Interview with Greg Jennett, ABC Afternoon Briefing

29 April 2024

GREG JENNETT: All right, well, as Budget week approaches, the Coalition is seeking to find its line and length on whatever the Treasurer unveils. Now, this is likely to be a Budget bolstered by revenue that remains pretty strong, but one that doesn't splurge huge new spending because inflation risks remain high. Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume is already giving some thought to their response, and she joins us in the studio now. Senator, welcome back. We will get to Budget matters in just a moment, I promise. But from what you've seen and heard regarding the rally the Prime Minister attended here in Canberra over the weekend, did he misread it or was there some breakdown in communication, do you think around whether he was whether Katy Gallagher was or was not to speak?

JANE HUME: I don't know what the logistics were that surrounded that rally, but what was very clear is that women that were attended that rally, and indeed women right around Australia are angry and they're angry because they're frightened. When you're dealing with somebody that's frightened, whether it be an individual or a group, there has to be a level of not just empathy and understanding, but also patience. Allow them to speak It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do the speaking. What women-

GREG JENNETT: And you think that patience was lacking?

JANE HUME: Yes, I think that opportunity to get up and say what the government is doing is terrific, was mistimed and misjudged. Quite frankly, there is good work that is being done in this space. But this is not the time to crow about the good work that's being done. This is a time to demonstrate that you understand the problem, and will work towards dealing with those fears of women.

GREG JENNETT: More broadly, does Australia have a national domestic violence crisis right now?

JANE HUME: Well, only a week or so. A week and a half ago, I was talking in the media about the 25th woman for the year who had lost her life to an intimate partner. We're now only a few days later talking about 27. Whether it's a crisis or not, it's certainly wrong and unacceptable that we have these levels of domestic violence and indeed deaths at the hands of intimate partners. And inevitably it is women who are dying. They're asking for help. They're looking to their government for help, both state, federal, and they're looking for genuine understanding and support, not just platitudes. Unfortunately, I think what the Prime Minister delivered was platitudes.

GREG JENNETT: Okay, well, he will have a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

JANE HUME: Good, good.

GREG JENNETT: The Budget is coming up. Is there anything obvious that should be addressed in the Budget, in your view, on domestic and sexual violence?

JANE HUME: As I said, good work has been done in the past. And certainly the Coalition led by Anne Ruston at the time, who was Minister for Women's Safety, led the discussions at state and federal levels and community levels around the fourth Action Plan to eliminate violence against women and their children. I was part of those conversations and they were very fruitful indeed. They resulted in some really positive policy directions, one of which, and I'm just pointing to one small one, was in the March 2022 Coalition Budget, which was a replication of a project that had been done in Tasmania, Project Vigilance, which put ankle bracelets on offenders and then connected them to a police headquarters. Police could see when violent offenders were approaching their victims and would alert those victims. It worked really well to genuinely move the dial. We put forward some money to replicate that programme in other states. That was reprioritised by the Labor government in just October 2022, only a few months later. I think that was a mistake. There's some really good opportunities to use those programmes that we know work to prevent domestic outcome, domestic violence before it occurs

GREG JENNETT: All right. Thank you for highlighting that. There are probably questions I could and should ask to follow up. I am not fully knowledgeable about what other states-

JANE HUME: Mark Speakman was talking about this just last week.

GREG JENNETT: -other states, I'm sure, would say they're either doing it or examining it, but I did promise to move on to the Budget. So you've been criticising the government for over expenditure. Jane, bracket creep and commodity windfalls are delivering windfall surpluses, not structural ones, you say. So this is your opening criticism pre-emptively against the budget. Does that mean the Coalition will promise a structural surplus ahead of when it's currently scheduled, which is well out into the 2030 somewhere?

JANE HUME: Well, what the Coalition have been saying, and indeed for some time, is that the decisions that this government is making, its, uh, undelivered policies or misguided decisions are actually making Australians poorer. It's making the situation worse. This Budget is an opportunity to reverse that trend-

GREG JENNETT: By spending less?

JANE HUME: But it must consider what its priorities are. The Coalition would like to see a Budget that restores those fiscal guardrails, restores Budget integrity and honesty, particularly things like a tax to GDP ratio, and also ensuring that a Budget surplus is structural rather than simply relying on windfalls. But at the same time, we also want to see a Budget that tames inflation and restores productivity so that we get that economic growth, that genuine economic growth, rather than just surface growth, and most importantly, restores opportunities and prosperity to Australians, whether it be in small business whether it be young people being able to afford to buy their own home. But taming inflation is the number one priority here, because that's the thief in the night that eats away at your savings, that erodes your purchasing power and reduces your standard of living. And that's what we've seen in the last two years.

