Interview with Tom Connell, Sky News

TOM CONNELL: Welcome back to another edition of “Hume and McAllister”. Each week Shadow Finance Minister and Assistant Climate Change and Energy Minister Jenny McAllister face off and fire up on the big news and developments. Jane and Jenny, welcome again. Jenny, you’re here in Canberra for the Jobs Summit. Jane, the Opposition is calling this a “talkfest”. So, you’re in Melbourne, not attending this particular summit, so I’ll just leave it at that. Let’s get into your competing priorities in a moment with your opening opinions, first of all. Jane, apart from of course, you know, “talkfest”, what has you fired up this week?

JANE HUME: Actually, this week, Tom, I’m sparing a thought for the little guy because this week at this “talkfest” while big government’s talking to big unions and big business, Australia’s 2.4 million small businesses are still doing it tough. It not just about worker shortages, energy prices are skyrocketing, the cost of supplies and inputs is going through the roof, and this week we’ll also see repayments to loans increase as those interest rate rises begin to kick-in in the form of repayments.

Now, I think Phil Coorey in his own special way nailed it this week. He called the Jobs Summit a “two‑day episode of The Drum” – “a two‑day episode of The Drum” that was essentially window‑dressing for decisions that were already made. If Labor was serious about supporting small businesses, then they would reiterate their commitment to that $275 fall in energy prices. They would have supported the Coalition’s commitment to halve the pensioners – sorry, to double the pensioner work bonuses to get older Australians back into the workforce. And they would be talking fiscal rectitude and responsibility so that the RBA didn’t feel compelled to do all the heavy lifting to combat inflation. In this two‑day workfest (sic), you’ve got to spare a thought for the little guy because in this incredible circus that we’ve seen in the last few days all small business got was peanuts.

TOM CONNELL: Shout‑out to Phil Coorey; friend of the program. Jenny, it was called a “workfest” at the end there. I’m not sure if that was a slip of the tongue, Jane, but Jenny, what’s been on your mind this week?

JENNY McALLISTER: Well, Tom, next week the climate change bill will come to the Senate, and it’s no accident that there has been a real focus on this bill in the Government’s first 100 days. Our climate change bill is a really important signal to Australia and to the rest of the world that we are finally making serious efforts to get involved in the transition to a low‑carbon economy. The hardest work still lies ahead and we are entering a new phase. We are no longer talking about whether we decarbonise, but we are talking about how. The Jobs and Skills Summit has been an important opportunity where there has been enormous excitement in the room about the opportunities that this presents for business, for workers and for communities. We know that there is a real prize ahead of us if we can grasp it. It will take effort. It will take clear policy setting from government and it will take collaboration. But we are up for it, and the legislation coming into the Senate next week is a very important signal in that regard.

TOM CONNELL: All right. There you go. Jenny McAllister on Budget as well in her one minute. Let’s get into what has been happening at the summit this week. Yesterday’s discussions included the need to simplify wage bargaining, including improvement to the so-called BOOT or the “better off overall test”. It was first introduced under the Rudd Government.

[excerpt]

TOM CONNELL: All right. So that’s how it’s played out. There seems to be a bit of an agreement on the better off overall test that it’s too inflexible, so we’ll see what detail drops out there. But I might get your reaction, first of all, Jenny, in fact to what we just heard from Stephen Jones, that industrial action is important, including the right to strike. So, are we going to see the right to strike as part of multi‑employer bargaining? Is that what Labor is advocating here?

JENNY McALLISTER: Look, we do need to make changes to the industrial relations system and that’s been agreed over the last couple of days between employers and between unions. The real challenge is to get wages moving and to improve productivity, and bargaining offers that possibility but over the last decade the rates of bargaining or the coverage of bargains has been falling. Multi‑employer bargaining offers the opportunity to get wages moving again in some of those really important sectors, including in feminised industries. Strikes are relatively rare in Australia and that’s unlikely to change under any proposals of the Government.

