn't commit to at the 2022 election. In fact, in the 2025-26 year, government spending as a proportion of the economy is going to be higher than any time on record outside of the pandemic…
ANDREW CLENELL (interrupts): But Jane Hume
JANE HUME: The Reserve Bank Governor…
ANDREW CLENELL: Yeah, go on.
JANE HUME: Go ahead Andrew. Well, Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank Governor, has said that government spending, that growth of the public sector, has been one of the reasons why it's taken so long to get inflation under control that in fact, it's making the situation worse, making the Reserve Bank's decision to lower rates that much harder, and that will certainly be one of the factors that Michelle Bullock and the Reserve Bank Board have to consider when they make their rate cut decisions.
ANDREW CLENELL: Alright, let me ask about the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. So, Peter Dutton has put Jacinta Price in charge of government efficiency, James Stevens in charge of waste reduction. If you were to become finance minister. You shadow finance. Isn't that your job government efficiency, to find things to come
JANE HUME: Well, this is not unusual for a Coalition government to be focused on reducing government waste and improving government efficiency. We've had ministers for government efficiency and reducing red tape and improving government services in the past. It's fantastic to have Jacinta Price as part of the team. She is a warrior for the cause, having already identified so much waste and mismanagement in her own portfolio, it'll be fantastic to have her as part of this…
ANDREW CLENELL: So it's not undercutting you?
JANE HUME: Oh gosh no, no, of course not. And don't think for a second that there isn't an awful lot of government waste to go around. We can start by talking about the 36,000 additional public servants that have been appointed by this government. That's about 40 new public servants every single day since they have come to government, and at the same time, we've actually seen a reduction in the quality of services that are being delivered. So just for example, the Department of Health has increased by 57% I was talking to minister to Anne Ruston about this just yesterday, and yet, at the same time, billing rates have gone backwards. The Department of Energy and Environment has doubled in the number of public servants, and yet approval times. Environmental approvals are slower and emissions have gone up. Services Australia have added an additional 4000 public servants, yet it takes longer now to apply for attention, around 48 days compared to 35 under a Coalition government. If you're on the phone to the children and parenting services, wait times up to about an hour. It takes five times longer to get a low-income card than it did under the Coalition so of these 36,000 new public servants. You're not getting 20% more. That's a 20% increase of public service. You're certainly not getting a 20% more…
ANDREW CLENELL: I'll get to that in a second…
JANE HUME: What are they doing?
ANDREW CLENELL: I just want to get to this point. Will Jacinta Price be on the Shadow Cabinet Expenditure Review Committee?
JANE HUME: Well, Jacinta Price is already in Shadow Cabinet, where the important decisions are made…
ANDREW CLENELL: No but on the Expenditure Review Committee…
JANE HUME: Well, that's a decision for Peter Dutton, but Jacinta Price is already in cabinet, and it's fantastic to have that government efficiency focus within cabinet as well. Looking forward to having Jacinta on board with this?
ANDREW CLENELL: Yeah, to The Australian Jacinta Price said the Coalition would follow the principles of Margaret Thatcher in office. What did you make of those comments?
JANE HUME: Well, I think you wouldn't be, you wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't be hard to find a number of Margaret Thatcher fans in a Coalition government. But the real issue here is to put a uniquely Australian approach to what it is we're going to do to improve government efficiencies. And there are certainly ways that we can do that very quickly. Just for instance, the government waste that has been identified by James Stevens on the underlabor.com website. And I if you want to spill out your weeties over your breakfast, go to the under labor.com website that James Stevens has put together is eye watering. Eye watering. Let's just take one example. DFAT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have employed a consultant in Darlinghurst to give them strategic advice on how to have a First Nations approach to foreign affairs. Now I'm not entirely sure why that's necessary in the first place, but it's going to cost over $250,000 on top of that, we already have a First Nations Ambassador whose part of his mandate is to develop a strategic approach to a First Nations approach to foreign affairs. He earns $380,000 a year. There is extraordinary amounts of duplication for things that I'm not entirely sure we need in place.
ANDREW CLENELL: Can I drill down a bit on this, 36,000 public servants, will you be getting rid of all of them? Will you get rid of 1000 new ones in the NDIS? Will you get rid of the admissions in Veterans Affairs, or are you going to keep those in those two departments?
