Interview with Jacqui Felgate, 3AW Drive

2 April 2025

JACQUI FELGATE: Well, we're a bit lucky because Melbourne is the battleground, or Victoria is the battleground state. So I suppose we'll be seeing a lot more of both of you?

JANE HUME: I hope so. It's nice to sleep in my own bed.

RICHARD MARLES: That's true. A lot more on this campaign is in Victoria.

JACQUI FELGATE: Well, it's been a busy day so far. So, um, what have you been up to? Firstly, Richard.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, I started my day at South Geelong station. Train station, where at 10 to 7, I was greeting commuters who were heading up to Melbourne and then I've been in Melbourne. I headed up myself and I've been spending the rest of the day in Melbourne.

JACQUI FELGATE: And you've flown in?

JANE HUME: I've flown in. I started in Canberra this morning. We had the National Press Club address for the Shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor, so I've flown back for that. But I'm off to Hawthorn next to do some stuff with Amelia Hamer, out there in Kooyong and then back into the city.

JACQUI FELGATE: I actually saw the Liberals have put up a little, um, sign. Have you seen that? Because obviously we've had the Signgate with Monique Ryan's husband, um, stealing the sign or whatever, and they've put up a little sign saying, don't take my placard.

JANE HUME: Monique, don't take this sign. Please don't take this sign next to Amelia Hamer’s sign.

JACQUI FELGATE: Laughing about that. Why are you laughing, Richard?

RICHARD MARLES: What happens in the studio stays in the studio.

JACQUI FELGATE: I heard that. Hey, uh, so we've obviously had both leaders in town today, so I will start with you, Richard. So they're avoiding, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese appears to be avoiding our State Labor leader in Jacinta Allan. Is she political poison?

RICHARD MARLES: Well, firstly, the State Parliament is sitting at the moment.

JACQUI FELGATE: But they both had media conferences at the same time today.

RICHARD MARLES: Yeah, well, I mean, we've got our own message. I mean, the answer to that question is no. But this ultimately is an election between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. I mean, that's the choice that people have got at this election. Um, and that's, the context in which we're putting this case.

JACQUI FELGATE: But how hard is it for you to fight against a really unpopular State Labor Government? Look at the poll today.

RICHARD MARLES: But, well, that's not who we're fighting, who we are fighting is Peter Dutton and what he would mean for Australia, but what he would mean for Victorians and we're out there making the case about what a federal government will do and what the choice represents between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton and federal Labor and federal Liberal.

JANE HUME: But Albo will stand in front of, well he stood next to.

JACQUI FELGATE (TALKS OVER): He stood next to Peter Malinauskas.

JANE HUME: And Chris Minns, Roger Cook, even David Crisafulli he'll stand in front of. But he won't stand next to Jacinta Allan and you know why? It's because she really is on the nose. The State Labor Government here is on the nose and to be honest, everywhere I travel, people will tell me, I don't need to tell them, that Victoria is the ultimate canary in the coal mine for a bad State Labor Government, because Victoria has worst health care, worst roads, worst education, uh, worst law and order, higher taxes than pretty much anywhere else. I mean, we're a failed state. That's what bad economic management will do.

RICHARD MARLES: This is a federal election. It's as simple as that.

JACQUI FELGATE: Would you stand next to the Premier?

RICHARD MARLES: I'd stand next to the Premier.

JACQUI FELGATE: Um, do you have any plans to?

RICHARD MARLES: I have stood next to the Premier. Well, I'm not. I don't have any plans to, because it's not commonplace for me to be, you know, doing things as the Defence Minister with the Victorian Premier. But I've got no issue. But this is ultimately a Federal Election. Um, and, this is about a government that has been focused on cost of living measures, which is reinvesting in the biggest way ever in Medicare and nine out of ten visits to a GP being bulk billed. I mean, that's what federal governments do. That's the area of policy they're involved in. And the choice here is between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. The Victorian government is its own story and this is not a State Election.

JANE HUME: Well, I think this is ground zero though for the CFMEU and we know that Labor have taken millions of dollars, Federal Labor have taken millions of dollars in CFMEU.

JACQUI FELGATE: They have banned that though.

JANE HUME: Well have they Richard? You’ve banned it? You're not taking any more money from the CFMEU?

RICHARD MARLES: At the end of the day, we've um, made really important decisions that were never made during the Liberals time in government federally around actually stepping in respect of the CFMEU, appointing an administrator, seeing a whole lot of officials being removed from that organisation, preparing the case for a whole lot of criminal investigations there. I mean, I know what, uh, what Jane will say is they'll de-register the CFMEU, all that.

