Interview with Tom Connell, Sky News

TOM CONNELL: Yes, it’s that time, a little bit earlier than normal for Hume and McAllister because Anthony Albanese’s plane was late. He’s thrown all things into chaos, so we’re attempting to get out our panel before we do hear from the Prime Minister. Each week, of course, we have the Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume and Assistant Climate Change and Energy Minister Jenny McAllister facing off and firing up on the big news and political developments. Jane, Jenny, welcome as usual. Before we delve into today’s debate and the part I control, it’s over to you. Sixty seconds each to tee off with your opening opinion. 

Jenny, let’s begin with you. Your government looking for more energy efficiency in our homes. This speaks to me. I can hear the money going out the window in our apartment in Canberra during winter. 

JENNY McALLISTER: That’s right, Tom. Today Building Ministers will be meeting and they’ll have the opportunity to consider a proposal to lift the standard of new housing. There’s 150,000 new homes built each and every year and at the moment they need to be built to a six star rating. This proposal would see them built to seven stars. Now, if it is passed, it will be the first time there’s been any substantial change in a decade. It’s another area where the previous Liberal Government made almost zero progress, and it has real costs. Each and every year, billions of dollars are wasted in energy, money that Australians spend on energy goes out the door through warm air exiting poorly constructed homes or through inefficient airconditioners or just old or badly designed appliances running all year round. This is a real opportunity to shift the dial across thousands of homes that will be built in the coming years. I really look forward to seeing the outcome of today’s discussions.

TOM CONNELL: Maybe there will be some money for retrofitting because it’s not going to help my little apartment in Kingston. I can live in hope. Jane, you’re revved up about superannuation. 

JANE HUME: I am, Tom, because prior to the election, Stephen Jones said that stability and certainty in superannuation was a priority, yet this week, more than the [indistinct] bill, Jim Chalmers made a radical new policy agenda for superannuation. Now, you’ll recall that when the Coalition was in Government, we reduced fees, we improved accountability and transparency and we removed and exited those persistently underperforming funds. We made superannuation work for members. Well, Labor are making superannuation work for Labor because they’ve said that what they want to do is crack open that $3.4 trillion nest egg and use it for nation-building priorities, form improving influence in the region and also for pursuing Labor’s policy objectives, things like housing and energy and climate. He even called it workers’ capital. 

Now, I understand these are all lofty goals but if they’re not financially viable, if they don’t make a good return on investment, well, that’s the reason why super funds aren’t investing in those things already. It’s important to remember that superannuation does not belong to the government. It doesn’t belong to the unions. It doesn’t belong to the superannuation funds themselves. It belongs to you. You earned it. You saved it. And somebody is investing it in trust on your behalf for your retirement. Once again, we’re seeing that Labor, when they run out of money, simply come after yours.

TOM CONNELL: All right. Let’s get into the big topic of the week. Business groups and unions keen to get a seat at the table. The Albanese Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit is less than a week away now. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has announced as well – this was just yesterday – that it wants to see a rethink of enterprise bargaining, including allowing multi employer or sector wide bargaining access to boost wages. Here’s a recap on how the conversation around skills has gone this week: 

MICHELE O’NEIL: What we’re thinking is that within a sector, like, within a smaller group, you’d be able to have an agreement across – so cleaners could say we want to have, you know, minimum pay rates for us that are a bit better. You’re still going to have enterprise bargaining. So, your market leaders, your people out the front like Coles and Woolworths, they’ll still do things like they do now. 

ANTHONY ALBANESE: There is discussion taking place in the lead up to the Jobs and Skills Summit. That’s a good thing. Enterprise bargaining at the moment simply isn’t working. That wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. 

PETER DUTTON: She wants, frankly, a return to an industrial relations system that would cripple families and small businesses in this country. 

MATT KEAN: There are currently 65,000 people, skilled workers, waiting to come into the country that will help alleviate this skills crisis that we’re currently seeing and the only thing standing in the way is the Federal Government’s processing of visas.

TOM CONNELL: Jenny, we might start with you on this; it would be a pretty big change if the unions got this particular change. Do you think it’s something that employers would be possibly forced into, or it would be an opt in basis? 

JENNY McALLISTER: It’s a really interesting conversation, Tom. I mean, the thing leading up to this forum that’s been very interesting to me is how much agreement there is. Employers, workers’ representatives, government representatives and experts all say that there are problems with the enterprise bargaining system and it has real consequences. Wages are flat; productivity is flat. That’s been the case for a decade, and we need to fix it. All sorts of people are putting ideas on the table and that’s the purpose of next week’s summit. I think that we will see a range of proposals brought forward. I think we’re seeing a really promising willingness on behalf of all of the stakeholders to actually listen to one another and engage in dialogue. That’s actually the point of the summit.

