Jane Hume started the parliamentary term in the doldrums.
The Victorian senator and favourite of the media had been turfed from the opposition front bench by her “friend” Sussan Ley, after being tarred personally with much of what went wrong to deliver the Coalition its cataclysmic election loss.
The demotion had hurt, she conceded, but she also wasn’t about to let it get her down.
“This isn’t the playground, this is the parliament. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make a difference,” she told morning television two days after Ley’s first shadow cabinet was unveiled.
“As my very wise mother would say, ‘Stop your nonsense, chin up, chest out, straighten your tiara and let’s get on with the job.'”
On Friday there was no tiara but a metaphorical crown as she ascended over three of her colleagues to be elected deputy Liberal leader, while the party ousted the woman that had orchestrated her move to the back bench just nine months earlier.
The Victorian senator beat three of her colleagues to become deputy leader. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
It makes Hume the first senator to hold the title since 1990 and, depending on the portfolio she chooses for herself, that could mean some new horizons for the opposition to traverse.
Hume, along with new Liberal Leader Angus Taylor, made up Peter Dutton’s economic team. Whether they can shake that association in the minds of voters, who emphatically rejected the party the last time around, remains to be seen.
“We know the challenge that faces us. We know that many people have lost faith,” she told reporters on Friday.
“Our party and our movement has a proud history. In my role as deputy, I will make it my mission to ensure that it also has a bright future.”
From banker to parliamentarian
Hume, 54, was born in Melbourne and stayed in the city for her studies, earning a commerce degree at Melbourne University.
She entered the workforce as a graduate at NAB, before spending two decades moving between various roles in the banking and superannuation sector.
After multiple attempts at Senate preselection, she was elected in fifth position on the Coalition ticket in 2016, behind now prominent frontbencher James Paterson.
Her success at the ballot box came after a bleak period in her personal life. At a women’s summit last year, she spoke of finding herself unemployed, recently divorced and a single mother of three.
“Were my parents thrilled? Absolutely not. Was I thrilled? No, not in the least,” she said.
Hume, then a new senator, arrives at Parliament House in 2016. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)
Three years after joining parliament, Scott Morrison named the former super adviser as assistant minister for superannuation and financial services.
Hume got straight to work, telling the Sydney Morning Herald she sought to make urgent changes to the “inefficient” super system and reintroduce legislation to make it opt-in for those under 25 years of age.
After the Coalition’s 2022 defeat, the senator was appointed as the shadow minister for finance and the public service.
She was also tasked with helming the party’s election review alongside former director Brian Loughnane, which recommended targets rather than formal quotas for female MPs, despite the party’s poor result with women.
It was an issue she had some experience with. Long before being elected to the Senate, Hume had established a program to help mentor young women keen on entering politics.
“One of the tough things we have to do is convince our members and our colleagues that there is a business case for increasing the number of women in parliament,” she told the ABC in 2017.
But she came under fire the following year for comments made during an episode of Q&A that suggested women who weren’t able to break through the preselection process should simply work harder.
“We have to work for what we want,” she said “And for women that don’t get there, well, the trick is work that little bit harder. Don’t get bitter, get better.”
Blunders mar election campaign
The first sign of trouble for Hume came before the official election campaign. During a speech at the Menzies Research Centre she declared it would be an expectation of a Coalition government that “all members of the APS [Australian Public Service] work from the office five days a week”.
While there would be some exceptions, she said, “they will be made where they work for everyone rather than be enforced on teams by an individual”.
Hume had apparently been inspired to float the proposal after a conversation with her son, who was working from home as an intern.
Her comments were quickly met with backlash and Labor seized upon them to claim that everybody would be at risk of being forced back to the office if Dutton was elected.
Angus Taylor and Jane Hume were Peter Dutton’s economic team. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
The policy was particularly poisonous among women, for whom the ability to work from home is often essential to being able to juggle a career and parenting responsibilities.
Such was the outrage that Dutton had to publicly abandon the position — a remarkable concession in the midst of an election.
“I think it was pretty clear during the election campaign that that policy was a mistake,” she told reporters on Friday.
It was not her only election misstep. Two days before Australians went to the polls, she suggested on live television that there were “Chinese spies” volunteering for Labor.
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The comment swiftly went viral on social media platforms popular with Chinese voters and prompted calls for the prominent Liberal to apologise.
Hume this week labelled the comment a “throwaway line” that had been taken out of context and blamed Labor for weaponising it.
“I have in fact, apologised to those that were offended by that,” she said. “They were ill-considered remarks.”
Both fumbles were widely cited as key contributors to the Coalition’s defeat — and Hume did not escape unscathed.
Banished to the backbenches
With the wreck of the election still smouldering, Sussan Ley stood up in front of journalists and declared that the Liberal Party would go in a new direction, one that reflected modern Australia.
That new vision for the party apparently did not include Hume on the front bench, despite her status as a fundraising powerhouse.
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The high-profile senator was unceremoniously left off Ley’s ministry, along with fellow Liberal woman Sarah Henderson. It meant the number of women on the front bench went backwards under Ley, even as she acknowledged the need to attract more women to the party.
Asked about the snub, Ley described Hume as a “strong performer across a range of different subject areas” and an “enormously talented, fantastic” team member.
Hume kept quiet on the slight for two days, before turning to Sunrise to break her silence.
“If you’re asking me whether I feel hurt or slighted by this move from Sussan, of course it hurts,” she said.
“It hurts professionally because I was a hard-working and prolific member of the front bench in the previous opposition. It hurts personally, too, because you know, Sussan and I are friends.”
But Hume also saw a silver lining: “There is something very liberating about being on the back bench and being able to speak without having to stick to the party line and without having to stick to talking points.”
Hume is known for her strong — and often entertaining — performances in Senate estimates. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Indeed, despite being on the back bench, Hume managed to stay in the spotlight. She is known for her strong and often entertaining performances in Senate estimates, including one particularly memorable exchange with a witness who she often bumped into wearing lycra at the gym.
“Less worthy men have seen me in far less,” she joked, before her own mouth dropped open seemingly in surprise at what had slipped out.
In the hearings this week, Hume questioned the Department of Parliament Services about why condoms were available in women’s changing rooms but not men’s. The public servant said she thought it was wonderful that women were taking control of their sexual health.
“I agree … I just wonder why men aren’t taking responsibility as well,” Hume replied.