JANE HUME: We absolutely will deregister the CFMEU.

RICHARD MARLES: It says that, it doesn't understand the system because you do that and you hand the keys back to John Setka, which we're not going to do.

JANE HUME: Well, no we won’t, he just won't be allowed on work sites and that will be a crime as opposed to a right, which is what you're allowing with the CFMEU.

RICHARD MARLES: He is not allowed on work sites now. But if you remove federal regulation from the CFMEU then you're not regulating them and what we're doing is regulating them in a way where we're removing officials and we're cleaning the union up.

JANE HUME: The CFMEU in Victoria has cost Victorians so much. I mean, the reason why so many of our infrastructure projects have run over time and over, well over budget is because of the militant CFMEU on those work sites. We do not want that to happen any more. We do not want that to happen federally. But as I said, this is the canary in the coal mine. Victoria is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country, and they know how bad it can get and how much it can cost Victorians, cost Australians when we have a bad economic management and bad Labor government and the CFMEU running roughshod over our infrastructure.

RICHARD MARLES: Like no argument about where the CFMEU is at, which is why we're doing something about it. But if the Liberals really felt that strongly about it, you would have thought they would have acted in the ten years or almost ten years that they were in government.

JANE HUME: Well, we did, we had the ABCC.

RICHARD MARLES: That was about stickers on people's helmets, not John Setka.

JACQUI FELGATE: I do want to ask you just as Defence Minister. So we had Peter Dutton on the program earlier today. The Chinese Government has accused him of beating the drums of war against China. So how concerned are you that already they've made an announcement like that through their state media?

RICHARD MARLES: Well, I mean, I'm not really focused on what China is saying through their state media. What I'm focused on is, um, where our national interest lies and you can look at what we are doing, um, in the face of, you know, the biggest conventional military build up that we've seen since the end of the Second World War. That's what China is doing, which is leading us as a government to the biggest peacetime investment in our defence force.

JACQUI FELGATE: Peter Dutton, said today to me that Labor should have been more forthright in calling out the Chinese ships off the coast.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, easy for Peter Dutton to say. When Peter Dutton was the Defence Minister, he was the Defence Minister at the time and there was a Chinese warship off our coast. He literally did nothing about it. You know what we did.

JANE HUME: They weren't outside Sydney Harbour heads, pointed out to us by a Virgin pilot.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, that's not right. What there was, was an unprecedented level of surveillance of this task group that was put in place by this government in terms of both Navy assets and Air Force assets. We surveilled, in combination with New Zealand, this task group in the entirety of its time, when it was within the vicinity of Australia, when Peter Dutton was the Defence Minister and there was a Chinese warship in Australia's vicinity, there was no surveillance at all. I mean none. So, the gap between the rhetoric and the gap between the action on in the case of Peter Dutton is enormous.

JANE HUME: Albo was so weak on this, he didn't even know which agency was responsible for our response. He was saying it was border forces response. It's the defence forces responsibilities.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, I don’t know if you're talking about a different ship now.

JANE HUME: Well, this is the one that's checking out the undersea cables in Tasmania.

RICHARD MARLES: Okay. There's a whole lot of speculation about.

JANE HUME: There are a lot of ships.

JACQUI FELGATE: How many ships are there?

RICHARD MARLES: There is a Chinese research vessel, which is what, now what I think you’re, so we're conflating a few things here. So, well, there's we don't there's speculation out there. None of what you have has just been asserted there is fact. Um, we have a very clear sense of what that ship is doing and what it is about.

JACQUI FELGATE: What is it doing?

RICHARD MARLES: I'm not going to go into it, but, um, for good reason I'm not going to go into it, but to say this, it was doing joint research with New Zealand. Um, we have a very close relationship with New Zealand. So, you can imagine that we are very clear about what this ship is doing. That the effort in terms of monitoring it, is not a Navy vessel, is being led by Australia Border Force. Um, but all of our agencies are contributing to that and that includes Defence. But rightly, the effort is being led by the Australian Border Force. We know where the ship is. We know what it's doing. Um, and what we've got here is, again, the Libs trying to kind of amp all this up and fall into a trap where we know, but fall into a trap where we establish a standard in respect of ships near our continent, which would hamper our ability to act when we are near China and that is much more the norm.

JACQUI FELGATE: Okay, I do need to take a break. I'm with Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles and Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume.

JACQUI FELGATE: Welcome back, I’m here with Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles and Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Jane, I just wanted to ask you to clarify the Coalition's policy on working from home, because there's been a lot of speculation about exactly what it is that you'll do.

