Interview with Sally Sara, RN Breakfast
25 March 2025
SALLY SARA: Jane Hume is the Shadow Finance Minister and joins me now. Jane Hume, good to have you back in the studio, welcome back.
JANE HUME: Good to be here.
SALLY SARA: Let's get first to tonight's Budget. The Coalition talks a lot about restraining spending in order to get the Budget in balance. But we've heard so little from you or the government about tax reform. Why is that?
JANE HUME: Well, tonight's Budget is really more about whether the government is capable of restoring this lost standard of living, because Australians have gone backwards under Labor, they've gone backwards by around 8%. It's not that it's in your head that you're feeling poorer, you actually are poorer than you were three years ago. So tonights Budget is really about whether the government can restore that lost standard of living and get inflation down sustainably, restore prosperity and create opportunity for all Australians, and restore that Budget discipline and honesty that has been lost from these last three Budgets that have now essentially seen, you know, a wasted two surpluses, windfall surpluses from high commodity prices and high taxes that have now been turned into deficits as far as the eye can see. So that's not good fiscal management, Sally. That's just bad management. Quite the opposite.
SALLY SARA: Why has the Coalition been matching a number of Labor's policies, rather than coming up with and announcing your own and having it the other way around?
JANE HUME: Well, let's face it, in a cost of living crisis, when people are crying out for assistance, we won't stand in the way of that assistance.
SALLY SARA: But why don’t we hear from you first?
JANE HUME: People need help now. Now, you will hear policy announcements coming from the Coalition throughout the election campaign, and you'll hear more about some of those on Thursday night. But most importantly, we're trying to now help Australians to make up for Labor's failings, whether it be in energy policy, because energy prices have run out of control, some of our energy bills are now up to $1,000 more than they were three years ago, or grocery prices. We know that they're up over 10% and yet, you know, quite frankly, the government's response to high grocery prices has been weak indeed. You know, whether it be the high cost of insurance. All of these things have been caused by Labor's inability to manage the economy, to manage inflation and keep it down, get it down sooner, so that interest rates could have come down sooner.
SALLY SARA: Let's go to the issue of gas. What's the timeline here? The Coalition's saying that it wants to get gas moving to get more into the market. How quickly can you do that?
JANE HUME: Well, we'd like to do that as soon as possible. In order to bring energy prices down as quickly as possible, we need to fast track approvals for gas and so that will happen immediately on coming to government. We will prioritise that and you've already seen some announcements around the North West, West, Shelf, sorry, it's early in the morning, in WA. We will make sure that approvals are met within 30 days of coming to government and that's really important.
SALLY SARA: How in the actual process, what are you going to remove or speed up specifically?
JANE HUME: Well, there'll be more details on that. But what I will say is that, unless we can bring more gas into the system, essentially energy prices will continue to rise. We need that gas to come into the system. Economics isn't new. It's all about demand and supply. At the moment we haven't got enough supply. Bring more supply into the system, prices will come down.
SALLY SARA: On the issue of the public service. We haven't got exact numbers yet from the Coalition, but the phrase that's been used many times is particularly focusing on jobs in Canberra, and there's around 36,000 here. Why Canberra?
JANE HUME: Well, there's more than 36,000 jobs in the public service here. There are, in fact, 209,000 jobs now in the public service around the country. Most of those are focused in Canberra, as you would not be at all surprised. Now that amount.
SALLY SARA (INTERRUPTS): Hang, on when it comes to public service jobs, there's around 39% that are here in the ACT, are you counting people in the military as well?
JANE HUME: 209,000 is not is not 36,000 so there's more than that here in Canberra. But more importantly, the number of public servants has grown dramatically. It's grown by around 20% just in the last three years. It's about 40 new public servants every single.
SALLY SARA (TALKS OVER): But there are more in other parts of the country?
JANE HUME: They've also received an 11% pay rise that hasn't been accounted for in these Budgets. That's one of the reasons why we want to restore that fiscal discipline and honesty in Budgets, because there's essentially a black hole. Either Labor's Budget says we're going to reduce the number of public servants, or they've failed to account for the 11% pay rise that they've been given. That doesn't sound like Budget honesty to me.
SALLY SARA: Jane Hume, thank you for your time this morning.
JANE HUME: Great to be with you Sally.