Interview with Laura Jayes, AM Agenda

16 October 2024

LAURA JAYES: Let’s bring in now the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. I wasn’t gonna ask you about this, but here it is on our radar, Jane Hume. I didn't know ABBA was such a big deal in Melbourne. Have I missed something?

JANE HUME: I've actually been to this show before. I went to it in London, Laura, and it was bloody fantastic. Who would have thought that you'd be dancing around to a bunch of holograms? But I was in the mosh pit.

LAURA JAYES: The mosh pit?

JANE HUME: You know, cut it, in the mosh pit of an ABBA concert. I think that's really demonstrating my age, but it was good fun.

LAURA JAYES: You cut it in the mosh pit. Well, can you balance that up with a bit of Oasis in November next year? Or not your thing?

JANE HUME: I'd love that. In fact, yeah, that would be great. I think that maybe that's nice, you know, sort of outweighs the sort of the uncoolness of ABBA.

LAURA JAYES: Okay, well, I'm glad you got a bit of a balance in your music taste then. Let's talk about what everyone seems to be talking about in Canberra at the moment, and that is the Prime Minister buying a new home. Do you begrudge him for that?

JANE HUME: I don't think anybody begrudges him for buying a new home. He's welcome to set up his life with his new, soon to be wife and that's terrific. He wants to plan his retirement. I just think that the timing and the tone of this one, it has been a little bit tone deaf, is what's causing him grief. I just, I think his judgment is brought into question here at a time when the cost of living is still out of control, when Australians are really doing it tough, when they're facing what's going to be a very tough Christmas, when people can't find somewhere to buy or even rent a home. This decision at this time is probably a pretty poor call and the worst thing, of course, is for his colleagues, they're now sent out to clean up the mess.

LAURA JAYES: Is it his Hawaii moment?

JANE HUME: Well, that's for others to say, not for me to say, but I certainly I'm very glad I'm not a Labor Minister out there today, trying to justify this decision.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah. I mean, for a Prime Minister, though, of his age, buying a $4.3 million home, you'd hope he'd have that level of success to afford that kind of home, wouldn't you?

JANE HUME: Well, he's certainly been a politician for a very long time. I'm sure he's had an opportunity to accumulate some savings, and that's entirely up to him. That's entirely up to him, and I don't want to pass judgment on that, but I would say that making this decision now is not a great look. I'm assuming that he went and inspected this property, because, you know, to spend that amount of money on a property site unseen would be almost unheard of. I'm not entirely sure when he did that, but I would imagine that Australians are waking up this morning and wondering, really, has the Prime Minister got his mind on their issues, as opposed to his own?

LAURA JAYES: This is the, what it does, is foment the politics of envy. Is part of you this morning, you know is that you're kind of thinking, Well, you know, Labor does kind of push the politics of envy when it suits them. Now it's coming back to kind of roost for the Prime Minister. Is that part of your thinking?

JANE HUME: Look, I would hope not. I hate, I think that's really ugly, the politics of envy. We should celebrate people's success and you know, certainly when people start a business and build something that's something that we should be celebrating, this is not about that. This is about making a decision that is kind of out of step with the rest of the community, at a time when the Prime Minister himself is saying that he empathizes, that he's trying to help average Australians, and they're the ones that are struggling to pay the mortgage or struggling to pay the rent, that they're struggling to pay the grocery bills. They can't pay their energy bills. They're looking down the barrel of a pretty grim Christmas, whereas the Prime Minister has clearly got something to celebrate.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, he does. What about unemployment figures tomorrow? I mean, the jobs market is holding up really well. Any credit for the government or just business?

JANE HUME: I don't want to preempt what the unemployment figures will be tomorrow, but certainly there'll be certain things that we're on the lookout for. We want to see what the ratio of full time jobs to part time jobs will be because evidence suggests that Australians are working harder than they ever have before, and there's a number of people that are taking second jobs to try and supplement their incomes in a cost of living crisis. I'd also be very interested to see what proportion of these jobs are public sector jobs versus private sector jobs, or jobs that are being supported by public sector decisions, like in the NDIS, for instance, rather than those businesses in the private sector, or particularly small businesses, which and they're the businesses that are telling us that they're having to make pretty tough decisions about laying off staff rather than taking them on. That's a side of an economy in stress when it's more the public sector that's pushing whatever employment growth or economic growth along, rather than the private sector doing what it does best.

LAURA JAYES: Jane Hume, good to talk to you. Thanks so much.

JANE HUME: You too, Laura.