Interview with Greg Jennett, ABC Afternoon Briefing

18 September 2024

GREG JENNETT: Jane Hume, so good to have you back with us in the studio. Welcome.

JANE HUME: Good to be with you Greg.

GREG JENNETT: Why don't we start out on housing? Because the Senate has definitely frustrated the Government's Help to Buy agenda kicking it down the road until late November. Now, unlike the Greens, we know exactly what the Coalition's position is. You see nothing worthy about the Bill at all. So why not join the government and stab it in the heart?

JANE HUME: Well, let's be very clear about what this Bill is about, Greg. This is about the government owning your home with you. Now, you're right, we've said from the very beginning of this term of government that we don't agree with this Bill. We think this is really poor policy. But it's not just us that thinks it's poor policy. In fact, there are programs like this that exist already right across the states and territories. And in Victoria, it's so poorly subscribed, they're actually unwinding the program. And yet the government is persisting. It's going to cost $5.5 billion so that people can own their house with everybody. Albanese, now that's kind of crazy.

GREG JENNETT: Well, that's the argument against it, but you've had, at least by my reckoning, two, if not three occasions to say, ‘Okay, we'll defeat it, and you chose not to’.

JANE HUME: Well, this is up to the Greens. They were the ones that moved a motion to not have the Bill go to a vote. If that's what they want, they've got more time to consider. That's what the Senate is for. Amazingly, the Government could have brought this Bill on back in February, because that's when it passed the House of Representatives. Now, all of a sudden it seems to be urgent. Actually, I think that the Government might be telling porkies here. It hasn't been urgent since February. Why is it urgent this week? I think they've got plenty of time up their sleeves. They want to negotiate with the greens. They can knock themselves out. But what is it that they'll be selling out? Will they be selling out negative gearing? Will they be selling out capital gains? What is it the Greens want in exchange for getting this bill through? There's

GREG JENNETT: There’s not the slightest indication that they will negotiate with the greens. So therefore, all you've done is collude to further delay a question until the 26th of November. It still doesn't make a lot of sense, I would suggest to people outside the building.

JANE HUME: Well, the Government were the ones that brought on this Bill. They said it had to be done this week. The Coalition were never going to support it. The Greens were always in the mix. They're still in the mix. All right.

GREG JENNETT: I don't want to dwell on the really, really remote possibilities of a double dissolution trigger being established on this Bill, but it is technically possible, if the Government treats it as a failure to pass, that you're one step closer to that happening. Are you happy to give it that option if it shows acknowledging again that that is unlikely?

JANE HUME: It is a very, very narrow pathway to a double dissolution. I don't know whether the Prime Minister had thought that one through when he answered that question, but if he wants to bring on a double dissolution election, we've been saying bring on election for months.

GREG JENNETT: All right, let's move on. The Productivity Commission has released its report into a model for a decade long build out of a universal child care system with fewer out of pocket costs. That's the proposal, anyway, that the PC has prepared. I know you haven't had long to absorb it, but what is the Coalition's in principle position on universal pre-school childhood education?

JANE HUME: Well, you're right. We haven't had time to consider it yet. There are 700 pages to this report. There's 56 recommendations, and universal child care, of course, is one of them. But it's all about how those recommendations interplay with each other. So it would be very, very premature for me to say, even in principle, what we feel about this particular report. But what I would say is that the commitment of the Coalition towards childcare, the importance of childcare, was demonstrated in the last government, where we saw an increase of around 50% of childcare places, and increase now around 90% of four year olds in early childhood education, that's a really terrific statistic, and one that we should be very proud of. We've also seen quite a significant uptake in female workforce participation because of policies that the Coalition put in place, particularly additional support for families that have two or more children in childcare, because we know that when you have that second child in childcare, that tends to be the tipping point where, and more often than not, it's the woman in the family makes a decision to return to the workforce or not. So they're policies that we're very proud of.

GREG JENNETT: Do you see any possibility of the Government legislating on this front before the election, and then, for argument's sake, a Coalition government inheriting that?

JANE HUME: Well there’s a lot of ifs in that, and look, to be honest, for a report that's come out today, the Government actually hasn't shown that. It's its ability to be nimble with these things. They're running out of parliamentary runway. I'm not entirely sure whether they have time to put this legislation through. They've made lots of positive noises. It's just not much in the way of action.

GREG JENNETT: I’ll certainly concede that is deeply hypothetical, about three different twists in that one. But what we do know is the Intergenerational Report has the Federal Budget in the red for the next 40 years. This would be a major new policy invention for the nation, if any government were to take us down that track. Can it be funded even at the price increase of about $5 billion which is what the PC says? Can it be funded out of current revenue settings?

JANE HUME: That's a very good question, and we'd need to see where revenue and expenses lay after the next election. At the moment, we're already spending around 15 billion or so dollars a year on subsidising childcare. The Coalition has said that we fundamentally believe that that's an important expenditure, but it's not a limitless bucket.

GREG JENNETT: This would take it to 17 or perhaps even higher.

JANE HUME: It’s quite significant. Now look, we've shown the ability to work with government on sensible policies to make sure that, you know, say, with NDIS or now we're currently working with them on aged care, that where those important investments in the essential services that Australians expect and deserve can be managed in a sensible way that will work with them. But we've seen no proposal from the Government.

GREG JENNETT: There’s an argument to this day that some of the big policy inventions, like NDIS probably at the time, should have come with a levy or a designated additional tax of some sort. Do you agree with that? Well,

JANE HUME: Well, the best way to be able to afford the essential services that Australians expect and deserve is to grow the economy. And of course, that's something that we haven't seen. In fact, we're in a per capita recession. The economy is just bouncing along the bottom, and instead of growing the pie, the Government's talking about how to cut that pie up differently. We want to see productivity injected back into the economy through lower energy prices simplified and less more flexible, industrial relations, a deregulatory agenda that is meaningful for business and, of course, lower and simpler and fairer taxes, because that's the way you inject the productivity back into the economy, so that you grow that pie, then you can deliver the services that Australians need.

GREG JENNETT: Let's just take you quickly and finally out of finance into something that all parents follow closely. Instagram, you might have noticed, is going to move down the path of restricting teen access to content being the party of enterprise free markets responding to consumer choice. I imagine you would applaud that. But at the same time, why not slow down or back off on the social media ban to see how that goes?

JANE HUME: Well, forgive me for being a little bit cynical. Yeah, but Instagram, Meta have had plenty of time to do this and have shown no interest in doing it before now. Now that they know that governments, not just our own, but right around the world, are genuinely concerned about…

GREG JENNETT: They say they weren't prompted by governments.

JANE HUME: Really, that's interesting. But I find that very hard to believe, because we've been talking about this for some time, and it's not just Australia, it's other governments as well. If Instagram or Meta were very serious about this, they probably could have acted some time ago. There does seem to be some consensus that social media has had profoundly harmful effects on young Australians and parents are trying out for more to be done. Peter Dutton mentioned this in his budget and reply about 18 months ago, that we were going to move on this, that we were going to make sure that there was an age verification process that went that, you know, that was going to be trialed now. Anthony Albanese moved on this only two weeks ago, which is quite extraordinary. But I think more needs to be done. Is this enough, I don't think so.

GREG JENNETT: Alright, we’ll see where that takes us Jane Hume, we thank you once again.

JANE HUME: Great to be with you Greg.