E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO BRISBANE
MONDAY, 20 JULY 2020
 
SUBJECTS: Federal Parliament postponement; Future of JobKeeper and JobSeeker; Opinion polls; Energy policy; State borders.
 
KELLY HIGGINS-DEVINE: After sitting sporadically, Federal Parliament is not sitting this week. Jim Chalmers is the ALP Shadow Treasury spokesperson and the Member for Rankin. Good afternoon.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Sounded like things were getting out of hand during the reading of the news -
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Just a tad, just a tad. I won't say whose fault it was, but I think it may not have been Bauschy. Look, what is the impact of Parliament not sitting again?
 
CHALMERS: It means there's less scrutiny of the Government unfortunately. It means that more than a month will pass between the update of the budget later this week and before we get to ask questions of the Government in the Parliament. This is a decision that's imposed on us, we don't actually have a say in this in the Federal Opposition. But a lot of people around the community, certainly speaking to people around my part of the world today, they're a bit disappointed and they think that the Government's got a bit of form when it comes to escaping scrutiny, so they don't like it.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: The interesting thing about this - I'm on Twitter of course, and there's a lot of noise on #auspol - but I do wonder if the average person is at all concerned about Parliament not sitting, or whether they do see it as you have said, as a way of not being under any scrutiny, or that democracy gets diverted for another large period of time? Do you think this is something that the electorate actually cares about? Or are they thinking, no they've been given medical advice and this is what you do?
 
CHALMERS: I think there's a recognition that in the Opposition at least we're obligated to take the advice as it's relayed to us by the Prime Minister. But I think what's making people unhappy at the moment is the inconsistency between the Prime Minister saying here in Queensland we've all got to open the borders and get back to work and everything's got to get back to normal at the same time as he's closing the Parliament down. I think a lot of people are latching on to that inconsistency.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Yet Newspoll has showed a big increase in the popularity of the Federal Liberal Government, and in Scott Morrison. How can you be an effective Opposition during a crisis?
 
CHALMERS: A couple of things about that. In most countries around the world, most democracies with one big exception, incumbents are doing pretty well politically out of this crisis. For understandable reasons in a lot of countries people want the Government to succeed, and we see that in the polls. The other thing about the polls, they couldn't pick the outcome of the election 18 hours from Election Day at the last election, so I'm not sure that we should have a lot of faith in them to pick the outcome 18 months from the next election either.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Jim Chalmers, has the Federal Labor Party suffered due to the State Labor Party in Victoria? The State Labor Party and Dan Andrews' handling of the virus?
 
CHALMERS: That's for the analysts I think. I'm not really a commentator on that - 
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Oh come on. What do you think?
 
CHALMERS: I'm not sure what the answer is to that. Clearly, in the Federal Opposition, and you asked me this a moment ago, our job is to try and be supportive where we can, to disagree where we absolutely must, and to make sure that the politics are secondary to all of this, to try and help the Government make good decisions because we all want the country to succeed. That's not a recipe for a big lead in the polls, but it's the right thing to do and so that's what we'll do. We take the same approach to the states. The states are doing the best they can, of both political persuasions. We've tried to back in the Premiers and Chief Ministers when they take their decisions based on medical advice. 
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: What do you expect will happen with JobSeeker and JobKeeper in changes to be announced on Thursday? What are you hearing?
 
CHALMERS: We're hearing lots of things. Each day there seems to be a new smoke signal. Sometimes one day contradicts the day before so there's a lot of uncertainty in the community about what's happening with those two pretty important modes of support in the economy. The Government has said that they'll clarify things by Thursday, if not a couple of days before. I suspect we might hear more about it tomorrow, for example. I think what we'll see is some sort of extension of both of them but it remains to be seen what that extension looks like.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Do you think that extension is necessary?
 
CHALMERS: Absolutely. We've always said that the original JobKeeper payment, which was based on the Prime Minister's assumption that everything would snap back to normal at the end of September, we've always thought that was a dodgy assumption. We've said that if the economy needs support for longer, if unemployment is supposed to be higher for longer, then the economy will need support for longer as well. We've been saying that for some time. Even before the outbreak in Victoria that was pretty obvious. The test for the Government is whether or not unemployment stays too high for too long. That's the test for whatever they do with JobKeeper later this week.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Just back to Parliament not sitting, has there been any talk about a Zoom conference, and how it might be able to happen? Because we don't know when this is going to get better, and it can't go on indefinitely, that the Parliament doesn't sit?
 
CHALMERS: Yes, there's been a lot of talk about it but no resolution. We've reached out to the Government via our manager of business in the Parliament, Tony Burke. We've reached out and said, let's try and work out a way that we can get the Parliament to sit as soon as possible. As you rightly point out it can't just be in abeyance forever. We do need to hold the Government to account, we do need to legislate some of these changes to Government payments and ways that we support businesses and workers in the economy. We're going to have to sort it out one way or another, so we should try and resolve that as soon as possible.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Jim Chalmers is the ALP Shadow Treasury Spokesperson, the Member for Rankin, and a regular on Steve Austin's program. I'm Kelly Higgins-Devine, sitting in for Steve for the next fortnight. ABC Radio Brisbane, and it's 4:40. Jim, it's been reported today that there are serious differences in ideas on environmental policy within the Labor Party, particularly around emissions targets. Is this the case?
 
CHALMERS: There is a discussion going on in our Party about the best medium-term targets. Anthony Albanese. Mark Butler, myself, and others have all said that we will come to a concluded view on that closer to the election, once we know what kind of situation we would inherit if we were to win office. We've said that we think that the country should get to net zero emissions by the middle of the century. We've also said, importantly from my point of view in my Treasury portfolio, that we need to get some certainly into energy policy again. That means cleaner and cheaper energy. It means more business investment, because when you talk to businesses right around Brisbane and right around Australia, the thing that's really missing here is a settled energy policy. I think all of us are up for that conversation. We want to engage with the Government and see what we can do, because if we're going to grow our way out of this first recession in almost three decades then energy is going to be a big part of that.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: What's your position on the idea of moving the border?
 
CHALMERS: I've been following that with a bit of interest today. I know that there's a discussion going on between our Premier and the Premier of New South Wales. I think Premier Palaszczuk has written to Premier Berejiklian about it. We need to find a better way to process people at the border. I know that Premier Palaszczuk says move the border south; Premier Berejiklian says move it north. I think what we probably all agree on is that people are waiting too long there, so we need a different way to process people. Whether that's processing them at a different part of the freeway, or some other arrangement I think we do need to do better because people are getting pretty cranky.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: They are indeed as I imagine I would be if I lived down there. It doesn't matter what side of the border you're on, it would be fairly nightmarish at the moment trying to do that. As you're watching the numbers increase in New South Wales, are you starting to get a little bit nervous about a full closure again of the border. 
 
CHALMERS: I am nervous about what we're seeing in New South Wales. Clearly the epicentre at the moment is still Victoria, but there's been enough in New South Wales to trouble us. It reminds us that we need to be vigilant in an ongoing way. We were doing pretty well but we weren't on top of it entirely, obviously, as so we need to be vigilant. From time-to-time Governments of different persuasions have copped a bit of stick for being careful and cautious about reopening, but I think that what this shows is that that careful and cautious approach is warranted. Because it's not too hard to see it getting away from us again.
 
HIGGINS-DEVINE: Jim Chalmers, good chatting with you. Thank you.
 
CHALMERS: Thanks so much, Kelly. All the best.
 
ENDS