JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
4BC DRIVE
THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2021

SUBJECTS: MYEFO; Economy is recovering despite the Morrison Government not because of it; Unemployment rate doesn’t tell the full story; Underemployment, insecure work and real wages going backwards; The Morrison government learnt absolutely nothing from furore over rorts and waste; Morrison government can’t rort the way to recovery; Morrison government sprung spending on political interests rather than national economic interest.

SCOTT EMERSON, HOST: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer and Member for Rankin. How are you, Jim?

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: I'm great Scott. Thanks for having me on your show.

EMERSON: These figures today, it's great to see the numbers coming down. But I did say to Simon Birmingham a little bit earlier there seems to be $16 billion in the back pocket of the government waiting to be spent ahead of the election. Is that where you think they will be using? Is that the war chest for a bit of pork during the lead up to the election?

CHALMERS: Without question. I think a lot of Australians would have tuned into Josh Frydenberg and Simon Birmingham expecting to hear something about the skyrocketing cost of living, skill shortages, stagnant wages or insecure work and instead, the main feature of this mid year budget update is $16 billion available to the government for more of the usual rorts and waste which has defined the government. What Australians need to know from today's mid-year budget update from the Morrison government is secret rorts before the election and secret cuts after. They say that they'll repair the budget after the election, but they won't tell us how. In the meantime, they've stashed away that $16 billion slush fund for more of the same rorts that we've seen over much of the last eight years.

EMERSON: They wouldn't be the first government to do that on both sides of politics, to have some money stashed away ahead of an election. But the reason they can do that is you'd have to concede is the economy is improving. These are improved numbers on what was previously forecast.

CHALMERS: Two parts of your question and I'll come to the recovery in a second. In terms of the historical comparisons, this is a much bigger hidden fund in this budget update than we're used to seeing. It's the biggest even under this government, which has turned slush funds into an art form. I think by our reckoning, it's the biggest there's ever been. $16 billion hidden away for more of the same rorts and waste and that's the reason why we've got a trillion dollars in debt because the government sprays money around on their political interests. That's the issue about the slush funds, rorts and the waste. In terms of the recovery, yes, the economy is beginning to recover. That's welcome but it's unsurprising because it comes off such a low base. The economy got absolutely smashed by those lockdowns made necessary by the failures on vaccines and quarantines at the federal level. Everyone expects the economy to recover and rebound. What really matters is what kind of recovery we see. I think a lot of working families around Australia would be thinking, well it's not a recovery unless our material circumstances improve. What it says in the budget update today is that real wages will go backwards for another year. What that means if you strip away the economic jargon, it means that cost of living is skyrocketing at the same time as people's real wages are going backwards and making it harder to make ends meet. I think that's what people were looking to hear from the Treasurer about today. Instead, they just hear about more rorts and waste.

EMERSON: You're saying about wages, and I know that's been an issue that Labor has been running for some time in terms of the lack of rise in real wages here. Wages are tipped to rise about 3 per cent so if that's not enough how much would you like to see rise as wages rise by?

CHALMERS: First of all, it's not just Labor that's been going on about stagnant wages. It is factually the worst performing government on wages in our history. So that's important. People feel that in the community. It's not political argy-bargy. It's a fact that people have had stagnant wages for much of the last eight years of the government. We want wages to grow much stronger than they have been. We certainly don't want real wages to go backwards as the budget update predicts. That's because you want to grow the economy in the right way, so people have money to spend in local small businesses and local economies and local communities. One of the reasons why economic growth was slow even before the pandemic was because people were finding it hard to make ends meet. Even the non-economists listening to your show this afternoon will understand that if people don't have sufficient wages, then it's hard for them to support the small businesses in their local economy and local communities. That's what we've been saying for much of the last eight years. We need our wages growth to be stronger. That means we need economic growth to be stronger. We need the economy to recover the right way. We need to look for opportunities for people to turn insecure work into more secure work and we've announced policies on that front some time ago.

EMERSON: I'm talking to Jim Chalmers, the Shadow Treasurer, potentially he's going to be the Treasurer of Australia after the next federal election. Jim Chalmers in terms of the labour force figures which came out today, the unemployment rate across Australia now down to 4.6 per cent and 366,000 jobs created in November. That number 4.6 per cent, historically, that is a low number, that's a good number for an economy that has been struggling through the impacts of COVID.

CHALMERS: We want the number to be as low as possible. We've said all along we want the unemployment rate obviously to be as low as possible. But what's also important to recognise is that the unemployment rate tells part of the story of the labour market, but not the full story. Even in those numbers that many welcome today there's 1.7 million Australians who either can't find a job or can't find enough hours. That goes to our issues with underemployment, goes and our issues with insecure work, and that flows through to the stagnant wages that we're talking about. So, the labour market is more than just the unemployment rate. We do want the unemployment rate to get down as low as possible, but we also need to deal with some of those other issues which have been holding working families back for much of the government's eight years in office.

EMERSON: But 4.6 per cent, do you accept that is a good number?

CHALMERS: It's good to see it heading south. That's what we want to see. We want it to be as low as possible and at the same time as wanting to see it low and lower, we want to deal with some of those other issues in the labour market that we've been talking about for some time. The biggest issue in the labour market is people's jobs aren't secure enough and that seeps through to stagnant wages. We want more jobs. We want the unemployment rate to be as low as possible but we  want them to be good jobs as well. That's issue has been so stark for the last eight years because wages have been so stagnant.

EMERSON: Jim Chalmers, thanks for being on the show today.

CHALMERS: Appreciate your time, Scott. Thank you.

ENDS