Press Conference, Queanbeyan, NSW - Monday, 3 February 2025
Topics: Labor’s cost of living crisis; increase in the number of families seeking help to put food on the table; Labor’s bloated bureaucracy; productivity; Coalition support for small business
E&OE
JO VAN DER PLAAT, LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR EDEN-MONARO:
Well, good morning everyone, and thank you to Angus Taylor and Senator Jane Hume for coming out to visit Benny's with me this morning in Queanbeyan, which is part of my electorate Eden-Monaro. I wanted just to say thank you, a huge thank you to Father Michael and Elaine for sharing some of the stories and some of the connections that they've formed with the very many people that are accessing this service and continue to access this service. I've been privileged enough to have been here a few times and gotten to know father, Michael and Elaine, and talk to them about some of the incredible work that they do and that their tireless volunteers do in there every single day. I must say, some of the stories that I'm hearing in terms of the types of people and the demographics that are turning up here, and the number of people, in terms of the increase in people that walk through the door everyday, are things that really concern me. I heard recently of a young boy that came in to ask for some lunch to put in his lunch box to go to school and I think that we're going to be seeing a lot more of that. I'd really like to hand over to Father Michael, though, to just perhaps elaborate a little bit more on what St Benny's actually does for this incredible community. Father Michael.
FATHER MICHAEL COCKAYNE:
Well, we don't do enough, that's the first thing I can say. There's a huge amount more to be done in this community as in all communities. There's a great deal of need for what we do here. We provide food for people. We provide food on an ongoing basis through the week, on most of the days of the week, and we provide also cooked meals, breakfast and lunch four days of the week. Also upstairs we staff who work in housing, find housing, particularly for the most marginalised of people. People who really find it very, very hard to be housed. In some ways, almost unhousable for various reasons. So that's the work that we do here. It's a work that comes out of mainline churches here and others, but our volunteers and our work is now done across the board, everybody from those who don't believe to those who believe in findings [inaudible]. So that’s what our work is.
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Thank you, Father Michael, and thank you very much to you and Elaine for showing us through St Benny’s and talking to us about some of the people that are seeking your services. It's extraordinary to think that it was only three years ago that Anthony Albanese was telling Australians that you would be better off under a Labor Government. He said that your mortgages would be cheaper, but they're about $50,000 more expensive. He said you'd have $275 off your energy bill because of their renewables-only approach. But in fact, energy bills have gone up under Labor in some states as much as 30%. He said that you would feel it in your hip pocket, a change in government. Well, certainly that is the case, because we've seen prices rise by a cumulative more than 11% now, and standards of living in this country have collapsed by 8.7%. That's the fastest and deepest collapse in standards of living on record and now the Prime Minister is out again, saying, trust us for another three years because you'll be better off under Labor. Well fool me once, Prime Minister but you can't fool Australians twice. At the beginning of this term of government, the Coalition established a cross-party Senate Select Committee into the cost of living where we discussed the drivers of the cost of living crisis and the implementable and practical solutions. At the end of the day, the decisions that this government have made have prolonged to the cost of living crisis and made inflation stay higher for longer. Organisations like the one that we're at today are at the frontline delivering services to Australians in need, and they're seeing people come through their door seeking support, seeking housing, seeking food to put on the table because they are doing it tough and some of these people that are coming through the doors have never sought help before. They’re families, sometimes with two incomes, sometimes with mortgages, but increasingly, they are stressed and they’re seeking help from their government and unfortunately, Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party have been missing in action. Only a Coalition Government will deliver a back-to-basics economic approach to tackle the cost of living at its source, which is inflation, getting inflation sustainably below band to take the pressure off the Reserve Bank. Work with the Reserve Bank so that they can lower interest rates. They should have done it sooner but inflation has lasted too high for too long. No one is believing the Prime Minister when he says that you'll be better off under Labor. You can fool us once but you can’t fool us twice.
