Interview with Tom Lowrey – ABC Afternoon Briefing

TOM LOWREY, HOST: To discuss all things pre-Budget, I spoke to our political panel for today, Employment Minister Murray Watt and Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume, a short time ago. Murray Watt, thanks for joining me.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: G'day, Tom.

TOM LOWREY: Jane Hume, thanks to you as well.

JANE HUME, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE: Good to be with you, Tom.

TOM LOWREY: Murray, just first to you, something I wanted to off cover quickly. Labor's pulled down a social media post that repurposed a racist slogan on a t-shirt. It said something like, “This is Australia, we eat meat, we drink beer, and we love Medicare”. Did Labor miss the mark on this one?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, and we've already said so publicly. Obviously, that was an inappropriate post to go up. Sometimes, some of our social media enthusiasts get a little bit too enthusiastic, and I think that's an example of that. So, obviously, it missed the mark. I'm glad it's been pulled down.

TOM LOWREY: Just on tomorrow's Budget, it's going to be in the red as, really, as far as the eye can see. How do you sell that to voters?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think voters can see over the last three years, the Albanese Government has delivered responsible economic management, especially in very uncertain global times. Two consecutive surpluses, the first time we've seen that for a couple of decades. Not one surplus delivered under a Coalition government, but two under a Labor government, all while making sure that we were delivering important cost of living relief. So, that's the same sort of approach that we'll take this time, making sure that the economic approach that we take remains responsible while helping Australians as much as we can. The announcements we've already made around energy rebates, cheaper medicines are a sign that we recognise people still need support, and I hope that we receive that support from the Coalition going forward.

TOM LOWREY: Jane, the Treasurer, the Finance Minister, both unwilling to say when the budget will return to surplus. Would the Coalition deliver a surplus in its first term?

JANE HUME: Well, certainly, we won't take the objective of returning to structural balance out of our objectives. There should be a credible pathway back to a structural balance, if only in the medium-term. Now, doing it in the short-term is going to be very hard even for a Coalition government, which will instil back that fiscal discipline back into our budgetary processes. But now there is so much baked-in Labor spending that unwinding that, walking away from that, or growing the economy to beat that is going to take some time. That's really frustrating, but what's more frustrating is the fact that the Labor Government, and indeed Jim Chalmers as Treasurer and Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister, crowed about these windfall surpluses and yet have walked away from the responsibility of a deficit, walked away from a responsibility of deficits as far as the eye can see, and have essentially waved the white flag and said, not our problem, not our responsibility and not our fault either. Now, that's unacceptable. If you can claim a surplus, surely you can claim a deficit, Murray?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think, Tom, unlike Jane and her colleagues, we didn't bother printing coffee mugs that said "Back in the black". We actually delivered back in the black. We did it twice in a row, of course the economic - 

JANE HUME: But now they're red. Where are your red coffee mugs, Murray?

MURRAY WATT: Well, we don't worry about coffee mugs, Jane. We actually just worry about delivering good economic management, which is what we've done. I think the other important thing, Tom, this week is that this is finally an opportunity for Peter Dutton and the Coalition to outline their economic plan. They've had nearly three years to do so. They still haven't done so, and this would be a great week for Jane and her colleagues to outline exactly where those 36,000 job cuts in the public service will actually come from.

JANE HUME: I'm happy to outline our economic plan right now for you, Murray, if you like, because we have a plan to get the economy back on track with a back-to-basics approach. We'll make sure that we rein in that wasteful government expenditure and there's been plenty of it. We have a whole website full of it, www.underlabor.com. You can see that -

MURRAY WATT: But does it say where the job cuts are going to come from, Jane?

JANE HUME: And we'll make sure that we bring inflation back under control in a permanent way, lower, we'll deliver lower energy prices, affordable homes. We'll make sure that we deliver quality health care and that we restore public safety and law and order and most importantly, safer communities.

TOM LOWREY: Just on the public service in particular, the government says it saved $4.7 billion on spending at consultants across this first term. In principle, is it better to employ public servants than consultants? Do you agree with that as a general sort of idea?

JANE HUME: Well, the most important thing is to deliver better public services, and that hasn't happened under this government. In fact, a bigger public service doesn't necessarily mean better public services. We've seen the size of the Health Department increase by around 40 per cent, but bulk billing has collapsed. We've seen almost a doubling of the size of the environment and energy portfolio, and yet approval times have stretched out and emissions have gone up, and we've seen thousands of people added to Services Australia, and yet the wait time to get an age pension has blown out by nearly 50 per cent, five times longer to a low-income card and an hour-long wait on the phone of the parenting and families helpline.

