JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC AM
TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2021
SUBJECT: Federal Budget.
SABRA LANE, HOST: Jim Chalmers, good morning, welcome to AM.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much, Sabra.
LANE: There'll be more jobs, skills, training, billions more for aged care, mental health. That sounds like this would be a Budget that Labor would be proud of?
CHALMERS: I think if the Government really cared about all of those sorts of things we would have seen some action at some other point in the last eight long years of this Government. In many of those areas that you identified we're actually trying to clean up the mess created by Government cuts, whether it's Scott Morrison's aged care cuts, whether it's the problems in childcare, cuts to apprenticeships over the last eight years or so. So I don't think the Government deserves a pat on the back for trying to fix some of the mess that they've created. This can't be another political con job, this Budget. It can't be another Budget long on announcements and short on delivery. Because failing to deliver over those last eight long years has meant childcare is less affordable, aged care is a disgrace, and wages are stagnant.
LANE: Even Anthony Albanese admits that it sounds like it's going to be a Labor-lite Budget by adopting the policies that are traditionally policies that voters more consider ALP policies rather the conservative policies. The Government has taken your ground and it's leaving you actually fewer options?
CHALMERS: I think there's a political analysis, which I'll leave to others. We have said for some time, the Government should be more ambitious on jobs, for example. We've said that there needs to be more for the Government to show from this trillion dollars in debt that the Government has racked up. And there have been obvious areas of neglect over the past eight long years - aged care, childcare, stagnant wages, and the like. Our fear is that the Government is constructing a political story, more marketing and more spin, but they'll fail in the delivery once again.
LANE: By saying that, you think that an election's closer rather than further away?
CHALMERS: This Budget is definitely designed to get Scott Morrison through an election. We don't yet know when that will be, whether there'll be another Budget between now and then, but it's certainly a political Budget. We don't want it to be another political con job, long on announcement and short on delivery.
LANE: Based on elections since the pandemic started, people have been rewarding governments for their handling of COVID How difficult will your task be to convince voters not to return the Morison Government.
CHALMERS: This is a Government that's been around for eight years already and by the time...
LANE: That's a point that you've made, if you could go to the question.
CHALMERS: I'm answering the question by saying, at the time of the election, they'll be asking for twelve years, right, and we'll be able to say to the Australian people, over that eight year period, asking for twelve, we've had wage stagnation, we've had job insecurity, we've had failures across the board. We've had Budgets which make big announcements and then failed in the delivery. And we will stack up our positive plans, we've already talked about childcare, we've talked about the National Reconstruction Fund, apprenticeships, cleaner and cheaper energy, our positive policies will be very competitive against eight years of failure.
LANE: Labor predicted a cliff at the end of March when JobKeeper ended, that hasn't happened. The unemployment rate is 5.8%. The Government now has a task to get it down to four, somewhere in the fours. The property market is booming. COVID isn't rife in Australia, like it is elsewhere around the world. The vaccine rollout is not as fast as people would like, but compared to other countries, voters might think that's not disastrous, we'll stick with that?
CHALMERS: Well, that's a very kind description of the vaccine rollout, which has been a debacle from the very beginning, especially compared to other countries. Look, we want the economy to recover strongly. We want jobs to be created. The extent that the recovery is underway is a credit to the Australian people, who've done the right thing by each other to limit the spread of the virus, not a credit to the Government. The recovery would be stronger if Scott Morrison hadn't bungled the vaccines, and quarantine, and the China relationship. And the Budget would be stronger if we didn't have all of these rorts - sports rorts, dodgy land deals, JobKeeper for companies that didn't need it, and all the rest of it. Just because the recession could have been worse, doesn't mean the recovery couldn't be better.
LANE: We don't know all of what the Government's going to offer until tonight, your Budget Reply will very much depend on that. There are hints that Labor might offer new policies on social housing, renewable energy jobs, housing, the current paid parental leave scheme, that you might turbo-charge that. Should voters expect something on each of those things on Thursday night?
CHALMERS: Well, it will be career limiting in the extreme for me to try and steal Anthony's thunder in terms of his Budget Reply. It does depend a little bit on what the Government announces tonight, but people know where we're coming from. We want the economy to be stronger after COVID than it was before. We want people to get that wages growth and job security, which has been absent over the last eight years. We want cleaner and cheaper energy. We want advanced manufacturing to be a bigger part of the economy. People know our priorities.
LANE: Will you have something on each of those things or pluck out one of those things?
CHALMERS: I encourage your listeners to tune in on Thursday night and listen to Anthony.
LANE: Labor has been critical of the already legislated tax cuts for high income earners, they're not scheduled to come in until 2024. You've also been critical of the temporary tax relief for low and middle income earners, that's due to expire in June. It might be extended further tonight. What will Labor do on both?
CHALMERS: Well, the point that we've made is that the tax cuts for the highest income earners are permanent, whereas the tax cuts for low and middle income earners are temporary. We've said the priority needs to be people who need that tax relief the most. We've supported tax relief for people on low and middle incomes. We've said throughout that those tax cuts that come in three years down the track, which overwhelmingly benefit the highest income earners, it doesn't make a lot of sense to commit those tens-of-billions of dollars so far ahead. We'll have more to say between now and the election on that, but we support tax relief for people who genuinely need it. We need to be conscious of the fact there's a trillion dollars in debt, many multiples of what the Government inherited from Labor, and so we need to do what's right and responsible.
LANE: Jim Chalmers, thanks for joining AM.
CHALMERS: Thank you, Sabra.
ENDS