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Well, thank you, Jane. It's great to be here with Jo van der Plaat, hard-working candidate for Eden-Monaro, and I know she's out and about across this enormous electorate, the towns and villages in places like here in Queanbeyan on a regular basis. I know she was in Goulburn on the weekend and she'll continue to work hard to focus on the issues that I know people are facing right across Eden-Monaro. Can I thank Father Michael and Elaine for what they do. I make a point of going to food banks as I get across Australia, and the work that people like the team here do is unbelievably important and extraordinary, truly extraordinary. We've seen demand for these sorts of services across the country increasing dramatically in recent years, different demographics, but most of all greater demand and the pressures I know it puts on your organisation and those right across the country who are doing this sort of work are enormous, but they're up to the task, and they're doing absolutely wonderful, wonderful work. One of the things they do is they help to reach out to those who find it difficult to say they need help. There's this stigma attached to saying I need help, and organisations like what we see here today are doing that kind of work where they help people through what is a really difficult time in their life. So thank you for your wonderful help. We are facing a cost of living crisis that we haven't seen before in this country. Our standard of living has fallen more than it's ever fallen before. We are seeing Australians paying an extra $50,000 in mortgage payments since Labor came to power two and a half years ago. We're seeing cost of living pressures rising prices across the board, 10 or 11% for the average family, but closer to 18% for working families and it's those working families who are really struggling right now across this country. Now we hear the government say that things are going well. Well, they’re not. They talk about a soft landing, well, there's a crash landing and we're seeing that in the impact it's having on people's bottom lines. There is a better way, as Jane said. Getting back to basics, making sure we've got the balance right between supply of housing and demand for housing. Making sure that government isn't getting in the way of businesses investing and creating jobs, creating prosperity for all Australians. They're the basics that we know work because they've worked in the past. They'll work again. There is a better way. We can't afford another three years like we've seen over the last two and a half. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST:
I might keep you in front of the mic, if that's okay. Do you support Peter Dutton’s plan to slash 36,000 public service jobs?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Well, we need to make sure government is the right size for this country and right now, bigger government and smaller private sector is not the right answer. We've got to get the balance right. If we're going to have prosperity in this country, we've got to have a thriving private sector. More bureaucracy isn't the answer to the problems we're facing right now. So we've been very clear about this, right from very early on, that Labor's plan to try to solve the crisis we're facing now where the bigger bureaucracy is not the right [inaudible] that's very clear. We know that government spending puts extra pressure on inflation, extra pressure on interest rates, and we as a country have seen that our inflation and interest rates have been at the back of the pack in terms of coming down and delivering relief to Australia. That's the real relief. That's the source of the problem. The underlying source of the challenges we're facing is this crisis in terms of rising prices and rising mortgage costs, and that crisis is very real right now.
JOURNALIST:
Are you concerned about the impact it might put on regional areas like Goulburn, Yass, Cooma, when we have all these jobs cut?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Well, I tell you what I'm concerned about, is how this cost of living crisis has affected places like where I live and grew up around this region and that cost of living crisis is incredibly real, and everyone should be doing everything they can, whether they’re in the public or private sector, to do what they can do, as we've seen here today, to take pressure off that cost of living. And the answer isn't a bigger government. That's not the answer. We know that from the past. We've seen this before. This is not the first time we've seen pressures. These pressures are worse than anything we've seen before. This is the biggest hit to Australians’ standard living in our recorded history. We haven't seen this depth of a hit to Australians, and yet, we've got a Treasurer and a Prime Minister that thinks the answer is more bureaucracy when it’s simply not and it never has been. Jane might want to add to that.