TOM LOWREY: What about, say, Veterans Affairs as one example though? Clearly, more staff there has helped clear that backlog of processing times for veterans waiting for their claims.

JANE HUME: And we've said that we won't be cutting frontline services. We'll make sure that we guarantee the essential services that Australians expect and deserve. But we want to make sure that government services are delivered efficiently. That doesn't necessarily mean that we need more people. And for all the fact that the government has said that they've made cuts to consultants, they've actually added 36,000 new public servants. That's 40 new public servants every single day since they came to office, and that costs around $6 billion more every single year.

TOM LOWREY: So, when you say no frontline services, what are the sort of back-office roles you think the government can do without?

JANE HUME: Well, as we said, we're not going to cut frontline services, but we want to make sure that services that can be delivered are delivered more efficiently.

MURRAY WATT: How are you going to do that? It's all very well to have these sort of global statements about back in the black, back on track, all these sort of general statements, but no one has any detail yet about what you're going to do and where you're going to make the cuts.

JANE HUME: Are you really seriously saying to me, Murray, that you think that this is an efficient delivery of government services as could be achieved?

MURRAY WATT: What I think is that many of the facts that you keep citing are actually incorrect. We've actually checked some of the things you've been saying. As a result of the changes we've made and the conversion of external labour hire to public servants, we've more than halved the time older Australians wait for the age pension, processing times for a low-income card have halved from 31 days to 16 days, and call wait times have fallen from an average of more than 30 minutes in ‘23, ’24, to just over 20 minutes in the last December quarter. -

JANE HUME: Well, that’s not what the department -

MURRAY WATT: So I don't know where you're getting your figures from -

JANE HUME: From the department’s last estimates -

MURRAY WATT: But they are actually the facts. They are actually the facts that show that the investment in public service -

JANE HUME: Murray, the department showed us that data and they did it at the last estimate -

MURRAY WATT: They are the facts -

JANE HUME: So, if they've changed in their estimates, only a few weeks later, I look forward to seeing it -

MURRAY WATT: And that shows that the investment in converting consultants and external labour hire, which cost taxpayers more to provide public service.

JANE HUME: It doesn’t.

MURRAY WATT: Labour hire costs the taxpayer more than employing people directly
-
JANE HUME: $6 billion a year to employ them directly -

MURRAY WATT: Because labour hire firms take a profit out of that, and costs more.

TOM LOWREY: Just in principle though, right, is a bigger public service always better? We have seen, you know, tens of thousands of new jobs out of the public service. Does Jane have a point that, you know, the way government works hasn't dramatically improved?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I would argue, and these facts show, that the provision of services to the Australian people has improved as a result of the investments that Labor has made in the public service.

TOM LOWREY: So, is the APS the right size now?

MURRAY WATT: We think it's about the right size now. We think it was not adequately funded before, and the way the Coalition used to get around that was by outsourcing work to expensive consultants and labour hire firms that didn't meet the service standards people are now receiving. You've mentioned Veterans Affairs. There was a backlog of 42,000 claims from veterans when we came to office. That's been cleared as a result of the investments Labor's made in the public service and converting labour hire to permanent public servants. So, it’s up to the Coalition to say where are they going to cut these jobs -

JANE HUME: But if it's a backlog that you’re clearing, why do you need permanent staff now? -

MURRAY WATT: But where are you going to cut the 36,000 jobs?

JANE HUME: But this is what I'm interested in. If it's a backlog and you're clearing it, why do they need to be permanent staff? Wouldn't they be better off used somewhere else in Services Australia? -

MURRAY WATT: So, we should now sack them, or we should now make them external labour hire again?

JANE HUME: Well no, I'm interested to know if you think that there are other backlogs, don't you think that it would be better to use them elsewhere? Are you using the resources of government as efficiently as possible?

MURRAY WATT: I'm pretty staggered that you think that, having finally cleared the backlog of veterans claims, that we can go back to outsourcing rather than keeping people there and keeping that backlog at zero.

JANE HUME: If the backlog, if there were there to address a backlog and that's been done, what are all those staff doing now?

TOM LOWREY: So, Jane’s point, “is there room for external consultants?” I think is the question here.

