Interview with Chris Kenny, The Kenny Report
15 February 2024
CHRIS KENNY: Lets catch up now with the Shadow Finance Minister, Senator Jane Hume, who joins me live from Melbourne. Good to talk to you Jane. First up, let me offer you the chance to pass on your congrats to Anthony Albanese and Jodie Haydon.
JANE HUME: Which I'm very happy to do. Of course we wish the Prime Minister and Jodie every happiness. I think this is lovely news and you know, broken in such a traditional way. I did see comments on social media from one WAG that asked whether the Prime Minister had, like he had done with the Voice, whether it was a modest proposal. I thought that was quite funny, but I think it's terrific news. A wedding is always good news.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, maybe she got a clue when he gave her one of those 'Yes' t-shirts to wear out to dinner. I don't know, but we do wish them all the best. Now on to politics. I want to start off on the economy today. Unemployment ticking up to 4.1. That's the highest it's been for two years. It's higher than when Labor took office. Obviously historically, it's not exceptionally high, but it is a worry that the economy is starting to slow. That people are starting to hurt and it's a matter of where this goes in coming months. Whether we do get a soft landing or we crashed this economy and too many people end up out of work.
JANE HUME: Look, it is a concern. There's now 581,000 Australians that are out of work. This should not be a surprise. We know that the Reserve Bank Governor warned that this would potentially be the case. Unless we can inject our economy with productivity enhancing reforms, unless we can get economic growth moving again, well I think we can expect more of this to come. The scary part of this data today, though, is the fact that that low unemployment that we've been experiencing in the last few years has really been the only comfort to Australians during Labor's cost of living crisis. Should the cost of living crisis remain and it looks like inflation is staying higher for longer, interest rates are gonna stay higher for longer because of the decisions that government is making. If inflation stays higher for longer, if the cost of living crisis continues on, and there's a much higher chance that you'll lose your job. I think that that is something that Australians should be worried about.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, just on this, I think the only thing we need in this economy, the only way to have sustained economic growth is to lift productivity. And so this is a really, really bad time as if there's ever a good time to bring in these new industrial relation laws that are going to make it harder to boost productivity, harder to employ people.
JANE HUME: That's exactly right. We've heard that too, from the Reserve Bank Governor that injecting productivity back into the economy is the only way that we're going to have sustainable wage rises that aren't inflationary. Unless we can get energy prices down, unless we can have flexible workplaces where bosses are encouraged to employ more people, unless we can cut red tape, and unless we can have a tax system that incentivises people to get out there, take on that extra job, take the promotion, whatever it might be, take on the extra hours, unless we've got those things in which we're turbocharging productivity we're going to end up with what we've seen, which is essentially economic growth at a standstill. In fact, we're in a per capita recession right now. The only thing that is keeping economic growth in the positive territory is that Ponzi scheme of extraordinarily high immigration levels, and that is entirely unsustainable. So we need to see more work done at the productivity level, not these regressive industrial relations laws and the unwinding of taxation reforms that would encourage people to have a go and get out there in the workforce and take that promotion.
CHRIS KENNY: You mentioned that horrible energy crisis. I'll have more on that later in the program with Keith Pitt. You also mentioned immigration. That brings me to the big political drama that continues to unfold this week. The Immigration Minister Andrew Giles under all sorts of pressure. He hasn't been keeping victims of crimes up to date with what's happened with these 149 released illegal immigrants, convicted criminals. He hasn't been forthcoming with information, yet. He's pretending everything's okay here he was in Parliament today.
[excerpt]
ANDREW GILES: I took every step to keep the community safe. Including including, including filing this case, all the way to the High Court.
[end excerpt]
CHRIS KENNY: This is just an extraordinary claim that he took every step to keep the community safe. This is absolutely his failing, isn't it? That's the core failing here.
JANE HUME: The things that we heard in Senate estimates this week about this issue were astounding. We heard that the Attorney General had been warned in June, that there was a high chance that the High Court case would fail and that they should prepare for it. We know that the Prime Minister had been kept up to date by his department. And of course we've heard that the Home Affairs Department, the most senior counsel in Home Affairs, had tried to brief Andrew Giles three times and he had failed to turn up to those meetings. Twice, he was actually out campaigning for the referendum rather than attending those meetings where we could have stemmed the tide on this terrible situation where we now see 149 convicted criminals wandering around throughout our community. Murderers, sex offenders, this is really dangerous. The most significant failure of government. The idea that they would take responsibility for it is mind blowing. Clare O'Neil said just before Christmas on an interview that I did with her, a panel interview that I did with her, if it was within her power, if she had the legal power to do so she would keep these people behind bars.
CHRIS KENNY: Yes.
JANE HUME: Well, we gave her that power. Those preventative detention orders were there. Now why was not this given the priority of government.
CHRIS KENNY: They still haven't done that. Still haven't made applications.
JANE HUME: No, that's right. Albo said ‘I charged Treasury to do changes to tax’, but he didn't charge the Home Affairs Department to put those preventative detention orders in place, which would have kept Australians safe.
CHRIS KENNY: We will keep on it and I'm certain you as the opposition will to. We'll follow up on that next week. Thanks for joining us, Jane Hume. I do appreciate it.