SENATOR JANE HUME:
The size of the bureaucracy has blown out by 20% just in the last two and a half years alone. 20%. Now, you'll be hard-pressed to find an Australian that feels that they are 20% better served and in fact, in some parts of the bureaucracy, services have got worse. Wait times on the parenting and families helpline, for instance, is now around an hour, which is more than double what it has been. To get a low income card it takes five times longer than it did under the Coalition Government. Wait times to get a pension, for instance, is now 48 days. It was around 30 under a Coalition Government, and that's despite the fact that more than 4,000 people have been added to Services Australia. The size of the Health Department has increased by 47% and yet bulk billing has collapsed in this country. The size of the Department of Environment and Energy has nearly doubled the number of public servants, yet approval times for environmental approvals have blown out, and emissions have gone up. So you can see that just by adding numbers to the public service, it doesn't necessarily mean your services are better delivered. We've said that we'll guarantee the essential services that Australians expect and deserve, but there is a [inaudible] to right size of bureaucracy so that it delivers for all Australians, but it also doesn't blow out, bloat because an inefficient, bloated public service doesn't serve anyone.
JOURNALIST:
I mean, are you not concerned, though, that we have these rising wait times, so you're going to hack back staff, which are going to then maybe add additional wait times. I mean …
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Well clearly adding staff hasn't helped. In fact, in some circumstances, it's made the situation worse. There are better ways to deliver an efficient and effective public service, and that's what the Coalition will be focused on.
JOURNALIST:
Do you know exactly how to deliver that? How can you promise that things are going to get better with less public servants?
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Well, wait times were shorter under a Coalition Government with a smaller public service. Delivery times were better under a Coalition Government with a smaller public service. It's only a Labor Government that's delivered at a cost of $6 billion a year an increased by 20% to the Canberra bureaucracy. I don't know a single Australian that feels 20% better served.
JOURNALIST:
Are you feeling confident that there'll be 36,000 other jobs for people to move into? I mean, are we potentially risking putting more pressure onto Father Michael and these services because suddenly we have thousands of people without an income?
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Amazingly, the private sector is telling us that they wish that the government would back off employing people because they're crying out for skills. But unfortunately, because of decisions that this government has made economic growth is staggering to a halt. We only grew by 0.8% in the last 12 months, and we've been in a per capita recession now for seven quarters in a row. This is because the Labor Government has taken its eye off the ball. The cost of living has gone up, our standard of living has gone down and economic growth is stagnating, which is why we need a back to basics economic growth to tackle the cost of living at its source, which is inflation, and to make sure that we deliver productivity enhancing investment to help our economy to grow sustainably into the future.
JOURNALIST:
When you left office, there were about 54,000 labour hire employees. Can you rule out simply replacing any public servants that you cut with those labour hire employees.
SENATOR JANE HUME:
So in the COVID years, of course, we made sure that we bolstered the public service to cater the surge capacity. That's what Australians expected. They needed their government at that stage. But the idea that a Labor Government outside of a pandemic would grow the public service by 20% without the service delivery to show to go with it, is unacceptable. Australians expect and deserve an efficient and effective public service, but that's not what they've got under Labor.
JOURNALIST:
So you wouldn't rule out labour hire employees to replace public servants?
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Consultants have been used and are still being used by the Labor Government, and they may claim otherwise, but that's simply not the case. The latest that we heard was that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have hired a consultant in Darlinghurst to deliver a strategy on a First Nations approach to foreign affairs. Now that's at a cost of $260,000 to the taxpayer. Ironically, we also now have a First Nations Ambassador, who is paid $380,000 a year to do exactly the same thing. There is duplication and waste going on in the public system. We know that we need to reduce spending to get inflation under control. Michele Bullock, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, has said as much. That's why a Coalition Government will bring a back-to-basics approach. We'll make sure we get rid of the wasteful spending, and we will deliver cost of living relief to all Australians in a sustainable way by bringing inflation down.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think the community deserves to know where these 36,000 jobs are going to be cut from? I mean, it might make a drastic difference for who votes for you, if they you know, know their jobs are on the chopping block?
