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Jane Hume: ‘Well I personally believe in climate change’
Another sticking point of last night’s debate was climate change and Peter Dutton declining to say that the impacts of climate change are getting worse. When asked last night whether the impacts of climate change were getting worse, Dutton said: “I’ll let scientists pass that judgment.”
I don’t know because I’m not a scientist and I can’t tell you whether the temperature has risen in Thargomindah [Queensland] because of climate change or the water levels are up.
Hume was asked on RN Breakfast what the deal was with climate change and the Coalition, and said she personally believes in climate change.
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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 critical pathway to get there.
Cannane asks whether the Coalition accepts that climate change is making natural disasters worse. Hume says:
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 is you’re going to do about it?
Key events
Jason Clare has continued his morning rounds, joining Sky News, and he’s pushed again on energy prices – where he still backs renewable energy as the cheapest form of energy and rails against nuclear.
As the education minister, he’s also asked about the fair work commission recommending pay rises of up to 30% for hundreds of thousands of early childhood workers and health professionals.
He’s asked whether the government would absorb that cost or will childcare costs go up more for families?
What that decision said yesterday was that for childcare workers, that their salary should be increased by anywhere from nine to 27 per cent over the next five years, and the first tranche of that should be 5% I think, starting on the first of August. So they’ve put that advice out. They haven’t made their final decision yet, but if they were to do that, increase the award by 5% that would be absorbed within that 15% that we’ve already announced.
A future government will need to look at this over the next couple of years. It’s [a pay rise] between 9% and 27% over five years.
Education minister says general funding for students will help high school completion rates for First Nations kids
Clare was also pushed by host Bridget Brennan on what rate of school completion the government would like to see by First Nations students. She says just over two thirds of First Nations’ students are finishing year 12 right now.
The first thing Clare says is “we’re not getting ahead of ourselves”. He doesn’t set a target and says the government’s reforms and school agreements with the states and territories that were finalised earlier this year will help. The focus, he says, is on helping “kids who fall behind to catch up and keep up”:
When I became the minister for education, the funding for students in schools in the Northern Territory was abysmal, effectively one in five students weren’t being funded at all … investment targeted in the right way, we think, will help to increase the number of young people finishing high school, both Indigenous and non-indigenous.
Clare on Coalition attacks on low fee-free Tafe completions: ‘courses take more than a year to go’
Jason Clare also jumped on ABC News Breakfast earlier, and responded to the Coalition’s plan to establish 12 new technical colleges.
Clare won’t reveal whether he supports the policy, but says more young people need to finish school and then be able to go to Tafe or university, and blames the Coalition for cutting funding out of schools during their last terms of government.
What we need to do is not just build one or two technical colleges in a state – there’s kids in every single high school that want to get the skills they need to get a trade and that means that we need to provide them with that support in every high school and help them to get the skills they need through these fee-free courses at Tafe.
The Liberals’ record is rip money out of schools and now they want to rip money out of Tafe that shows they have got no credibility when it comes to education.
Asked about the criticisms the Liberals have made – that the completion rates of the free Tafe courses are low – Clare says students are still doing those courses, so many can’t have been completed yet.
This is the great line that the Liberal party is peddling that people aren’t completing the courses. Courses take more than a year to do.
Coalition announces $260m for technical colleges and attacks fee-free Tafe
This morning, the Coalition has announced it will open up new tech colleges, to get students from years 10 to 12 learning trades like construction and engineering away from university or Tafe.
Earlier on ABC News Breakfast, Sussan Ley, who also holds the shadow portfolio for skills and training, said the Coalition will invest $260m to establish 12 new technical colleges.
The colleges will be partnerships between the government and not-for-profit organisations, including independent schools and industry, and Ley says they’ll work “inside the school system”:
I don’t want to see kids getting in a bus and going to Tafe on Thursday afternoon and struggling to do something called VET in schools. I want to see schools that deliver this in a first class way.
The opposition has said it believes fee-free Tafe places aren’t working and had voted against legislation to create more permanent free places last year.
Ley is asked whether she’s “underselling” Tafe, when Tafe teaches different skills. She says the policy “sits alongside” Tafe:
This policy sits alongside Tafe. This is a policy inside schools. But sometimes, we’re pushing our school kids out of the school setting to attend a Tafe course, often some suburbs away… You don’t want to make someone, a student at school, feel that they have to be pushed into university.
Pocock ‘appalled but not surprised’ by Reuters gambling report
Staying on the Reuters gambling report, independent ACT senator David Pocock told RN Breakfast:
[I’m] appalled but but not surprised. I think the lack of action on gambling advertising was one of the biggest tragedies of the 47th parliament, there was support, strong support through the crossbench to legislate a phased in complete ban on down the advertising in line with what the Murphy review recommended … They betrayed Australians and bowed to vested interests and just kicked this can down the road.
