E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE DRIVE
MONDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2020
 
SUBJECTS: New JobKeeper numbers; This week’s National Accounts; Government waste; Qantas Job Losses; China Dispute.
 
STEVE AUSTIN, HOST: Jim Chalmers is the ALP Shadow Treasury spokesperson and the member for Rankin. Jim Chalmers are the JobKeeper numbers today a success or a failure, as far as Federal Labor is concerned?
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER:Well it's partly a success Steve and we welcome that but it's also entirely unsurprising as a function of at least three things: First of all, a lot of the restrictions have come off in the economy and so its unsurprising to the extent that when the economy opens back up as we knew it would and some businesses are doing better as we knew that they would. That's a good thing, that's what we welcome. But also there's tighter eligibility rules for businesses so inevitably there will be fewer of them which qualify. Thirdly, some businesses unfortunately have hit the fence in the last few months and so they're obviously not eligible either so it is partly a good story, and we welcome that but it's also a function of those three things and as you said a moment ago there's 1.5 million workers on JobKeeper. That's still a massive number and they're still relying very heavily on it and a lot of businesses are relying on it too. For those 1.5 million Australian workers the recent cuts to JobKeeper will sting a bit.
 
AUSTIN: So the adjustment, or the fall, has outperformed predictions in the federal budget. Surely that's a feather in the cap of the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg?
 
CHALMERS: It's a good thing if fewer people need government support, I'm not pretending otherwise, but we need to appreciate as I just said that part of that's the opening of restrictions which is not Josh Frydenberg's doing. Part of it is tighter eligibility criteria which is neither here nor there when it comes to the Treasurer. Thirdly some businesses have failed in the interim and so I know that he will be in a rush as he typically is to say that it is his genius. But I think it's more of a mixed bag than that. I also want to say Steve and I think we've spoken frequently enough that I hope you get this sense from me that when we are tracking a little bit ahead of where we might have been expected I will say so. I want the economy to come good as quickly as possible because it's about people's jobs and their capacity to provide for their loved ones. So as the economy recovers, and it's starting to recover now, we're certainly prepared to welcome that but also to point to what's actually causing these numbers that were released overnight.
 
AUSTIN: Well what's causing it probably is the fact that we've pumped billions into the Australian economy, there's so much money floating around that it would be shocking if it didn't improve.
 
CHALMERS: It is partly that, we've got a trillion dollars in debt and we want to have something to show for it, our fear is that we won't have enough to show for it. One of the reasons for that is there's been a fair bit of waste as well. A lot of your listeners would have seen that the Government's been paying for a private plane for an ex-minister to fly around Europe, they'd know that some of these JobKeeper payments have gone to executive bonuses so taxpayers have been funding executive bonuses, they would have seen the $1.2 billion Robodebt settlement that you and I have discussed before. And so it's hard to argue that from their trillion dollars of debt that they've got bang for buck right across the board. But where they've been able to, with our support, step in and provide a wage subsidy and that's been helpful then obviously we welcome that.
 
AUSTIN: I don't think the Mathias Cormann private jet thing is entirely fair, it's because I remember Kevin Rudd spent a lot of Australian taxpayers money trying to get Australia a seat at the Security Council including lobbying African nations and all sorts of things. So my assumption is that both sides think it's good that Australia be on these international bodies that heavily affect Australian treaties and agreements so is it being entirely fair by criticising the Government for making a jet available to Mathias Cormann?
 
CHALMERS: Well the two jobs aren't comparable -
 
AUSTIN: The Security Council is a pretty big deal.
 
CHALMERS: We weren't on it -
 
AUSTIN: I know but you tried hard and you spent taxpayer money trying to get there.
 
CHALMERS: No we got on, we weren't on it, and we got on it as a consequence of those efforts. We're already in the OECD.
 
AUSTIN: Okay so hopefully Mathias Cormann will get on the OECD.
 
CHALMERS: We’ve tried to be constructive about it and we said it would be a good thing for an Australian to head the OECD but when we said that there was no mention of using a RAAF jet to fly him around Europe at the same time when the Government says we couldn't possibly use RAAF jets to fly home stranded Australians. I think we are well within our rights to point out the absurdity of the Government saying that jet is not available for people to get home, including vulnerable people, at the same time as it's flying Mathias around Europe doing lobbying that could be done in other ways. I think that's totally reasonable and I suspect the Australian people share our view on this.
 
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers is the federal member for Rankin, he's the shadow Treasury spokesperson, he has been detailing what he sees as government waste. The National Accounts are released this Wednesday. What do you think will be revealed?
 
CHALMERS: What we expect and what most economists expect on Wednesday is we'll see in the quarterly GDP number, the economic growth number, for the September quarter, there will be a relatively strong rebound. But as all of those economists know and many of your listeners would know that's partly a function of coming off such a low base. We've been in the deepest recession in almost a century and the quarterly figure reflects a change from the quarter before so it's from a really low base so we expect it to be a big number. But what that won't capture and what that won't make up for is all of the loss ground from most of this year in the economy, it won't undo some of the lasting damage done in the jobs market in particular. So our view is obviously we want to see the economy recover strongly. But the best indication of that is how people are actually faring in the economy, how they're faring in the labour market, whether they can provide for their loved ones, not just one quarterly GDP figure which comes off a low base.
 
AUSTIN: Does GDP really matter? A lot of people question if GDP is a useful measure of anything these days?
 