TOM CONNELL: When you say “unlikely to change”, though, are we talking about is there going to be a greater right to strike as part of this change. What’s your view on that?

JENNY McALLISTER: Look, we’ll see how the negotiations progress. What’s been achieved in the last couple of days is an in‑principle agreement for reform to do a number of things. You heard Minister Burke talking about them just there. Simplifying the better off overall test and also removing impediments to agreement‑making, including single enterprises and multi‑enterprises. We’ll see what the detail looks like as those parties come together and have those conversations in the coming weeks.
 
TOM CONNELL: Jane, what do you make of multi‑employer bargaining in particular?

JANE HUME: Well, I think Jenny nailed it in her last sentence. The devil is certainly in the detail, and we’ll wait to see what unfolds with that detail. But my concern, I suppose, with multi‑employer bargaining is that it is essentially a reversion potentially back to the 1970s form of pattern bargaining, which led to so many strikes and often the opportunity for sympathy strikes as well within industries and across industries. That would be so detrimental to businesses large and small. It would see delays. It would see costs go up for, not just businesses but then passed on to consumers as well. So, we don’t want to see a reversion back to the dark old days of industrial relations. We want to see industrial relations moved into the twenty‑first century.

TOM CONNELL: In terms of bargaining, though, if you don’t have that ultimate option of striking, isn’t it all just an empty negotiation. Doesn’t a worker need to be able to take something to the nth degree otherwise the impasse remains forever, and you stay on the award? 

JANE HUME: Well, there’s always been an opportunity to strike in this country, but the idea that you’d go out in sympathy for other sectors can be disastrous. It would actually bring the country to a standstill. We don’t want to see a reversion to that 1970s-style of industrial relations. We want to make sure that we are setting up our industrial relations system for a productive economy for the future.

JENNY McALLISTER: This is an unfortunate scare campaign. I think we’ve seen a really mature conversation between employers and between unions over the last couple of weeks and over the last couple of days. There are people, the Opposition, of course, when they were last in government, included low wages as a deliberate design feature of their economic management. That’s not our approach. We’d like to see some changes and I don’t think scare campaigns are particularly helpful at a time when the other parties are being very constructive.

TOM CONNELL: Just on this, Jane, the employer groups –

JANE HUME: You can understand caution though, Jenny, you can understand caution when there’s no detail at all. So, it’s not a scare campaign. We want to know what it is you’re proposing, rather than just having a photo opportunity and a bunch of hand shaking.

TOM CONNELL: I guess the other thing to know, though, is to know if Labor have any red lines. As I said, for large and small employer groups, yes, they’re in the conversation and they want to talk about the BOOT and they want to talk about how some other bargaining might work. But they say if one group of workers can strike in sympathy or try and get conditions for another group of workers that would take the country backwards. Do you agree with that or is that an area Labor could go into, Jenny?

JENNY McALLISTER: Look the principles that have been agreed between the employers and the unions are that we should have a look at removing the impediments to bargaining and agreement-making, whether that’s single enterprises or multi‑enterprises. Some of the contributions to the summit over the last couple of days have emphasised the changing nature of workplaces in the last couple of decades that has seen more and more workers working in relatively small workplaces. It’s holding back wages, we know, in some of the feminised sectors, and there was real agreement at the summit that we need to get wages moving again, particularly for women and low‑paid workers.

TOM CONNELL: We might need to wait to see the detail. I am sure we’ll be thrashing that out on the panel as well when we get it. Let me finish on it. Do we get short sharp agreement not on the solution to it, but is the BOOT broken? You first on that, Jane?

JANE HUME: Well, we actually proposed – the Coalition proposed very modest changes to the BOOT in the last Parliament, which were rejected by Labor. Of course, now we’ve seen a movement in the right direction. We know that we want the BOOT to change to make it more flexible for businesses, but at the same time we want to make sure it’s increasing employment and employment opportunities and increasing productivity and that’s the priority.

