Interview with Natalie Barr, Sunrise

20 November 2024

NATALIE BARR: As Elon Musk prepares to slice and dice through the US public service, the tech entrepreneur has met with Australia's wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, at Mar-a-Lago. The pair discussed Elon's plans to address government efficiency in the Trump administration, just like he did at Twitter when he got rid of about 80% of the company's staff. Now Gina Reinhart is suggesting we should do a similar thing down under. For their take, let's bring in Housing Minister Clare O'Neil and Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume, good morning. Clare, is our public service too big and do we need an Elon type figure to cut it down?

CLARE O’NEIL: Well, Nat, Australians should get a chill up their spine when we see a couple of billionaires getting together to talk about efficiencies in public services. What that really translates to for your viewers is drastic cuts to health and education and other services that we ordinary Australians rely on.

NATALIE BARR (INTERRUPTS): Why does it though?

CLARE O’NEIL: Because Nat, the government does some incredibly important things. It looks after our sick children in hospital. It educates our children. It pays for aged care for Australians and these are abstract things to billionaires who can pay their own way, but for ordinary people, these are meaningful and important things in their lives. Now this is important, because unfortunately, Peter Dutton has said that he is going to make $300 billion of cuts to our public services here in Australia. The problem is he won't tell us where and why and when. It is really important that we get these answers before the election. We are about to come into an election period. Peter Dutton is going to make drastic cuts to public services, and he needs to fess up and tell us what they are.

NATALIE BARR: A lot of people might be sitting there in their lounge room today thinking, well, okay, he's got to be, I mean, whether you like Elon Musk or not, but if someone gets to be a billionaire, they may know how to make money. They may know how to cut waste. Let's give them a go. Jane, what do you think?

JANE HUME: Well, I think that was enormously disrespectful of Clare. You don't get to be the world's richest man and Australia's richest woman by accident. You get there because you've got some ideas about how to be efficient and how to be effective and how to be profitable and that's exactly it. I wish that the government would spend taxpayers money more widely and so should you. In fact, there's a 36,000 additional public servants that have come on board since this government began, 36,000. Now that's a cost of billions of dollars, and I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily feel 36,000 public servants better served than I did just two years ago.

CLARE O’NEIL: Well, which ones will you be cutting Jane, which ones will you be cutting?

JANE HUME: Well, 36,000, I’d be very interested to see exactly what it is they're doing. Are they front line services? Are they white collar or are they working from home? What are they doing Clare, that's serving Australians so much better? In fact, one of my colleagues, James Stevens, has already done some analysis of the waste that has occurred in the spending under this government and there's a website now called Underlabor.com.au, that covers things like the 36,000 additional public service. It covers $170 million on taxpayer funded advertising for tax cuts that you were already getting anyway. It even covers the $620,000 being spent on a special speechwriter for Bill Shorten to make him sound more empathic when he talks about the NDIS.

NATALIE BARR: We don’t need to drill down into all the examples. I just think people at home might be open, everyone, you know, we know you have to run the government, but maybe people are interested in drilling down on exactly where the money is going. Maybe we should be open to that?

JANE HUME: I think that’s a very good idea.

NATALIE BARR: Tell us what you think at home. Moving on Australia's immigration intake is in the spotlight this week, with the Nightly newspaper publishing this front page, calling Australia a crowded house and an opinion piece by Jeni O'Dowd, declaring it is time to shut the borders. It comes as 49 percent of people in this country, in recent surveys, say they think immigration is too high because of economic and housing issues. Clare, when our housing and economy is already under so much pressure, is it time to rethink our immigration strategy entirely? You guys promised to cut it, but it seems to be rising.

CLARE O’NEIL: Well, actually Nat, migration rates are starting to come down, and that's a really big and important thing that our government is doing. Unfortunately, we reached a peak hypocrisy here in Canberra this week, where our government has put forward a bill to cap the number of international students. Now, international students are the biggest driver of what has increased immigration in recent years. It's really important that we bring those numbers back down again. That's exactly what our government is trying to do. Now, Jane and her colleagues and Peter Dutton have talked a big game on migration, but when it came time to come into the Parliament and support the bill, they've said, oh no, we don't want to have anything to do with this. So it is totally hypocritical. The Liberals have shown themselves to be complete frauds on this matter this week. We're a government with a clear plan to bring migration rates down, and we will do that by hook or by crook, whether or not Peter Dutton comes with us.

NATALIE BARR: I'm just a bit confused, because the Australian Bureau of Statistics has got permanent long term arrivals from January to September this year, 391,850. That's apparently the highest figure for that period to date. So, that's the highest we've ever got for that sort of figure and your goal was 260 for the whole year. So is it coming down? Or are you talking about from now on?

CLARE O’NEIL: It is coming down Nat, and then the numbers are showing us that, we would like those numbers down further.

NATALIE BARR (INTERRUPTS): Which numbers are showing that?

CLARE O’NEIL: That is exactly why we've got this policy in place to cap the number of international students coming into our country and Nat talk to any immigration expert that you like, this is the biggest driver of what has increased about immigration numbers in recent years. The Liberals had an attitude of just let it rip, let it rip on international education. We're trying to bring those numbers back in, but the Liberals are saying they won't support it, and it'll be really good to hear from Jane now about what her justification is for that. All we hear from the Liberals is no, no, no. Good policies that we are putting forward get shut down by Peter Dutton, angry, aggressive attitude, and he's just got to stop it, it’s not the way to solve things.

JANE HUME: Oh for heaven's sake Clare, this blew out of control, that’s why you’re defensive.

NATALIE BARR: Just a sec, Jane. we've got this figure from the ABS, which they seem to be the people that count things, okay? It's just, we've just got the highest ever. Is that an incorrect figure? And are you voting against it, the intake?

JANE HUME: So in fact, the net overseas migration has blown out to a million people over two years. Now that is a record number, and it's about 70% higher than any other two year average. That's quite extraordinary. That happened, not just under Labor, but it happened under you, Clare, that happened under your watch. The student intake, international students, yes, we've said that we were cut back into international students. But the problem is, the way that the Labor Government have gone about this is piecemeal. They haven't actually addressed the problems underneath. There are so many different visa categories, and the visa system is what's broken. Students are now moving on to temporary visas. They're waiting for decisions about whether they can change courses, move courses. There's still 30,000 Covid worker visas out there. This has been allowed to run out of control under Labor. We've said that we will bring permanent migration cut back by 25 per cent, and that's because we're a proud migrant nation. There is no doubt about that. We want international students.

NATALIE BARR: I think that’s the take home.

JANE HUME: At some point, we've got to take a breather. Our services are stretched. Our housing system is in crisis. We've got to be able to play catch up, because it's been allowed to run out of control, not just under Labor, but under you Clare.

NATALIE BARR: Okay, look, thank you both. We have got to go and look, that's just really hard to understand, I can tell you, for most Australians, because you can't get a house.