CHALMERS: I think it's useful but not in isolation, I've given speeches about this in the past where I've said let's not abandon some of the traditional ways that we measure the economy but why don't we get better with all the opportunities afforded to us by big data and the like, why don't we work out what really matters to us and measure that so that we've got a sort of a broader view of what we care about the economy. How inclusive that growth is, how sustainable that economic growth is, how broad it is and whether more people get a slice of the action. All of those sorts of things I think are really important. The GDP number matters but what I'm saying is it's not the only thing that matters and this number that we'll get on Wednesday, it will look like a strong number but it won't make up for the damage that's been done over the last six or nine months.
 
AUSTIN: How much is that damage reflected in the announcement by Qantas today that they're going to outsource 2,000 groundstaff jobs, many of them here in Brisbane? These are the sort of the people who are currently employed by Qantas but I'm assuming that they won't be, they'll have to either reapply for their jobs, or will simply be sacked but they've only made the announcement today but I know you're aware of.
 
CHALMERS: I'm aware of it, I've been aware of it for some time. I actually went and sat with a lot of these ground crew workers and at that little Coffee Club just at the entrance to Brisbane Airport a few weeks ago -
 
AUSTIN: That little service centre?
 
CHALMERS: Yeah I went and sat there and heard their concerns and their concerns are legitimate. They were asked to make a bid for their own jobs and some of them have been doing those jobs for decades. They explained to me the kind of family feel of that workforce and how disappointed they were that they had to bid for their jobs having done it with such pride and such unity for so long, when I sat with them and their TWU representatives. Today's a really sad day. They saw it coming. They knew that the bidding for their own work was not going to end well. That's what we see today and I just think it's terribly disappointing. 
 
AUSTIN: How can they be forced legally to bid to the jobs they already hold? How's that legal?
 
CHALMERS: I'm sure that Qantas had the legal avenues covered off I just don't think it's right.
 
AUSTIN: Will you be telling the head of Qantas Alan Joyce that?
 
CHALMERS: Well we've all been saying in one way or another, we've been saying it very publicly for some time now. A number of my colleagues and I have been saying it, and you think about it more broadly there's been a lot of assistance to the company from the taxpayer in the last year, we recognise they're under pressure given what's going on with COVID and we've thought it's appropriate for the taxpayer to lend a hand with JobKeeper and the like. But there's a broader issue here -
 
AUSTIN: How they repay the Australian people?
 
CHALMERS: Indeed but there's a broader issue. Aviation is one of those sectors which has been really kicked in the guts by COVID-19, we recognise that. One of the real absences here, whether it's Qantas, whether it's the workers that a company called dnata who've been excluded from JobKeeper, whether it's what happened with Virgin Airlines, there is no encompassing federal government plan for aviation. In that context, a lot of workers in aviation, not just these 2,000 as important as they are, but really right across the board are very worried about the future. I don't think the Government's given them any confidence that there's some kind of plan to get out of what's happening right now.
 
AUSTIN: So what's the alternative for Qantas if they didn't do this what are their alternative be?
 
CHALMERS: As I understand that they've been thinking about this for some time. The alternative is clearly to maintain their workforce. The workforce has been willing to be responsible and reasonable when it comes to shifts.  I've spoken to some of these guys directly about this, many of them had only been working a shift every once in a while recognising the difficulties on the company, they're prepared to do what they could to maintain their team, maintain their employment but these are very dark and disappointing days ahead for them unfortunately,
 
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers is my guest. He's the federal ALP shadow Treasury spokesperson, before I let you go I just want to ask you a couple of questions about China. First of all, what's Labor's position on the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson sending out what would normally be regarded as a troll tweet, a manipulated photographs showing an Australian soldier with a knife to the throat of an Afghan child holding a lamb.
 
CHALMERS: It was disgraceful. It was appalling, inflammatory, deeply offensive, gratuitous and it was really deeply inappropriate and we support the comments that the Prime Minister made earlier on today about how inappropriate disgraceful it was. My leader Anthony Albanese popped up in the parliament to say that he agrees. It was entirely beyond the pale.
 
AUSTIN: What's Labor's position on the federal government's handling of some of the diplomatic relationship issues and trade issues that we currently have with China?
 
CHALMERS: Well I think we understand why so many Australian exporters and employers are deeply anxious about what's happening to their markets. Wine is just the latest commodity which has been impacted by the difficulties in the relationship.
 
AUSTIN: We're not the only ones that have difficulties though, the United States has them, Canada has them and New Zealand has them.
 
CHALMERS: Ideally the Government would find a way to address these challenges via the usual diplomatic channels. Unfortunately for whatever reason we don't have a government or Prime Minister or a Trade Minister who is able to access those usual diplomatic channel  We haven't heard a plan for how they intend to clean up this mess and for as long as it goes on a lot of those Australian producers who are heavily reliant on Chinese markets are in for a very difficult time.
 
AUSTIN: When the Chinese counterparts won't pick up the telephone to even speak with diplomats, there's not much the Australian government can do other than wait is there?
 
CHALMERS: Well they don't seem to have any plan though. Waiting is not really a plan I don't think. If there's a better way to go about it let's hear it. As it stands right now, I speak to a lot of these companies around Australia who are very anxious about their workforce because we do rely heavily on that market and the relationship is in bad nick at the moment. That is self-evident. There's no use pretending otherwise. But we've got a government which now recognises the challenge but doesn't seem to have yet told us a compelling story about how to fix it. Let's hear that, if it's a good plan then we'll support it. 
 
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers thanks for time.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you.
 
ENDS