E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM BREAKFAST
MONDAY, 25 MAY 2020

SUBJECTS: The Treasurer’s bungling of the JobKeeper program; JobSeeker payments.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Labor has called for a Senate inquiry to explain the embarrassing $60 billion JobKeeper reporting error. Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers joins us on the program. Good morning to you, Jim. How are you?

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good morning, Marcus. Well, thanks. 

PAUL: Look one of your colleagues, Joel Fitzgibbon on this program this morning called this probably the biggest accounting stuff up in our history. Is that maybe overstating things or is he right?

CHALMERS: It might be understating. It's not probably the worst stuff up in our history; it's factually, objectively, the biggest blunder that any Government's made in any budget at any point in the history of this Commonwealth. It's a massive error that's been made here. What it goes to is that the JobKeeper program is a good idea but it's been really badly implemented, been badly communicated and now it's been badly budgeted for as well. That has consequences for real people and real communities. Hundreds of thousands of Australian workers have been excluded from JobKeeper payments on the basis that the program was full and now we are three million workers short.

PAUL: And what about these three million workers, Jim? I mean, they would be, I guess, bitterly disappointed to hear that they've missed out on support from the Government during COVID-19 over the last couple of months or six weeks or so. They were pretty much told that, look, it's not a bottomless pit of money, we can't help everybody. But effectively if they've saved $60 billion, and there's a $60 billion black hole quite obviously, they could have?

CHALMERS: There's that Marcus, but I think the best way to think about this is that it's a massive amount of money and we just think it could be spent more effectively. The Government picked up and ran with a good idea, which is to say that what we need to do here is try and maintain a link between Australian workers and their employers because the longer the unemployment queues get, the harder it will be for us to recover from this crisis. We'll have higher unemployment for longer and that'll be bad for the budget in the long term as well. It’s a worthy objective to try and prevent that. But unfortunately they botched this from day one and this massive gap, the gap that was revealed on Friday, really goes to that.

PAUL: What of the money now that's not being spent on JobKeeper? Could that perhaps go to other areas to assist maybe an increase? I mean, it was suggested that perhaps this money could now go to assist lower paid workers. We've got frontline nursing staff here in New South Wales who have been calling out for a 2.5 per cent increase in their pay and been told no, we need to tighten belts and all the rest of it. I mean, there are a lot of people who could benefit from this money.

CHALMERS: Yeah I think those workers that you mentioned are essentially a responsibility of the State Government. The way I look at what's happened here with this mistake that's been made about JobKeeper is that it vindicates the position not just that Labor's taken, but most of the objective experts, as well as some Liberal Premiers and some Liberal backbenches, which is that too many people have been excluded from this JobKeeper program. We've got a situation where every third job was lost in food and accommodation, every fourth job was lost in arts and entertainment. These people have been either accidentally or deliberately excluded from JobKeeper. We've been saying that all along, not just as the consequence of this budget blunder but all along, we have wanted to make sure that the program was doing the good that it's intended to do. A lot of people have concluded, and not just in the political argy-bargy, but a lot of independent experts have concluded that the Government brought this program in too slowly and too narrowly. What we need to avoid now is the Government pulling it out too quickly and too broadly. We want to make sure that this mistake that they've made here in the costing of the JobKeeper program doesn't contaminate the program more broadly. We want to make sure that we can recover well out of this and the mistake that they've made gives us no confidence that they know what they're doing. 

PAUL: All right, moving forward. Can you see an increase in Newstart or JobKeeper?

CHALMERS: Clearly with Newstart, which is now called JobSeeker, there is a case to be made for that to be higher than it was before the crisis. Labor has said that for some time. The Government is no doubt working out whether they return it back to its old level or something higher than that. We think it should be higher than it was before because $40 a day is too hard for people to live on and to genuinely look for work on. That's our position there. On JobKeeper -

PAUL: Sorry about that Jim, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I meant to say JobSeeker there's been so many changes to names.

CHALMERS: I totally understand that. When it comes to JobKeeper our argument here is that you can better target it, you can maybe taper it, but don't just pull the rug out from under people on the last Monday of September. I'll give you one quick example Marcus about where we actually think the JobKeeper might be a bit too generous. Some workers who might have been making $100 or $150 a week before are all of a sudden making $750 a week now. Our argument is spend the money more effectively and do what you can to maintain a link between workers and their employers. We want the Government to succeed here. The better they do that job, the fewer people will join the unemployment queues and that means that we can recover more quickly than otherwise. 

PAUL: All right Jim. Good to have you on the program. We'll talk again soon. Thank you very much. 

CHALMERS: Thanks so much Marcus. All the best.

ENDS