Interview with Greame Goodings, 5AA Mornings

26 March 2025

GRAEME GOODINGS: Well, the Federal Budget offers tax cuts, rebates and a boost in services, squarely aimed at winning over voters ahead of the Federal Election. Jane Hume is the Opposition Federal Finance Spokesperson. Jane, thanks for joining us today. What is your initial reaction?

JANE HUME: Terrific to be with you, Graeme. Look, clearly, you're right. This is a Budget that's aimed at the next five weeks. It's not named aimed at the next five years. It's certainly not aimed at the next 50 years. It's a Budget that's for the election, not for our country's future prosperity. We all know that Australians are poorer under Labor, our living standards have collapsed, the largest and deepest collapse in living standards on record, and our security environment is the most dangerous since the Second World War. The Prime Minister himself said that. But Labor's Budget has failed to deal with both the economic and the national security challenges that our country faces that should be a great concern to Australians.

GRAEME GOODINGS: The Treasurer said the economy is heading in the right direction. Inflation is coming down. Employment is at really acceptable levels. He was painting a pretty rosy picture.

JANE HUME: Well, in fact, unemployment is higher than it was than when Labor came to office and inflation data, inflation numbers have increased, the forecasts have increased in this Budget. Again, this is really concerning, because we know that when governments continue to spend more and spend they certainly have here, a record 27% of GDP. That's the most outside of Covid times since the early 1980s. That when governments spend like this, it puts pressure on the Reserve Bank to either not drop interest rates or potentially raise them. If we can't get that inflation dragon tamed again and tamed it in a sustainable way. That's something that this government has failed to do for three years, which is why interest rates have stayed higher for longer under this government and Australians have all paid a price, particularly those with a mortgage. Some families are now paying, will have paid in the last three years, $50,000 in interest repayments, but they will never get back because of the 12 interest rate rises under Labor.

GRAEME GOODINGS: The treasurer has announced tax cuts. Will the Coalition match them?

JANE HUME: No, we have said that these are not genuine tax cuts. These are simply an election bribe. It's a cruel hoax to tell people that they're getting tax cuts, when, in fact, it's only the equivalent of around 70 cents a day and it doesn't kick in for around 15 months. So, $5 a week, it's not even going to buy you a cup of coffee. That's no way to restore our standard of living, that has dropped so far and so fast under Labor.

GRAEME GOODINGS: The government has suggested that the public service, Commonwealth Public Servants will, in fact, grow. You've already announced the fact that you will cut the number of public servants. Does that still hold true?

JANE HUME: Well, in fact, the number of public servants, we thought it had only grown by 36%, only grown, that's a 20% increase. We found out last night it's now 41,000 new public servants have joined the Canberra bureaucracy, and yet our standards of service, of service to the public, has fallen. It now takes 76 days to apply for an age pension. It used to take around 30 under the Coalition. It takes three times as long to apply and get a low income card than it used to under the Coalition and if you go on the parenting and families line, well, you'll wait for an hour on hold, and that's despite the fact that thousands and thousands of new people have joined Services Australia. The size of the Health Department has increased by 40%, but bulk billing has collapsed. The size of the Energy and Environment portfolio has increased by, nearly doubled and yet approval times for environmental approvals has blown out, and emissions are up. So you can see that a bigger public service doesn't necessarily mean a better service to the public and it's costing more than $6 billion a year just for those new public servants. Our concern is that we want to make sure that we can deliver a better public service, not necessarily a bigger public service.

GRAEME GOODINGS: Well, Peter Dutton has said he will cut the public service. How can you ensure that frontline services will be maintained with fewer people?

JANE HUME: We have guaranteed that we will maintain frontline services. That's fundamentally important. But we do think that there is room for manoeuvre within the Canberra bureaucracy. We know that we can do this. There's ways it can be done through natural attrition. It doesn't necessarily all happen at once, but what we want to see is a better standard of service, delivered to Australian taxpayers, because let's not forget that every single dollar that either public servants earn, or spend, is something that some that a taxpayer has earned before. So you're giving up your hard earned taxpayer dollars. We want to make sure you get the services that you deserve.

GRAEME GOODINGS: There's no question it was an election Budget handed down last night. The Budget in Reply, will that be a Budget in Reply aimed at winning the election?

JANE HUME: Well, you will see on Thursday night, Peter Dutton will deliver an alternative to get the Budget back to basics and restore our standard living that's been lost under Labor to get the country back on track. We will make sure that we bring down the price of energy. We'll get more gas into the system, and we'll get the energy mix right to make sure that we bring down energy prices in a sustainable way, not simply band-aid over the problem with continual subsidies baked into the Budget. We'll make sure we bring down the price of housing and get our migration settings under control, and we'll restore, do that by, we'll also restore law and order to our work sites and particularly unlock housing supply. Most importantly, we're going to stand up for a fair go at the checkout. We'll give the ACCC some stronger penalties and ensure that supermarkets do the right thing by both their customers and their suppliers and we have to back small business and boost competition. Because, let's face it, 29,000 businesses have gone out of business under Labor. We cannot, we cannot maintain that level of bankruptcies in this country and expect our country to grow and profit.

GRAEME GOODINGS: Jane Hume, thanks for your time today, Federal Shadow Minister for Finance.