Interview with Steve Cannane, RN Breakfast

17 April 2025

STEVE CANNANE: Well, energy prices, housing, climate change, even trust in Donald Trump are all issues that featured prominently in last night's Leaders Debate on the ABC. There were even moments of self-reflection with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton saying he had made a mistake about attributing comments to the Indonesian President. For more, I'm joined by Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Welcome back to Breakfast.

JANE HUME: Good to be with you this morning.

STEVE CANNANE: Thank you. Peter Dutton admitted last night that he had had made a mistake when he claimed that the Indonesian president had revealed that Russia had made a request to station aircraft at an Indonesian airbase. Should a man who wants to be Prime Minister be more careful with his words when talking about the leader of another country?

JANE HUME: Well, I think he cleared this up pretty well last night. He said he made a mistake and what he should have done is referred to sources from the government rather than from the President himself. But look, to be honest, I think the Australian public expects people to be able to acknowledge when they make a mistake and that's exactly what Peter Dutton has done. We didn't hear that from the Prime Minister. He didn't acknowledge that he made a mistake at the last election when he said that your energy bills were going to be cut by $275. He didn't acknowledge that he made a mistake when he said he didn't even fall off a stage, you know. So I actually think that kind of candour and honesty should be refreshing.

STEVE CANNANE: Has the Coalition in this campaign been so eager to criticise the government and the Prime Minister that you are making key mistakes?

JANE HUME: I think that the government and the Prime Minister should be criticised. Let's face it, Australia's standard of living has gone backwards in the last three years, sharper and faster than any other developed nation and yet the government has taken no responsibility for that. Australians are poorer today than they were three years ago. That's driven so much of the pain in this country over the last three years and yet that doesn't seem to be the issue that Labor will go out on, that Labor will apologise for or have a credible solution to deal with.

STEVE CANNANE: OK, but if I can bring you to comments made by your Coalition frontbench colleague, Bridget McKenzie, yesterday. She suggested on Afternoon Briefing that Russia and China want Labor to win the election and that both countries made statements to that effect. Now, she's had to reverse that because there was no evidence of it. Again, isn't this another example of simply not checking your facts before speaking?

JANE HUME: Well, there's no doubt that the government still does need to explain what it knew of any requests from Russia to have military bases in Indonesia. That is clear. We've asked for an explanation of that from the government.

STEVE CANNANE: But isn't this a bit sloppy to be making statements like this, about what Russia and China want? That's suggesting foreign interference in our election.

JANE HUME: But the alternative, of course, is that it would be a catastrophic failure of the Albanese government if there was a request that was made and the government only became aware about it through media reports. It's a very stark reminder of the government's failures to become aware of the PLA Navy ships that were holding the live fire exercises off our coast, until they were alerted by a Virgin Airlines crew. So I don't think it is unreasonable to ask for information from the government in these very, very uncertain times when the information that's coming through media reports is so confronting and has massive national security implications.

STEVE CANNANE: I want to go to another issue that was brought up in the debate last night, and that was trust in the U.S President Donald Trump. Peter Dutton in the debate would not confirm whether he trusts Donald Trump, saying that he had not met him. Is it concerning that someone who could be our next Prime Minister would not confirm whether he has trust in the leader of Australia's closest security ally?

JANE HUME: Well actually, he said that he did have trust in Australia's closest security ally in the U.S and that we have very deep and long term relationships in the U.S.

STEVE CANNANE (TALKS OVER): But what about the President?

JANE HUME: But the question was whether he and you're asking, you’re saying whether he'd met him, and he hasn't, it's very hard to be able to say that I can look somebody in the eye and know that I trust them if you haven't actually physically met them. I don't think that that's unreasonable. But at the same time, it is reasonable to say that the U.S is a longstanding, trustworthy, abiding partner of Australia, both economically, militarily, and of course we can trust them.

STEVE CANNANE: But given the Opposition Leader has made the point on countless occasions that he believes that he would would have got a better deal on tariffs with President Trump than the Prime Minister did, don't those comments last night undermine those claims about, as if he had some kind of relationship or some kind of inside track on negotiating with President Trump?

JANE HUME: Well, we've proved in the past that we can negotiate with President Trump. We did so at the last round of tariffs where Australia were successfully exempted.

STEVE CANNANE (TALKS OVER): That wasn’t Peter Dutton.

JANE HUME: We believe that we can do so again because of the deep ties and relationships with the U.S, who is our strongest and most important ally.

STEVE CANNANE: Okay, we're talking to Jane Hume, Shadow Finance Minister on Radio National Breakfast, where it's 20 minutes to eight o'clock. We're talking about some of the issues that came up in last night's Leaders Debate. I want to bring you to the issue of climate change. It was unclear from what Peter Dutton said in last night's debate, and I want you to clarify this. Does the Coalition accept that climate change is making the frequency and severity of natural disasters worse?

JANE HUME: Well, I personally believe in climate change. I know that Peter Dutton does. He said that he listens to the scientists. So do I. That's why we have a target for net zero, and that's why we have a credible pathway to get there, which is something that the government simply doesn't have and the discussion around energy last night, I thought was fascinating, because let's face it, the Prime Minister, not only could not say when energy prices would come down. He avoided that topic over and over again, but at the same time, his only solution was more of the same. He promised to do anything different in order to bring energy prices down. That should be, that should sort of alarm bells for Australians that are struggling under the cost of energy, because energy is the economy, unless we can bring those prices down. Well, then where, our destiny is lower levels of prosperity for the next generation and the generation after that. That should be a real concern.

STEVE CANNANE: If the Coalition accepts the science of climate change, does it accept that climate change is making the frequency and severity of natural disasters worse? The likes of floods, cyclones that have been hitting the country.

JANE HUME: Well, if that's what scientists are telling us, then that's what we should believe. The question, though, really is not about what it is, whether cyclones are worse or whatever it is, but what it is you're going to do about it and we've said that we have a credible pathway to net zero, and we should also acknowledge that we need to do more around mitigation. I think that that's fundamentally important. You can't just point to the fire. You have to be able to work out how to put it out.

STEVE CANNANE: Okay, will the Coalition be setting a 2035 target if you win the election?

JANE HUME: Well, we’ve got a 2050 target. We don't think that the government's targets are credible. We want to make sure that we get into government and understand exactly what it is that is capable of doing. That's a very difficult thing to do from opposition, but we do feel that we have a credible pathway to net zero by using a combination of renewables, supported by gas in the short term and in the longer term, as those coal fired power stations retire, replacing them with zero emissions nuclear energy, which is what other countries right around the world have done. They have brought down power prices and reduced their energy emissions.

STEVE CANNANE: I want to bring you to foreign aid. Peter Dutton wouldn't confirm if foreign aid would be spared from the cuts the Coalition might plan to public expenditure. Does the public have a right to assume that everything's on the table, that foreign aid could be cut?

JANE HUME: Well, he did make it very clear that we need to support our, we have regional obligations and that should remain. We've been a very generous donor of foreign aid in the past. We're a very good corporate citizen and that will remain as well. But we do want to understand exactly where the money goes and what it's doing. Is it being effective? Is it actually delivering for those countries that are receiving it? That's not unreasonable.

STEVE CANNANE: Okay, Jane Hume we'll have to leave it there. Thank you for your time this morning. 

JANE HUME: Good to be with you.