SENATOR JANE HUME:
So there has been a 36,000 increase in the size of the public service but we will make sure that we curtail the growth of the public service, that we will make cuts where there is excess capacity or where there is duplication and the taxpayer should expect this. The taxpayer expects an efficient and effective public service, not a bloated Canberra bureaucracy that isn't adding to their standard of service, their standard of care. At the time when Australians are doing it tough, when they're sitting around the kitchen table, making decisions about their own budget, worried about how they're going to put food on the table, worried if they're going to have to seek the help from an organisation like Benny's here today, well, why should the government not do the same? This government has failed to do the hard yards with its budget, and it’s Australian families are paying the price.
JOURNALIST:
Do you agree with Mr Taylor that this won't impact surrounding regional communities, cutting that many people out of Canberra.
SENATOR JANE HUME:
Well, Angus Taylor is the local member. He understands his community better than anybody. But this is a crisis that's facing all of Australia and all Australian taxpayers have been paying the price for Labor's failure to deliver on the one thing that they have been saying now for three years is their number one issue, which is the cost of living crisis. 11 times interest rates went up under this government while they were campaigning for the Voice. While they were distracted. This government has had the wrong priorities, it's had the wrong policy solutions, and it's had bad decisions and broken promises. That's what it's delivered to the Australian people. You cannot afford three more years of Labor. When they say to you that you'll be better off under a Labor Government, just look at their track record.
JOURNALIST:
After your first three years in office, if you're elected, will the public service be smaller than the government is forecasting, and can you guarantee the quality of services that you deliver will remain the same or improve?
SENATOR JANE HUME:
We have said that we will focus on delivering an efficient and an effective public service. By doing that, we'll make sure that we deliver on the promise to all Australians to spend their taxpayer dollars wisely.
JOURNALIST:
When will you release the costings for the small business lunch tax deductions?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Yeah so we'll release all our costings in advance of the election. I mean, we've been clear about that all along. That's the custom. That's what Labor did before the last election. We'll do exactly the same. We'll be completely transparent about it. We're still trying to work out how much money Labor's spending, and those numbers keep going up. Those numbers keep going up, and yet, they're not in the areas and in the way that's making a real difference. We want better government, not bigger government in this country. That's what Australians want. That's what Australians deserve. That's what the people of this region deserve. There's no shortage of demand for labour right now. The labour market’s strong. That's not the problem. The problem is our standard of living has collapsed. This government has had its priorities wrong, and it’s made the wrong decisions along the way.
JOURNALIST:
And where are the productivity gains from? I guess the lunch tax deductions.
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Well let’s be clear here that productivity has collapsed under this government. Absolutely. It’s been in free fall. We're at the back of the pack. This is not even close. We are behind our peer countries. We've seen a bigger collapse in our standard of living than any of our peer countries. We've seen a bigger collapse in the economy, GDP per capita, seven quarters in a row. We've never seen that before in Australia, where that's going backwards. I mean this is a truly extraordinary situation. So we've got to get productivity back on track. We've got to get people out, networking, working together. One of the challenges we've had post-COVID is we haven't been seeing businesses connecting in the way they need to, to drive productivity, and we need to make sure that we're pulling every lever we can to drive productivity. It's incredibly important. It's a good question, and it's one we are absolutely focused on. But you cannot have prosperity without productivity. It doesn't work. But that's what Labor think you can do, and that's part of the reason why we're seeing or a big part of the reason why people's standard of living is going backwards.
JOURNALIST:
So how exactly would the lunch tax deductions, I guess, increase productivity?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Well we want to see, we want to see small businesses, hospitality businesses, cafes, restaurants, hotels and others, doing well at a time when we're seeing record levels of insolvencies. Record levels of insolvencies. Again, we haven't seen this before. There's a lot about what we're seeing right now that is completely unprecedented, and not in a good way. So it's incredibly important we see those businesses being able to invest, to create jobs, to take risks, all the things that businesses have to do to drive prosperity and ensure Australians have the standard of living that they deserve and this is one of a range of policies, including accelerated depreciation, allowing businesses to invest, encouraging businesses to invest. These are the policies we know will drive productivity, will drive prosperity, and most of all, will get Australians’ standard of living back to where it should be. Labor's own plan doesn't return our standard of living to where it was when Labor came to power until 2030. That's their own plan. I mean, this is disastrous for this country, and we're going to continue to see a hit to Australians’0 prosperity and a failure to deliver the sort of aspiration that Australians deserve and want, if we continue to see a Labor Government behaving in this way. Any other questions? I think we’ve answered this one.
