Interview with Laura Jayes, AM Agenda

22 January 2025

LAURA JAYES: Let's go live to Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume in the meantime, on par with Trump, I would say. Jane Hume, great to see you. Happy New Year. Welcome back to AM Agenda. Let me ask you about Trump. First of all, because he has started really, he's off and running. This is going to change the world in many ways. It has already sent a little bit of a shiver through financial markets after doubling down on that tariff announcement. What is going to change here in Australia, do you think?

JANE HUME: Laura, thank you very much. And happy new year to you. Too good to see you back in on Jack as well. Yeah, look the inauguration yesterday was, I think, a bit of a trumpet sound for the world over, Australia included. It was good to see Donald Trump and we congratulate the new president. It was good to see him out there making decisions early on. He certainly has wasted no time at all in shaking things up. And look, when the US is strong, the world is strong. And I think that that's what we expect to see. I thought his inauguration speech was really interesting. Very inspiring, too, talking about making sure that the US is a unified and proud place. American exceptionalism, I think, was his overarching theme. And there was certainly some interesting information to come out of there as well. I've been very comforted and buoyed by the fact that Marco Rubio came out even before the inauguration and reaffirmed the US commitment to Australia and the AUKUS agreement in particular, that is going to be fundamentally important to our strategic alliance going forward, that is great news. Yes, there will be some changes to financial markets and to world trade, I would imagine, let's see how the Trump administration's commitment to tariffs plays out. That will have implications for Australian markets, indeed markets the world over.

LAURA JAYES: Yeah, and indeed, inflation won't it?

JANE HUME: Potentially, that is the case. Although I was also really interested to see that one of the executive orders that Donald Trump has put into place on day one, is to ensure that each of his government departments is focused on fighting the cost of living. I think that was probably something that wasn't picked up by the media appropriately, because it is so fundamentally important. Cumulative price rises in the US have been not dissimilar to over here…

LAURA JAYES (talks over): I mean an executive order to fight the cost of living. It's really just a big banner, isn't it? It's the detail that matters there.

JANE HUME: To essentially say that each one of the departments, government departments, needs to be laser focused on this issue, because it is the most important issue to Americans in the same way as it's the most important issue to Australians. In Australia we've seen cumulative price rises of around 10% over the last three years, and Australians are rightly suffering under those cost of living pressures…

LAURA JAYES: I’m sorry to interrupt you Jane, I hate to do this, but this is relevant because Donald Trump is on his feet now going to take you live to the White House, you'll be interested in this as well.