Interview with Peter Stefanovic, First Edition

25 November 2024

PETER STEFANOVIC: Well, on your marks, we are about to enter the final sprint to the finish line in Canberra, with the last sitting week of the year upon us. And in a sign the Prime Minister wants a fight on housing, the Labor Government will reveal today that it won't agree to the Greens compromise to push through the Help to Buy and Build to Rent bills. Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume joins us live from Canberra. Jane, good to see you. Thanks for your time. So I mean, your position on this has been clear all along, but if this is the government's number one priority, how does it go through without any support?

JANE HUME: Well, that's a very good question, Pete. It looks like as we come to the end of the year, this is a government that's run out of ideas and can't get anybody to agree with its legislation. It's run out of money. That's why it's raiding the super fund. And now it's running out of time too. This week in the Senate, I'm sure that there will be an awful lot of game playing, but at the end of the day, the Government has a backlog of legislation that it simply cannot get through. And that's not because there has been unreasonable opposition from either the Coalition or the Greens. It's simply because they haven't prosecuted the case. And that's certainly the case with these housing reforms. The Help to Buy scheme essentially allows people to share their home with Anthony Albanese. Now, who on earth wants to share their house with Anthony Albanese? Sharing your home with the government is not the solution to Australia's housing crisis. Allowing people to get into their own home, own their own home is the way to solve the housing crisis and to increase supply. And the Government has failed to do that, both of those on both of those counts.

PETER STEFANOVIC: So on the Greens push, I mean, I suppose this is a question for the government anyway, to get 25,000 extra social homes, social housing, buildings into the system. I mean, what would be a problem with that? I mean, it wants to cap rents to 25% of a wage. I can see issues there. But what about that first point?

JANE HUME: Well, let's face it, social housing is the responsibility of the states. And the states have failed in their responsibility to build more social housing. The government has thrown so much money after this problem, but they haven't done it with any milestones or conditional payments. They've just simply thrown the money out there. was an additional $2 billion as part of the Housing Australia Future Fund deal that they did with the Greens. Where's that gone? Because we haven't seen any more social housing being built. Now the Greens want even more. But on top of that, they also want changes to negative gearing. They want changes to capital gains tax. We know that they've said it from the start.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Even though they're winding that back now.

JANE HUME: Yeah but the government's gone out and costed it haven't they. We know that the government's gone out and cost of it that's been revealed. So we know that the government is actually considering it in the back of their mind. They want to know how they can do a deal here with the Greens. That would be a disaster. It also bells the cat for what we might see in the case of a hung parliament, which is why we cannot afford to have another term of a Labor-Greens Coalition.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Let's just get to a Future Made in Australia, because Jim Chalmers wants to introduce a bill to provide tax incentives to produce hydrogen and critical minerals. Would you get behind that?

JANE HUME: Well, we've already said that we won't be supporting production tax credits….

PETER STEFANOVIC: Not going to change your mind.

JANE HUME: …for enormous organisations to already do what they are already doing. This is simply throwing money after companies to do what they're already doing. And particularly for green hydrogen, even the, you know, one of Australia's richest people, Andrew Forrest, Twiggy Forrest, has walked away from green hydrogen because it is uncommercial.

PETER STEFANOVIC: True.

JANE HUME: This is throwing good money after bad. There is so much more that we could do in the energy and minerals and resources space that would actually make a difference, and this is not it. The most important thing that the Minerals Council and indeed the resources sector is crying out for is industrial relations reform, because the industrial relations reforms that this Government brought in are making their life more problematic. It's seeing big resources, projects simply move offshore because of decisions that this government has made, and it's anti-productivity agenda.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, do you suspect this will be the last sitting week before the election?

JANE HUME: I do suspect that it will be the last sitting week before the election. The government doesn't seem to enjoy sitting weeks. It makes them very uncomfortable indeed, because with each sitting week, increasingly their failings become clearer and clearer to the Australian public. I think there's going to be an awful lot of ministers and backbenchers from the Labor Government, that will be very much looking forward to a bit of a breather and a break over summer and the Prime Minister too. Perhaps it's a shame he hasn't got his. Maybe he has. Maybe he's settled on that lovely house in Cocoa Cabana already, and he'll have a chance to have a bit of a breather before we launch into an election year.

PETER STEFANOVIC: Alright, fun and games we are ready for it all. Jane Hume, thank you so much. We’ll talk to you again soon.