JANE HUME: We've certainly said that we're going to stop the growth in these, these bloated public service.
ANDREW CLENELL: Are you going to cut any of the 36,000?
JANE HUME: We will make sure that essential services are maintained and indeed improved. But there is duplication out there. Inevitably, we will make sure that we stop the waste and we stop the duplication, because as the public sector grows, it grows to unprecedented levels, it actually prevents the private sector getting on and getting ahead. We want to make sure that we have private sector led recovery, because that's the only way to sustainable economic growth. You will not find an economic recovery through an increase in the size of the public sector.
ANDREW CLENELL: Yeah, indeed. And I accept there is a point around private and public and the economy. Do you plan, though, to bring consultants back in, which, controversially, the other government did? Well, we have, you know, the PwCs of the world back in the picture under a Coalition Government?
JANE HUME: Ironically, this government is still using consultants, and there will always be a place for consultants, whether it is because you can't expect public servants to be experts at everything all the time, particularly when technology is changing so much this government may have talked a big game on consultants, but they're still using them. And the best example I can give you is that DFAT one that they've employed a consultant in Darlinghurst to give them a strategy on a First Nation, nations approach to foreign affairs. If they were really cutting consultants, they wouldn't have done that all.
ANDREW CLENELL: Right now I report at the top of the program about these comments from Peter Dutton to a gentleman at a fundraiser. Let's have a listen to those.
(Excerpt plays)
ANDREW CLENELL: Talking to a woman, my apologies. Now he's saying we're going to bring back the significant investor visa. I thought the Coalition was about cutting migration. What's behind this Jane Hume?
JANE HUME: We've made it very clear that we will be rebalancing the Migration Program, which has gone out of control under this government, with a million new migrants just in the last two years, and an expectation of more than 1.5 million over the next so this is unacceptable and unsustainable. We want to manage the migration program to make sure that our infrastructure, and particularly our housing, has a chance to catch up that our migration program is directed towards increasing our productivity, not decreasing.
ANDREW CLENELL: But this is about, this is about the votes of Chinese Australians, isn't it, which you lost in the last election?
JANE HUME: Well, no, the high investor, the high investor visa, my understanding, only went to about 300 people or so, and in fact, it was a really important source of capital for things like new housing developments. So this is something that obviously will be considered. There is still a version of it under Labor and that might need some rebalancing, but we'll announce our migration policy, our holistic migration policy in due course, before the election.
ANDREW CLENELL: All right, the nature positive bills being pulled. What do you make of that?
JANE HUME: Well, last I looked at we're still sitting on the Senate notice paper. It looks to me like the Prime Minister's saying one thing to the people of WA and another thing to his green voter base in an attempt to appeal to the Greens and the Green Teals. But you can't have it both ways. The Prime Minister speaking out of both sides of his mouth until I actually see it taken off the Senate notice paper. I think we can safely say it's still there to be debated,
ANDREW CLENELL: And you have been involved in discussions on electoral reform with Don Farrell. That's about caps, stopping the client partners of the world, amongst other things, being able to spend so much during a campaign. Do you think the opposition government will come to a deal on this in the next fortnight?
JANE HUME: Well, I'm not going to go into private discussions between the government and the opposition on this very important reform. I think that it's very much in the government's hands now where they go on electoral reform.
ANDREW CLENELL: Finally, the Prime Minister's response on anti-Semitism. Do you believe the Prime Minister didn't know for a week about this caravan full of explosives? If he did know, should he have told us?
JANE HUME: It's extraordinary that he didn't know, because this is an amazingly disturbing and deeply disturbing discovery. I think it's important for Australia's Jewish community to have the confidence that their Prime Minister is being straight with them, that he is being fully informed, and I think that Peter Dutton is called for an independent investigation into how this information was shared and with whom it was shared is a sensible idea. We have to be able to give Australians, and in particularly Jewish Australians, confidence that our Prime Minister is in fact, on top of his national security responsibilities.
ANDREW CLENELL: Jane Hume, thanks so much for your time.
JANE HUME: Great to be with you.