JOURNALIST:
No, we’re at a food bank today. What, you know, funding are you going to promise to food banks and things like that?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
The first and most important point I would make, is that if we are to see Australians in a position where they can live their lives as they want to live them, and they can balance the books. We've got to see an alleviation of inflation and the interest rate pressure that we know is bearing down on Australian families. We're going to see the employee living cost index come out on Wednesday. It's going to tell us, it's going to tell us that working families across this country are suffering under an enormous amount of pressure from those rising interest rates, rising prices, of course, and indeed, and indeed, increases in record levels of personal income taxes being paid. So that's the first and most important thing we can do. We do have to make sure services like this are supported appropriately, but we can only do that if government isn't wasting money in other areas, and so we do have to make sure we get the balance right.
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Alright. Thank you very much.
JOURNALIST:
Sorry, can we quickly grab, sorry, Father Michael, sorry?
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Yeah sure.
JOURNALIST:
You didn't run away fast enough from me. Father Michael, can you tell us a little about just how things are going here and what sort of struggles you are facing to provide enough food and things to the community?
FATHER MICHAEL COCKAYNE:
Well, a lot of the food we provide here is rescued food and we have increasing numbers of our volunteers who are actually going out to rescue that food. Almost every day we have people going out into different food sources to find a food that would be wasted. So that's one of the ways.
JOURNALIST:
Yeah, just how … is it getting more difficult to keep the doors open? Can you explain why?
FATHER MICHAEL COCKAYNE:
It’s getting more difficult because we have to have more people doing that kind of thing. It's getting more difficult because more people are coming. It's getting emotionally difficult to see a young father working but something has gone wrong, sickness or illness in the family, coming with children and needing food just to tie them over until they can get going again. It’s a huge emotional stress factor.
JOURNALIST:
What would you like to see from the government? Do you think if families had extra money that would help? Or do they need to really be funneling resources into you?
FATHER MICHAEL COCKAYNE:
No. When we close, if we were running our cafe here profit, we wouldn't be one of those going out of business. We'd make a fortune, except that people wouldn’t be able to afford food we provide. We don't need to be bigger. We need to be smaller. So government has to address issues that are driving poverty. Let's call it what it is. It's poverty. And as I've said to my friends here, and I will say to the Labor Party, take an example from what we've done here. Here clergy from different churches got together and said, how can we solve some problems? We put down our differences, we arguing on theology and we looked at the problems and we set out to resolve them and this is what can happen when people work together. My message to all politicians, this is a war zone. In a war, you collaborate. In a war, you work together. All including those that don't belong to parties, we should all be working together to solve a problem which is not unsolvable. We have huge resources in this country. Why are so many of our people not housed? It might sound naive, but we have resources to house people. Why do we [inaudible] how it should be done. If Roman Catholics and Baptists and Anglicans and United Church can get together and bury their differences and start to care for people. then I challenge politicians to do the same.
JOURNALIST:
Final one, sorry, we've seen Sleep Bus really struggle. How much are you concerned about what you're seeing there and what it means?
FATHER MICHAEL COCKAYNE:
It has been a struggle, however, locally, here again, people have got together. A committee is forming. There is help coming from a major charity and within the next couple of weeks, Sleep Bus will be running better than it ever has. It won't be called Sleep Bus but it will be a place to sleep. It will be running better. So it's being run from Melbourne. You can't run that kind of thing from a distance. So by bringing it home here, by the community working together, as I say, varying differences, all working together, then we can do amazing things.
JOURNALIST:
Thank you, Father. Really appreciate it.
ENDS.