TOM CONNELL: Okay. Jenny, are Labor’s changes to the BOOT going to be exactly the same as the ones you opposed 18 months ago?

JENNY McALLISTER: Simple, flexible and fair – they’re the principles we’d like to see embodied in any changes. There’ll be discussion between the parties about what’s possible. I think what we want to do is make sure there aren’t unreasonable levels of red tape around this that are hindering agreement making and hindering the opportunity to increase productivity in workplaces and get wages moving.

TOM CONNELL: Labor could have gone down this path though albeit in Opposition 18 months ago. 

JENNY McALLISTER: One of the real differences is the consultative approach we are taking to this process. We are bringing people together. That certainly was not the approach taken –

TOM CONNELL: They were doing the same thing, weren’t they?

JENNY McALLISTER: The previous government –

JANE HUME: We just did it without a “talkfest”.

JENNY McALLISTER: I just disagree with this, Jane --

JANE HUME: Well not the cameras, no, we were just getting on with the job.

JENNY McALLISTER: Jane, I think the decision by the Opposition to stay out of the room is really telling. I mean, if you want to be out of a conversation, that’s up to you. But it was a room that included employers. It included community representatives. It included the National Party. It included the crossbench. If you want to isolate yourself from that conversation –

JANE HUME: Jenny, if you name me one single decision that came out of the last two days that you hadn’t planned in advance, knock yourself out. But I don’t think you did. I reckon it was all a show trial. It was all a showcase for decisions that were already made.

TOM CONNELL: We’ll have to leave it there. I thought we might get some agreement. Maybe we kind of did. I’ll say it was a shame you didn’t come, Jane, because we could have had you here in the studio, without wading into picking a side there. It would have been great, but one day. We’re going to take a break, when we come back, skilled migration. A boost to that has been announced at this summit. We’ll debate that next with our panel, including are we looking at another Big Australia?

[Ad break.] 

TOM CONNELL: Welcome back. Well, restoring migration after two years of closed borders has been a key part of talks about how Australia resolves critical labour shortages. Home Affairs Minister earlier today announced migration would be boosted this year by 35,000 places up to 195,000 per year. This is how it’s played out at the summit.

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TOM CONNELL: So, it’s a one‑year boost for now. Jenny, we lost so many potential skilled migrants during COVID, so does this need to be something that’s in place for a few years, give a lot of people certainty to get those numbers back up?

JENNY McALLISTER: I think the observation is that the entire migration framework has been in drift for the last period of government, and we’re interested in what we can do to make migration work against our strategic priorities once again. Increasing the permanent migration rates for the next year is an important part of that. We know that there are many people who left during the pandemic and we want some of those workers to come back. But we actually need to deal with the longer term settings as well. I think one of the things you heard a lot about in the last couple of days is the shift to permanency. We don’t want to be a country that has a kind of second tier of residents living in our country with fewer rights than other citizens. Permanent migration offers opportunities to build the economy and build the sense of the community here and that’s why you’ve seen such a focus on that in the announcements today.

TOM CONNELL: It can be a bit of a political hot potato of course, migration, Jane, so where’s the Opposition going to land on what you’ve heard so far on this?

JANE HUME: The Coalition has always felt that a very well‑managed and maintained immigration policy is fundamental to underpinning Australia’s growth and prosperity, as it has been for decades. So, we welcome this announcement, but we want to see what it means. I’m interested in the modelling behind the number, where that one came from, and I think that we’ll probably tease that out at estimates. But, again, this is something that could have been done 100 days ago when the Government was first elected. It shouldn’t really come as an enormous surprise. Plus, I think that focus on only permanent migrants is something that we should dig a little bit deeper into. Temporary migrants serve a very important purpose in the economy for those small businesses, hospitality workers, whether it be backpackers, students. Temporary visas serve a purpose, and I don’t think that we should just throw them out because we would like more permanent migration as well. So, there’s a fair bit more to be teased out of this debate and we know that it’s going to be an issue that drives a bit of a wedge between the unions and the Government because they would rather like to see a much smaller Australia, rather than a bigger Australia.

