Interview with Laura Jayes, AM Agenda

4 September 2024

LAURA JAYES: I want to bring in now the Shadow Finance Minister, Jane Hume. Jane, good to see you. Thanks so much. Listening to that, the adage, if you can't govern yourselves, how can you govern a State or a Country comes to mind, how do you answer that?

JANE HUME: That's, I think you could ask Anthony Albanese that question, considering there was a federal takeover of the Victorian division of the Labor Party, this is not an unusual circumstance. If an organisational wing hasn't got its act together, well, then the Federal Executive should step in, and we owe that to the thousands of Liberal Party members in New South Wales, and more importantly, we owe it to the millions of Australians that are looking towards the Coalition to fight the next election and win the next election. We want to make sure we're in the best position to be able to do that. That's the decision that the Federal Executive has taken.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, well, this council stuff up means it's going to be a lot harder for you to win those crucial seats in New South Wales.

JANE HUME: Well, the good news is there are some fantastic candidates on the ground already in place for the next federal election in New South Wales. I've been campaigning alongside people like Katie Mullens in Parramatta and Ro Knox in Wentworth, Jo van der Plaat in Eden-Monaro. These are really terrific candidates, and I'm looking forward to the next election, whenever it may be, in the lead up to May, to make sure that we can return a Coalition Government and restore prosperity and economic growth and lower inflation back to our economy, because that's what all Australians are expecting and deserving and they're not getting it from the Albanese Government.

LAURA JAYES: That might be wishful thinking at the moment, well, you know, it all depends on the economy. We're going to get those GDP figures later today, but before we get to those figures, are you looking at the way our Federal Election is and the way voting patterns have been in the last couple of years, do you think it's possible to get a majority Government on either side? Are we looking at, you know, the new normal being minorities, and are you willing to do deals with the Independents and Teals?

JANE HUME: Well, I don't think you have to look too far into history to see the disaster that was caused the last time there was a minority Labor-Greens Government. The economic fallout from that was profound. In fact, it took the Liberals, really years to get the economy back on its feet, back on track, and Australians don't want or deserve that kind of chaos and dysfunction from a hung Parliament, and that ragtag, bobtail government that would be caused by a combination of Labor, Greens, Teals and other independents. That would be a disaster, which is why the Coalition would be the-

LAURA JAYES (interrupts): What do you mean you're not considering it? You might, it might be out of your hands. So the Coalition wouldn't do deals with the teals? Is that what you're saying?

JANE HUME: The Coalition is aiming to govern in its own right-

LAURA JAYES (interrupts): I know, I know. All major parties are aiming to do that, but we've got to look at the reality of the situation. Are you really saying that you wouldn't do deals with the Independents?

JANE HUME: We have no intention of doing deals with anybody. We intend to govern in our own right, and hopefully, the Australian public will see that we have a genuine economic plan that is a real alternative from Labor, that will deliver on what it is that they were promised two years ago and haven't had delivered to them. They were promised that their wages would be higher. Well, their real wages have gone backwards. They were promised that inflation would be low. Well, inflation is still hanging about. They promised they'd have cheaper mortgages. Their mortgages are so much more expensive, sometimes up to $24,000 a year more expensive, for an average mortgage and more importantly, they were promised that their energy bills would go down by $275 and they have gone up by around 23%. So this government has failed to deliver on the promises that it made just two years ago. It's looking to blame everybody else for those issues, and now Australians will be looking to take the baseball bats out and vote for a government that can deliver on its commitments to the Australian people to restore prosperity, economic growth and keep inflation below.

LAURA JAYES: Do you think the RBA has smashed household budgets?

JANE HUME: The RBA has done the job that it sets out to do, which is to tame inflation without wrecking the economy. Now, unfortunately, the RBA hasn't been assisted by the government that's employed it to do that job. Jim Chalmers handpicked RBA Governor Michele Bullock has said that our inflation problem is homegrown. Now what that means is you can't point overseas and blame somebody else for this, for inflation, for sticky inflation in Australia. The RBA only has one tool in the shed, that's interest rates. It's been using those interest rates, but now it's got Jim Chalmers and others on the government front bench, saying that it's Michele Bullock's fault that the economy is tanking. Well, that's not the case. If Jim Chalmers is serious about tackling inflation, he would have done so in one of the last three Budgets. Instead, he's done the exact opposite.

LAURA JAYES: But we're talking about inflation and growth, and the growth numbers we're going to get out today that show, it's going to show the economy is certainly slowing down, and a lot of that growth, though, what is keeping us afloat, is government spending. So how do you interpret that? Because you want to get inflation down, but you don't want to smash the economy to do so. So what's the quid pro quo?

JANE HUME: Actually, we, the only thing that's keeping growth in the positive territory is the record immigration that we've experienced in the last two years. More than a million people have come to this country in the last two years. If we hadn't had that record migration, we would already be in recession. In fact, we're in a GDP per capita recession right now, and have been for around 12 months. That's a real concern, because it essentially means that your growth is a Ponzi scheme. It's not sustainable.

LAURA JAYES: A Ponzi scheme that every single government in recent memory has maintained.

JANE HUME: Well, no, if you've got positive growth, even with immigration, a per capita GDP positive growth, well, that's not a Ponzi scheme. However, what I would say is that there are better ways to tackle the issue of economic growth. For instance, you can put more energy supply into the system, that sustainably lowers energy costs for businesses. You can unwind that inflexible industrial relations laws, that are causing people to not employ others, instead of employing more people. You can unravel the red tape and the green tape that we're now seeing around new projects that's stifling business, and you can have lower and simpler and fairer taxes to inject aspiration back into your economy. That doesn't require $315 billion of additional spending from the government. You cannot spend your way out of poor economic management. That's exactly what this government is trying to do, and we every day, we keep hearing more bright ideas from the backbench, that Jim Chalmers clearly can't say no to, and those expansionary Budgets are simply making the inflation problem worse.

LAURA JAYES: Jane, thanks so much for your time. We'll see those figures at 11.30.

JANE HUME: Thanks, Laura.