GREG JENNETT: All right, so in the fastest growing areas of expenditure on the Budget which obviously includes servicing debt, NDIS, Defence, health and aged care, which of those should be cut?

JANE HUME: Well certainly the NDIS we would like to see some genuine reforms. It wasn't that long ago that-

GREG JENNETT: They would argue they're doing that.

JANE HUME: Would they? I would imagine they would. In fact they put a spending cap on the NDIS of around 8%, down from 14%, and yet there hasn't really been a single policy to back that up. Moreover, they've simply shifted the problem away from the NDIS part of the Budget to payments to states. Now that's not fixing the problem. That's shifting the problem. We have said that, particularly with NDIS, that should the government come up with genuine policies that will reform the NDIS to make sure that it is sustainable in the future, the Coalition will support them.

GREG JENNETT: Okay, what about Defence spending though, because you've already promised, without a figure or any revenue highlighted to fund it, to go over and above the government's own 2.4% of GDP spending target in ten years, how would you fund that?

JANE HUME: Well, any government has two major responsibilities to keep the economy strong and to keep Australians safe in these very uncertain times, particularly geopolitically, it is so important that we maintain our Defence expenditure, but it has to be spent effectively, too. So it's not just about the quantum of spend, it's about the quality of spend.

GREG JENNETT: But it is about the quantum of spend, isn't it? When you're promising to go somewhere north of 2.4%, which is the Andrew Hastie pledge? Well, that's more money.

JANE HUME: Well, certainly Andrew Hastie is not discarding the importance of effective Defence spending at the same time, and it is-

GREG JENNETT: So that means and it is cycling some, you know, scrapping some projects, recycling Defence money already allocated.

JANE HUME: Well it would certainly be making sure that we are ready for the type of conflict that we would potentially engage in. Now I don't want to pre-empt what that is. That certainly I wouldn't say, you know, for a Coalition Opposition to say in opposition at this point in time. But there is no doubt that effective Defence spending is just as important as the quantum of Defence spending. That said, that is only one component of the Budget. What we don't want to see is wasteful spending in other areas, allowing a public sector to potentially bloat out and eat into private sector growth and prosperity and productivity.

GREG JENNETT: Is that at risk or apparently at risk as we await the numbers in the much vaunted future Made In Australia investments, does that crowd out private sector growth?

JANE HUME: I would love to say yes or no, but the problem is I don't know what the Future Made in Australia policy is. I was listening to the announcement by the Prime Minister and I heard him say that we are “in a global race for jobs and for growth”, and he wants Australia to be “in it to win it”. I still don't know what this policy is other than-

GREG JENNETT: Are you philosophically opposed though to a government getting in there to join a race that's already gathering quite a head of steam, led, of course, by the US. Are you philosophically opposed to that?

JANE HUME: Well, can the prime Minister guarantee that the Future Made In Australia, whatever it is, isn't simply just old style protectionism? Is it, in fact driving productivity to drive economic growth? Because, quite frankly, the rates of spending that we have at the moment simply aren't sustainable. If it's not, if spending is growing faster than the economy, well, then that spending is unsustainable. And that's what we're seeing from this government now. So is the policy that the Prime Minister is putting forward, that the Treasurer Jim Chalmers, is putting forward driving productivity growth and at the same time bringing down inflation? Because unless we drive productivity, unless we bring down inflation well, then the economy is simply going backwards and relying on high migration in order to get any positive economic growth.

GREG JENNETT: But investment will generally or theoretically drive productivity, won't it? And the government says on the inflation part of your argument that we should never assume the money is coming very, very quickly. It'll actually be spread out over quite a long period.

JANE HUME: All investment isn't the same, Greg. There is definitely, you know, good investments and bad investments. We want to make sure that the investments that the government is making are in things that are going to drive productivity, not simply be a sop to the union.

GREG JENNETT: All right. Well, we thought we might at least mark out some boundaries of your economic outlook, minus the figures, which I guess we have to wait for on Budget night. Jane Hume, you've put a few thoughts down for us. We'll mark up against those when we get there on Budget day. Thanks for joining us.

JANE HUME: Thanks, Greg.