TOM CONNELL: So, the other thing we did learn over the past a couple of days of the talkfest, Jane, was that there was apparently a backlog of a million visas to be processed when Labor came into power. That seems like a pretty dire failing, because business groups I’m talking to are saying people are turning down jobs in Australia because they’re told wait six or nine months to get your visa done.

JANE HUME: Yes. There were lots of reasons why people were turning down jobs in Australia and one of them was because we were in such draconian lockdowns. It wasn’t really particularly attractive to come here. We did have a pandemic for two years, which did put a significant dent in our migration program and in our visa processing. There is no doubt about that. Our priority, of course, was to repatriate Australians away from countries – they wanted to come home. But now we need to make sure that we address that backlog appropriately and re‑prioritise this stuff. I know there were some announcements about this.

TOM CONNELL: That could’ve been done earlier. This is the final step in the process, a bit of rubber-stamping.

JANE HUME: I think we all have short memories.

TOM CONNELL: You don’t think that is a big backlog?

JANE HUME: It wasn’t that long ago since the last lockdowns, Tom. It really wasn’t that long ago, so, yes, it’s a big backlog, of course. We want more people to come to Australia. We want more skilled migrants to come to Australia, but we also want to make sure that we are set up in a way that we can accommodate those migrants. For instance, I know that there was an announcement that there would be more migrants to the regions. That’s terrific, except for the fact that we have a housing shortage in the regions. So, where are we going to put these migrants? We’re already having a rental crisis. What’s going to happen to rents when all of these migrants come in. So, it’s really important that this program is well managed on the way through. It can’t just be a number. It can’t just be a projection. We’ve got to see how it’s actually administered and how many of those numbers actually come through and join the workforce.

TOM CONNELL: Which seems to be the next big conversation that will lead into the Budget. We’re nearly out of time. I haven’t managed time well, so rather than getting a right for reply on that, Jenny, I’m going to end; my job, you know, is to try to humanise both politicians and journalists. People don’t trust either of us if you believe surveys. We are talking the jobs summit. What about first jobs? Jenny, beginning with you?

JENNY McALLISTER: Well, I can’t remember my exact first job, but one of my very first jobs when I was about 15 was to work at Avocado Land. So, I got to work in a premises that had a big avocado. I was very big on the ice‑cream machine, but my enduring kind of legacy is that at this business we pretty much played the Eagles Greatest Hits unceasingly on high repetition every weekend and I’m really only just coming back to the Eagles as I am approaching 50.

TOM CONNELL: That sounds like Guantanamo Bay sort of stuff to me!

JANE HUME: That’s great. That means we can sing Hotel California and set off the nervous twitch.

TOM CONNELL: Jane, what are you thinking back to?

JANE HUME: My first job I spent three years in my first job. Every Sunday I worked as a short-order chef and takeaway person at a very dodgy Mexican restaurant. I had to greet the customers with, “Buenos noches, signore. What can I get you?”, which I did with about that much enthusiasm. I had to wear a green bandana and a green white-striped shirt. I was eventually fired from that first job because it was really hot in the kitchen. I put my mouth directly under the ice‑cream dispenser and I got caught by the boss and found myself out on the street.

TOM CONNELL: How about the revelations we’re getting today and that you actually thought guzzling ice‑cream would cool you down? So, there you go, Mexican night at the Humes’ must be a cracker. I will admit to working at Hungry Jack’s. Similar to your sort of level, Jane; it wasn’t a very easy job. I just got so hungry. My approach eventually to the fries area got noticed to sort of fill up in between lunch and they told me not to come back on the Monday. So, you know, it was an experience, wasn’t it? What doesn’t kill you, I think. Jane, Jenny, we’ll talk next week. Thank you.

END