Interview with Mark Levy, 2GB Mornings

4 March 2025

MARK LEVY: Jane Hume is the Shadow Minister for Finance and the Public Service, and she joins me on the line right now. Senator Hume, good morning to you.

JANE HUME: Good morning. It's great to be with you.

MARK LEVY: Well, you can tell, you can tell that the election is looming gee, the spending spree continues, doesn't it?

JANE HUME: Well, it absolutely does, but it's gone on for a considerable period of time. In fact, the Albanese Government has spent $12 for every $1 that it has saved and Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank Governor, has said explicitly that that increased government spending has actually kept inflation higher for longer, which, of course, has kept interest rates higher for longer. Now that's a real problem, that costs all Australians. It's one of the reasons we've seen our standard of living go backwards by about 8.7% over the last three years, higher inflation, higher interest rates and the higher taxes that come with it. Getting government spending under control is an important fiscal discipline that a Coalition Government will deliver.

MARK LEVY: Another example of how ridiculous some of the government spending is. I mean, the Daily Telegraph reporting today that $25,000 was spent on giving 13 Services Australia bureaucrats drama lessons from NIDA to help them communicate better. I mean, what! $25,000 in a nine day course Senator, they're kidding themselves.

JANE HUME: That really is an extraordinary decision to make, and it really speaks to the priority of government and it doesn't matter whether it's a half a billion dollars on a Voice Referendum that nobody wanted, or whether it was, as we discovered, $620,000 on a speech writer, to make sure that the Minister for the NDIS is more empathetic when he speaks. These are decisions that the government are making. There is so much wasteful spending going on out there. Without that discipline that we can institute in our budget processes, we simply won't be able to get rid of that sense of that wrong footed sense, that every dollar that public service or a Minister spends is like a blank check. In fact, it's taxpayer money. Every dollar that we spend is $1 that somebody else has earned. You know, last week in Senate Estimates, we discovered that one department had spent $20,000 building a bespoke desk for one public servant, and that desk was now hiding in storage because I think people were too embarrassed to use it, and it costs so much money, this desk is too special for anybody in Parliament House. It is outrageous that those sorts of decisions seem to be okay at the time.

MARK LEVY: I doubt there's even a $20,000 desk in the Prime Minister's Office. That's how ridiculous it is. Senator, you're right. All the while, I mean, we've got power prices pushing food costs up and up, and Australians are going hungry. I mean, all the while as well, we've got the Treasurer standing there telling us about what a magnificent job he's doing, managing the economy. He's quite clearly not living in the real world, Senator.

JANE HUME: Well, I was chairing a Cost of Living Committee throughout this term of government, and that allowed me to travel across the country and speak to different industries, different businesses, different demographics and communities to find out how the cost of living crisis was affecting them and come up with some implementable and practical solutions. One of the things that shocked me most was when we spoke to food banks right around the country, the rise in people that were seeking food banks services was astronomical, like increases of 40% year on year, but moreover, that the clients that were coming to see foodbanks were people that had mortgages. They were people that had dual incomes and they still weren't able to put food on the table. When that happens, when people's standards of living go backwards so fast and so far you know that there's something wrong. A government's first responsibility should be to keep its citizens safe, but its second and almost equal responsibility is to make sure that our standard of living rise don't fall and that's been a real failure of the Albanese Government.

MARK LEVY: Alright, well, in a matter of weeks, you could be in a position to make the decisions on how to curb spending, bring that budget back under control. How do you plan on doing it, Senator?

JANE HUME: Well, look, one of our concerns has been the ever expanding, the bloating of our public servants. There are 36,000 new public servants that have been appointed in the last three years. That's a 20% increase. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find an Australian that feels better served by their public service, or at least certainly not 20% better served. So I think that we do need to have a rethink about where those services are being delivered and how, because we know that, for instance, the size of the Health Department has increased by over 40% but while bulk billing rates have gone down. The Department of Environment and Energy and Water have seen emissions rise, and they've seen approval time for environmental approvals blow out, but they've almost doubled in size and even Services Australia that has thousands of new public servants working for them, it's taking much longer to apply for an aged pension or for a low income card. A bigger public service is very expensive, but it doesn't necessarily mean a better service to the public. One of the things that we want to do is ensure too, that the public service comes back to the office, because data that we have discovered over the last few weeks suggests that around 61% of the public service now have working from home arrangements of some sort. Now there's some occasions where that's appropriate, but there are many where it isn't. We want to make sure that people that do work from home do so, with only if it helps not just them, but their teams and their departments. We want to make sure that our public service is productive and delivering for all Australians, delivering on its promise.

MARK LEVY: Yeah, and look, if you cut the public service by 36,000 jobs, it's going to save you about $6 billion a year. I suppose my follow up question, though Senator is, how do you make cuts without affecting services? Is that going to be one of the challenges if you are to win the election?

JANE HUME: Inevitably, it will be a challenge. But there are lots of ways to skin this cat for one of the better expressions.

MARK LEVY: How do you do it?

JANE HUME: Well, look, I don't want to get into the you know, the intricate details, but we want to make sure.

MARK LEVY (INTERRUPTS): But I think it’s important to put it on the record, though, Senator, isn't it? Because, I mean, it's all well and good for us to highlight the 36,000 public servant jobs, the $6 billion a year, but you've still got to make up billions and billions of dollars before we start talking about deficits and reigning in that budget, spending, if you know what I mean?

JANE HUME: So we want to make sure that those public servants are there, are delivering on their promise. That's why it's important that we bring them back to the office, that they understand that, you know, those offices aren't there for decoration. They're there so that we can collaborate, so that we can learn from each other, and that we can deliver on productive services, on the promise of public service. But we also want to make sure that there isn't unnecessary bloating in public service where it isn't needed. That's something that we would task the Department Secretaries with, making sure that they understand what their mandate is and the resources that they have in which to deliver that mandate. Now, a lot of people come and go from the public service. We want to attract the best and brightest. There are so many good problem solvers there. I want them to come back to the office with me and help solve some of the big problems that are facing Australia right now.

MARK LEVY: Alright, you're obviously backing yourselves to win, minority or majority. Can you get a majority or not?

JANE HUME: Well, that's certainly what we're aiming for. There's no point going into half win, is it. We think that we have a much better alternative that we can offer the Australian people, an alternative that not just delivers on the promise of national security and keeping Australians safe.

MARK LEVY (INTERRUPTS): You have got to win a stack of seats though Senator, comes down to the numbers.

JANE HUME: We want to make sure that people can see that their own hopes, their own dreams, their future prosperity, are reflected in the policies that we can deliver.

MARK LEVY: Alright, well, I've got to say, I saw you on telly last night, Senator, you're ultra impressive, and you shared that example when it comes to getting these public sector workers back into the office of this person who's traveling around in a motor home because they were hard to get a hold of while they're supposedly working. So I agree with you, we've got to get people back into the office five days a week and while that 36,000 public servant jobs will be slashed under a Coalition Government, that's a huge saving of $6 billion and look, I've been highlighting the fact that I don't think the current Prime Minister's up to the job anymore, and I certainly hope there is a change of government, and that would put you in the box seat to try and fix up this mess that's been left by Labor. Good luck with it all and I'm sure we'll be talking over the coming weeks and months leading into an election and post election as well. Senator, thanks for joining us.

JANE HUME: Great to be talking with you.