JANE HUME: Yeah, well, this only applies to public servants. Let's be really clear about that. It doesn't apply to the private sector. The private sector can do whatever it wants to raise its productivity. But unfortunately, the public service now works from home, actually has much more flexible working arrangements because they have the right to demand to work from home, unlike the private sector, which has to negotiate an outcome. We just want the private sector, sorry, the public sector, to essentially reflect the workplace practices of the private sector.

JACQUI FELGATE: How many days are they expected to work in the office?

JANE HUME: Well, the expectation is that, if you take a job with the public service, that you will work from the office, unless you negotiate to work from, you know, flexible working arrangements with your team and with your department, because at the moment you can say, thanks for the job in the public service, I'll work from home full time.

JACQUI FELGATE: But if you negotiate that anyway though?

JANE HUME: Well, you can't now. At the moment you can demand to.

JACQUI FELGATE: But you're saying you can negotiate that?

JANE HUME: Flexible work stays. There's no doubt that flexible work stays. We just want the public service to reflect the practice of the private service, because we've had so many situations where, you know, stakeholders have come to us and said, I flew my team to Canberra to meet with the department, walked into the meeting room with my team, ready with my flipcharts and my handouts, and everybody else dialled in.

JACQUI FELGATE: But can you have both though? Because aren't you essentially trying to have your cake and eat it too there?

JANE HUME: What's that, what do you mean?

JACQUI FELGATE: Well, you're saying that you can negotiate it, but you want everyone back in the office, so won't every public service servant just negotiate?

JANE HUME: Well, that's a default position. We want people back in the office, but if it works for the team, if it works for the department, well, then that's great.

JACQUI FELGATE: And what about job cuts to the public service?

JANE HUME: Well, we've said that there are 41,000, in fact, we haven't said it. There is 41,000 additional public servants that have been brought on under this government. That's more than 20% increase. It's about a 24% increase to the size of the public service and yet the quality of service that the public are getting hasn't really improved. So, for instance, the size of the Health Department has grown by about 40%, but bulk billing rates have collapsed. The size of the Energy and Environment Departments almost doubled, but emissions have gone up and approval times have stretched out. Services Australia has got about 7500 new people, which is an enormous amount. But we know it takes much longer now to get an age pension.

JACQUI FELGATE: That is true.

JANE HUME: Longer to get a low income card. You wait for an hour on the phone if you're calling the Parenting and Families helpline. So the services standards haven't improved, and yet the size of the public service has blown out, costing about $7 billion a year.

JACQUI FELGATE: So, Richard, can the public service be more efficient with job cuts?

RICHARD MARLES: Well, firstly, I mean, I think if you want to ask the question about improving standards, go and ask veterans, because we had a backlog of 42,000 cases where people hadn't even looked at them when the Coalition were last in government. That's not making a decision, they haven't even looked at them. Um, and that was waiting up till in some cases, beyond a year between the time that they actually put an application in and it was even seen, um, an example of what the public servants are doing that we have put on, um, is another 500 in that department, for example, which has meant that backlog has now been removed and that those applications are being seen within two weeks. If you want to cut 41,000 public servants, you are cutting, um, you know, frontline public service.

JANE HUME: No we're not.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, there is no way you'll be able to achieve that.

JANE HUME: Yes we can. We've said no frontline services.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, okay, but the 500, if you're looking at all the additional ones that have gone on, they come off, um, that implies a backlog.

JANE HUME: You're not seriously saying there's no waste in the public service are you?

RICHARD MARLES: We, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that we have gone through a process of, uh, looking at doing a whole lot of prudent management of the Federal Budget, such that we've actually delivered two surpluses, which was something that the Liberals never did.

JANE HUME: But there is $7 billion a year there, more that you're spending on an expanded, bloated public service. You could have saved more.

RICHARD MARLES: Well, um, again, said from a government, which literally gave us $1 trillion of debt.

JANE HUME: Hang on, you gave us $1 trillion of debt. We hit it this year. This year.

RICHARD MARLES: And we're now, in terms of the seven years, we're responsible for the three years of this term and the four years of the forward estimates. $207 billion we've saved relative to what we inherited from.

JANE HUME: Mate, we have got red ink as far as the eye can see.

JACQUI FELGATE: Did you just call him mate?

JANE HUME: Sorry I did, didn’t I. Minister.

JACQUI FELGATE: We've actually run out of time. Where are you both off to tomorrow?

JANE HUME: Uh, I actually don't know yet. Isn't that terrible? I'm literally going day to day at this point in time.

RICHARD MARLES: I'm on a plane to Perth tonight.

JACQUI FELGATE: There you go. Enjoy the trip. Thank you both for coming in.