The Murphy report made 32 recommendations, but banning online gambling is only a small part of the series of reforms her committee had called for.
Asked about Jason Clare’s comments about accepting and declaring any complementary tickets to sporting matches, Pocock says a politician can’t just say “nothing to see here” just because there’s been a disclosure:
We should be holding ourselves to higher standard as as politicians, and just because you say, well, we disclosed it, so nothing to see here, I think we need to ensure that … perceived or real conflicts of interest are avoided, not just disclosed.
Jason Clare says match ticket gifting not necessarily inappropriate so long as disclosures are made
Onto the stickier issue of gambling – an issue that remains a thorn in Labor’s side – Clare is challenged on a report from Reuters finding Australian politicians were gifted almost a quarter of a million dollars in sporting match tickets over two years while the government was considering reforms on online gambling.
Is it inappropriate? Clare says not necessarily.
What’s inappropriate is if you take the ticket and don’t declare it. Key here, as it is with all of these things, is that you declare it’s got to be transparent…
If someone provides a politician with a free ticket to the footy, then there’s an obligation on the politician to declare it so it’s not covered up.
Clare says the government has implemented “serious reform”. But Labor still hasn’t responded to a report chaired by the late Labor senator Peta Murphy that was tabled in June 2023. Clare says:
When it comes to that Murphy report, it’s not right to say that we’ve ignored it or rejected we’re continuing to look at it taking longer than right. It’s taking longer than expected, but it’s important to important to get it right and that’s what we intend.
Jason Clare refuses to put number value on potential energy bill savings
Following Jane Hume in the RN Breakfast studio was Labor’s campaign spokesperson, Jason Clare.
The first question goes to energy bills and Anthony Albanese’s reluctance to put a figure on how much they would be reduced under another Labor term. Jason Clare won’t promise anything either:
What I’ll tell you is that energy bills will be lower under Labor than they will be under Peter Dutton and the liberals. And the simple reason for that is building $600bn worth of nuclear reactors costs. It’ll increase the power bills of every Australian by up to 1,000 bucks.
Clare also weighs in on Dutton’s apology over his comments on Indonesia and Russia earlier this week. Clare says Dutton “effectively lied”.
He [Dutton] effectively lied about what the president of Indonesia said, or, in fact, did not say…
It’s not the first time he’s had to apologise. He had to apologise for telling people that they couldn’t work from home a couple of weeks ago, this guy is apologising more than a learner driver in a car park at the moment, and that’s not the sort of person that you want as Prime minister of Australia.
Bridget McKenzie misidentifies which Chinese leader called Albanese a ‘handsome boy’
Bridget McKenzie, who’s had to defend herself this morning after comments she made to the ABC yesterday, has appeared to make another foreign policy blunder this morning.
On the Today show, McKenzie was asked by fellow panelist Paul Sakkal whether her comments meant, “broadly that our adversaries are more keen on having a Labor government? Because, in your view, they’re weaker?”
McKenzie replied:
Well, I think it’s pretty clear from President Xi’s public commentary that he finds Albo a very handsome boy. He’s been very complimentary about the prime minister…
McKenzie’s mistake there was that it wasn’t president Xi who called Albanese a “handsome boy”, but China’s premier, Li Qiang, during Albanese’s visit to Beijing in 2023.
Jane Hume: ‘Well I personally believe in climate change’
Another sticking point of last night’s debate was climate change and Peter Dutton declining to say that the impacts of climate change are getting worse. When asked last night whether the impacts of climate change were getting worse, Dutton said: “I’ll let scientists pass that judgment.”
I don’t know because I’m not a scientist and I can’t tell you whether the temperature has risen in Thargomindah [Queensland] because of climate change or the water levels are up.
Hume was asked on RN Breakfast what the deal was with climate change and the Coalition, and said she personally believes in climate change.
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 critical pathway to get there.
Cannane asks whether the Coalition accepts that climate change is making natural disasters worse. Hume says:
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 is you’re going to do about it?
Hume doubles down on attacking Labor over Indonesia-Russia military base reports
The shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, is also up on ABC RN Breakfast to weigh into the debate last night (no prizes for who she thinks won).
It looks like the Coalition spokespeople are up first, and Labor’s spokespeople will be up to push their side shortly.
Hume is asked about comments made by her colleague Bridget McKenzie – which you can see here – that Russia and China want Labor to win the election. Hume deflects the question, putting the blame back onto the government.
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.
Host Steve Cannane pushes back, asking if it was “sloppy” for McKenzie to make statements that could suggest foreign interference. Hume still won’t bite:
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 …
I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask for information from the government in these very, very uncertain times.