MURRAY WATT: Of course, from time to time, the public service is going to need to bring in external skills, specialist skills that are available in the private sector. But it shouldn't be a default mechanism, which is what it got to under the Coalition. They had a public service cap and the way they got around that was by outsourcing policy work and the provision of services to the private sector, which charged more, which cost taxpayers more. And as I say, what we're still waiting for from Jane and her colleagues, is to find out where are these 36,000 job cuts going to be made, what agencies, which public servants will go? People deserve to know that before they vote.

TOM LOWREY: Murray, can I just quickly ask you, we're on the eve of the election campaign, obviously. I just want to quiz you on two things that the government said in the past few days. One was putting out figures arguing workers would be $5,000 a week worse off if they lost work-from-home benefits. That's not Coalition policy. It doesn't apply to the private sector. Also, on the PBS, you've raised the possibility that, you know, Peter Dutton might trade the PBS or trade off on the PBS somewhat with Donald Trump, which, again, the Coalition has said it's not going to do. Is Labor going to rely on scare campaign tactics to try and win this election?

MURRAY WATT: No, no. To start with, the work-from-home policy and, I don't know, today's Monday, I don't know what the policy from the Coalition on work from home is because it changes every day.

TOM LOWREY: It's not currently -

MURRAY WATT: But you might remember where this started was Peter Dutton saying that he was going to stop work from home in the public sector. We've not said that it applies to the private sector -

JANE HUME: No, we didn't. That's a lie, that’s a Labor lie, Murray. -

MURRAY WATT: But there’s legitimate concerns from women in the private sector that this might spread further. The point about transport costs -

JANE HUME: That's absolute nonsense and that is a Labor lie.

MURRAY WATT: The point about transport costs is about costing the average travel time and transport costs of people who commute to work in the CBD, their parking costs, their petrol costs and things like that. It stands to reason that people who work from home who were under a Dutton government would have to come to the city or come to their office to work every day. They're going to incur further costs -

JANE HUME: Except they won't because you're lying about it, Murray. This is simply a scare campaign -

MURRAY WATT: But you don't know what your policy is. Every day, the work from home policy changes -

JANE HUME: Would you like me to explain it to you again?

MURRAY WATT: Well, what's today's version? It'll be different to yesterday’s. Two weeks ago, Michaelia Cash said publicly that you wanted public servants in the office five days a week. What's changed since Michaelia Cash made those comments?

JANE HUME: So, flexible work will always remain, and this is not a policy that affects the private sector. The private sector can do what it wants to to create productivity. But at the moment, we have an arrangement whereby arranged between the CPSU, the Community and Public Sector Union, the Service Union and the Finance Minister, where embedded into the agreement between the public servants and the government is the right to demand to work from home full time. Now, prior to Covid, about 22 per cent of public servants worked from home. During COVID, that moved up to around 50, 55 per cent. And that was not dissimilar to the private sector, but it's now at 61 per cent. And we're hearing from stakeholders that they do things like fly to Canberra with their team to present to people in a department, walk into a meeting room and they meet with the public servants on video link or by phone. Now, that's kind of crazy. We had one example where one public servant came to us and said that a team member that worked with them was difficult to get hold of because they were working from home full time. In fact, they were travelling around Australia in a caravan with their family. If this is being abused -

TOM LOWREY: Just to nail this down, this is changing the EBA is what you want to do?

JANE HUME: Well, the EBAs remain, of course, existing arrangements remain, and will be entirely honoured. But this is about embedding a culture within the public service to make them understand that every dollar that they spend and every dollar that they earn is about, is taxpayer money. It's money that somebody else has given up asking them to serve them.

TOM LOWREY: So, what's the thing that the Coalition would do to try and get public servants back in the office more often?

JANE HUME: We want to have a default position, whereby if you accept a job with the public service, it's on the understanding that you work in the office. Now, flexible arrangements will always be allowed, always. But it has to work for the individual and the team and the department. That's the only way that we're going to create an effective and an efficient public service.

MURRAY WATT: So, Michaelia Cash was wrong when she said two weeks ago that the expectation is that people will be in the office five days a week. That's not the position?

JANE HUME: So, the default position is that when you accept a job with the public service, that it will be from the office, but you can arrange to have flexible work, but it has to work for everybody. It can't just work for you, and you can't demand it.

TOM LOWREY: All right, I have so many more questions. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Murray Watt, thanks for joining us.

MURRAY WATT: Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Jane.

TOM LOWREY: Jane, thanks again.

JANE HUME: Thanks, Murray. Thanks Tom.