Interview with Peter Stefanovic, First Edition

20 January 2025

PETER STEFANOVIC: Joining us live now Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Jane, good to see you. Better news for Peter Dutton though he's drawn level as preferred PM for the first time. This is according to the AFR. Why do you think so?

JANE HUME: It's good to see you too. Pete, welcome back. I know I didn't get quite the welcome that Tom Piotrowski did, but that's okay. I’d understand why, and that's because I seem to say the same thing to you on a regular basis, that the most important poll to the Coalition is the one on election day. And we won't be commenting on that. Suffice to say that clearly, this next election is going to be about Australia's future. It's going to be about whether we can afford three more years of Labor, whether we can lower inflation, deliver a stronger economy, quality health care, affordable homes, cheaper energy and safer communities. And clearly, the electorate is beginning to speak up. They know that the election is coming, and they're beginning to switch back on to what it is that our leaders are saying, and the message that Peter Dutton is telling them is resonating, and that's because they've had three years of pain under Labor.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Well, we must, we must be getting close to the election now, because, I mean, we've got announcements and policies that are coming thick and fast. Now, you had one yesterday, $30,000 help for small businesses. Given that thousands of businesses have already folded in the past year, and that's no fault of yours, but help with a free lunch or tax breaks for lunches. How many of those businesses do you think that'll save?

JANE HUME: Well, small businesses, we know, are doing it tough, and particularly, we're seeing highlights of insolvencies in their businesses about three times the average of insolvencies under this Labor Government. This announcement yesterday is a $20,000 tax deduction for small businesses who want to take their employees or their staff or their or their clients out to lunch, back into cafes, back into restaurants and pubs. So this helps not just the small businesses, but it also helps that hospitality industry. Who have really been at the front line of the cost of doing business crisis and the changes that we've seen in consumer behavior because of rising prices, rising inflation and cost of living.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Would attention not be better placed elsewhere, to help those businesses, though?

JANE HUME: Well, this is practical help. This is going to help those employees and employers of those small businesses, bringing people back into the office and then rewarding those employees when you know, when somebody has a baby or retires, or the end of the financial year, bringing those employees out to those hospitality businesses, helping the hospitality businesses as well that have seen such a drop off in their business and a change in the way that people are…

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, but that's for bosses, it seems. But what about on the ground? What about staff? How does that help them afford groceries?

JANE HUME: No, it's well, that's for employees too. It allows those businesses to reward their employees. It makes the workplace a better place, too, but most importantly, it's there for those hospitality businesses, the ones that have been talking about laying off staff. You know, they're the ones that have been at the front line of Labor's changes to industrial relations laws. They're the ones that are really struggling with those rising prices from energies, from rents, from insurances, but their margins are being squeezed. It's the small business owner that is being squeezed here. So this is practical assistance for them. It's very limited. It's only $20,000 tax deductibility a year, but we think it will make a practical difference to both the small businesses and to the hospitality sector that have been crying out for help from this government, but have yet to have any assistance whatsoever.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Is it 20 or 30?

JANE HUME: It's 20.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, my mistake. I had 30. Anyway, Jim Chalmers, his super tax plan is in trouble for the accounts above $3 million. The concern from crossbenches is from taxing unrealised gains. I've had many questions over this one. Jane, the main lingering one is, how can you tax something that hasn't happened yet? It seems as though a lot of people, particularly the crossbenchers, aren't buying it.

JANE HUME: This is a very good question. Pete, this is a policy that should have been doomed from the start to begin with. It was a broken promise. Labor said going into the last election that there would be no changes to tax, no changes to superannuation. Yet, this was the first policy that they announced. It's a tax on unrealised capital gains. It would be the first time that your profits have been taxed before you actually made any profits. It's a brand new kind of tax, one we haven't seen in Australia before, one that hasn't worked in any other jurisdiction, and it's not indexed. So if you're a young person starting work today, and you earn the average wage throughout your life by the time you retire, this tax will affect you. This was a terrible idea, from go to woe. The Coalition have said that not only would we vote against it, but should it pass and we get into government, then we will repeal this terrible Labor tax. This terrible broken promise. Labor are completely discredited, whenever they now promise that there will be no changes to taxation, no change to superannuation, or $275 reduction in your energy bills. You know that they are lying. So what is it that they're going to be lying about in the lead up to this next election.

PETER STEFANOVIC: You know the Democrats tried this on at the last US election, taxing unrealised gains. Didn't work so well.

JANE HUME: How’d that work out for them?

PETER STEFANOVIC: Yeah, not so well. Okay, good to see you, Jane, thank you. We'll talk to you soon.