Interview with Gabriella Power, AM Agenda on Sky News
16 November 2022
GABRIELLA POWER: Joining us live now is the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume, what's your take on the wage growth numbers? It sounds good, but it's obviously not rising as fast as inflation.
JANE HUME: Well, we always knew Gabby that wages were going to grow, when unemployment is low. When people are employed, there is more pressure on employers to increase their wages, to keep them, to retain them and also to attract them. But what we've seen in the budget is in fact, a forecast that says that real wages, so your wages after inflation, is not going to grow. In fact, it will go backwards over the entire term of this parliament. Now, prior to the election, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers made some very big calls about how Australians would feel a change of government in the hip pocket. Well, they certainly are, but not for the reasons that they voted for unless this government can keep inflation under control. That thief in the night that steals away your purchasing power. Well, I think that Australians are going to feel much poorer rather than much richer, even if their wages go up.
GABRIELLA POWER: And Australians everywhere are feeling the pinch when it comes to cost of living. It's just getting harder and harder. Is enough being done to ease the pressure?
JANE HUME: It this isn't a surprise again, before the election, we were saying that the cost of living was the number one issue and indeed, every survey, every every poll now, says that this is the most important issue to Australians, and yet the budget has done so little to deal with it. And it doesn't matter whether you're feeling it at the checkout or at the petrol bowser or most importantly, when you're paying your mortgage, which of course now for an average mortgage is more than $1,200 a month more than it was at the beginning of the year. All of these pressures are mounting on ordinary Australian families, and it's up to the government to make some calls as to what it's going to do about it. Not things are gonna happen in two years time. Not things that are going to happen in even one year's time, but right now. And the most important thing that they can do is get inflation under control. If you can't tame inflation that cost of living is going to keep on rising and the pressure is going to keep mounting on ordinary Australians. In particular, you have to control your own spending. Because if you don't control your own spending within your own budget, well then the RBA is forced to do all the heavy lifting by raising interest rates putting further pressure on the cost of living for ordinary Australians and for businesses.
GABRIELLA POWER: You mentioned the unemployment rate earlier. The October job numbers will be released tomorrow the unemployment rate is expected to increase to 3.6%. Are you concerned this is going to keep rising?
JANE HUME: Well, when we left Government, we left not just the economy in a very strong position but unemployment rate at record lows, something that we were particularly proud of putting people into jobs and getting people to stay in jobs was one of the key focuses of the previous coalition government. But what the budget says is that 140,000 Australians should expect to lose their jobs. Next year, unemployment is expected to rise. And that's only going to be made worse by these industrial relations changes that Labor have introduced because small businesses simply won't be able to cope with the pressure that those IR laws are going to place on them. It's a productivity killer. It's red tape on businesses. And that's why we're seeing such enormous protests now from the business community about these industrial relations reforms. Because quite frankly, unless we introduce productivity enhancing measures, rather than productivity killing measures the economy simply won't grow to keep up with these changes.
GABRIELLA POWER: Okay. Anthony Albanese has met with China's President Xi Jinping, what was your takeaway from that meeting? What do you expect will come from it?
JANE HUME: Well, we're all hoping for a positive outcome from that meeting. That's that we would very much support and welcome the fact that the Chinese government has decided to reengage with Australian officials. Again, that was something that we sought when we were in government. Obviously, when we're in government, again, some of those very tough decisions had to be made about these like AUKUS, or things like Huawei you know, these were decisions that were made with advice from our security agencies with advice from our strategic defense advisors. You know, these were things that we had to do, and we're very proud of them. We did them in the national interest, but it did cause an issue with our Chinese counterparts. If we could move beyond that now and see outcomes from those meetings with Xi Jinping, particularly in relation to trade and investment changes to those sanctions on barley, on wine, on beef. Well, that would be a good thing. So the meeting is the first step. Now we want to see the outcomes.
GABRIELLA POWER: Medibank will hold its annual general meeting today following the data hack. Do you expect people will be reassessing if they need health insurance at all because of what's happened here?
JANE HUME: I hope not because it's not the problem with the product, it was a problem with the safeguards around the company. Now, I'm sure that we will be unpacking the details of the Medibank hack for, you know, in the months and years ahead. But health insurance is a really important thing for Australians to own it gives them great comfort and great security, particularly at a time of a health crisis in places like Victoria where we you know, our hospitals are full, emergency rooms are overflowing, the ambulances are ramping. We want to make sure that we can get the best health care that we could possibly afford. Health insurance is a really important investment for lots of Australians. So I would desperately hope that this won't make a difference to that decision.
GABRIELLA POWER: What should come from this meeting today, especially for those who have been impacted by the hack?
JANE HUME: I think that people want to feel assured that there is a limit to the amount of data about them that has been leaked and breached. I think they want to feel assured that the company has done everything possible to make sure that that breach didn't occur. And I think that they want to make sure that their government is on their side when it comes to changing their documents, making sure that they've updated their privacy. That you know, security safeguards on their personal documents or personal information. So, cyber crime is one of those things that is going to remain with us. And it's very hard to get ahead of the curve, whether it be for private enterprise, whether it be for government or whether it be for individuals. But there are things that people can do. What I would urge most Australians to do, particularly those that have been affected by this data breach is to continue to check your bank accounts, make sure that there's no unusual transactions there. And if you are approached by any individual that is trying to extort money from you or obtain a ransom in exchange for your personal information reported to the cybersecurity agencies, that's cyber.gov.au immediately don't engage with them individually.
GABRIELLA POWER: Okay, Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume, thanks so much for your time.
JANE HUME: Great to be with you, Gabby.