TOM CONNELL: So, Jane, I think the interesting thing about this is, I guess, if you’re going to consider a pretty radical solution, is it a radical problem? Do we have something broken in the bargaining system when we have such ultra-low unemployment and it not being the driver of wage increases that it has been in the past? 

JANE HUME: Well, I think this is the great frustration, isn’t it? We really know what the Jobs Summit should be about, which is about worker shortages. That’s the priority of business right now, not re imagining industrial relations with more and more dialogue. In fact, there are solutions that can be implemented immediately to the worker shortage. One month after the election, Peter Dutton announced a doubling of the pension of work bonus. We’ve already introduced that legislation into Parliament. If Labor was sincere about really wanting to address the problems of businesses, which is worker shortages, they could have adopted that legislation immediately and we could have pensioners working in the workforce right now alleviating those job shortages. 

So, look, let’s face it: I think that this Jobs Summit is becoming, like, the wish list of the ACTU; it seems to be expanding on a daily basis. It’s looking to me like nothing more than a talkfest and a photo opportunity and already we’ve seen Jim Chalmers rule in and rule out some of the outcomes. Well, if there’s predetermined outcomes, why do we need the fest in the first place? We haven’t even invited some of the biggest employers in the country in the banks. They employ hundreds of thousands of Australians. They are front and centre of the future of industrial relations and yet they haven’t been invited for a seat at the table. I think this is going to be more show than outcome.

TOM CONNELL: What about immigration as part of this conversation, Jenny, because it was reduced under the Coalition, the permanent migration cap of 160K. Now everyone says it has to go up. Do we need it to go up sizably? How cautious do we need to be in this area? 

JENNY McALLISTER: Migration will definitely be on the agenda at the Jobs and Skills Summit. We need to have a have a conversation about the approach we’re taking. Unfortunately, like so many things under the Liberals, this was not approached in a particularly methodical way nor was it approached in a way that involved all of the stakeholders who’s got an interest in this. We know that many people left the country during the pandemic. It’s one of the reasons that we do have shortages and that businesses are talking about their challenges in obtaining labour and so part of the solution lies in migration. But part of the solution, of course, also lies in reviving the training agenda. This was left to languish under the Liberals, and we know that there are Australians out there who want new skills, who want to work, who are ready to be part of the industries of the future but for the last nine years there’s been no plan to get them there. Part of the Skills Summit – Jobs and Skills Summit is about talking with employers, talking with unions, talking with training organisations about how we are going to generate home grown skills alongside the migration challenge.

TOM CONNELL: Reducing immigration – it was an interesting push at the time, Jane. It seemed to be a bit on the political side as well. There was talk about whether or not it reduced pressure on infrastructure and even bring down house prices. We had this accidental experiment with COVID. We found that it really didn’t do that. Was it a mistake in hindsight to have pressure down on migration numbers? 

JANE HUME: Well, it certainly wasn’t a mistake in hindsight to close the borders throughout COVID. That was probably one of the reasons – 

TOM CONNELL: No, I’m talking pre COVID, sorry, just to clarify. 

JANE HUME: – in the way that we had – yes, I understand, but – and I entirely agree that a well managed migration program has actually underpinned Australia’s prosperity for decades, and now it’s important that we reinvigorate that. What we’re going to see next week, though, is extraordinary tensions between the demands of the unions and also the demands of the government. I will be interested to see how that one plays out. We know that the Government has the capacity and the ability to bring in more migrants immediately and, in fact, the department is ready to go to process. Obviously, there was some changes during COVID. There was reprioritisation getting Australians back into the country, rather than bringing in new migrants. Security checks need to be done and the processes need to take place. But you can flick a switch and say ready to go. It’s only the unions that are holding Labor back on this one.

TOM CONNELL: We’re going to go into Royal Commissions. I’ll just go straight into this because we’re very close to going to Antony Albanese at the Daily Telegraph Bush Summit. Jenny McAllister, a Royal Commission called on Robodebt. I think we get why we know a fair bit about what happened here. And Labor has pledged not to do the same thing. i.e. income averaging on this scale. So, surely a Royal Commission on COVID has to be a priority right now on all things COVID. 

JENNY McALLISTER: Two things on this, Tom. On the Robodebt, we don’t actually know what happened. There was a settlement offered by the Commonwealth. What we do know is that it hurt a lot of people. It made a lot of people extremely unhappy and in some cases very, very ill. And we need to get to the bottom of that to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Of course, at some point we’re going to need to examine our pandemic response and I think the Prime Minister has made it pretty clear that there will be a point where we need to do that. But examining the crisis generated by Robodebt and the poor decision making that led to it is really important. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and we want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

TOM CONNELL: Apologies to you both. We’re having to truncate the program. That’s where we’ll have to leave it because we do have Anthony Albanese standing up. We’ll blame the flog – the fog, I should say. I nearly said something else! Jane and Jenny, we’ll talk again next week at about 11.30.

END