JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE DRIVE
MONDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2021
SUBJECTS: Christmas cards; Home quarantine; Labor’s Powering Australia plan; Labor’s Electric Car Discount.
STEVE AUSTIN, HOST: Time to talk federal politics with Labor's Jim Chalmers. I want to ask about the announcement about Labor's climate change policy, announced late last week was it Friday or Saturday, but Jim Chalmers before I do that can I ask you about Christmas cards? I know as a politician there's a certain element of, you know, you have to send a certain level of Christmas cards to people, but to family and friends Jim - non work related ones - do you do it or does your wife do it?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Neither of us do it.
AUSTIN: Neither of us, did you say?
CHALMERS: No, I send work Christmas cards but we don't send Christmas cards to our mates or to our family. I think a phone call, or we might see family and friends - a bit like one of the people that texted in - but we don't kind of send hundreds of cards to our friends.
AUSTIN: Okay. But you do send sort of business or professional cards as a federal Member of Parliament.
CHALMERS: It's funny that you ask Steve, because I'm literally right now looking at a stack of about 500.
(LAUGHTER)
AUSTIN: Commiserations!
(LAUGHTER)
CHALMERS: That's going to be my evening tonight and probably the next few nights. Particularly locally, all the principals of the schools, heads of community groups, a lot of constituents. If constituents send me a card I try and send them one back, that sort of thing.
AUSTIN: Okay. This is one of the times where I really feel for politicians because I don't think people understand.
CHALMERS: I think you might be on your Pat Malone there, Steve!
(LAUGHTER)
CHALMERS: I don't think there's a lot of sympathy.
AUSTIN: You've got a stack of 500 Christmas cards, I'd find that a nightmare, but you sort of run the risk of offending some community group or someone who once sent you an email if they don't get something from you, I guess.
CHALMERS: For me, I mean this very genuinely Steve, it's a bit like what you said before. When you're actually signing the cards it makes you think of your connection with that person or that organisation.
AUSTIN: Yep.
CHALMERS: I've done the school principals so far and it's enjoyable because when you're writing it you remember the last few times you spoke to a certain principal, or something great that happened at their school, or some event you went to. So I don't think many of us would see it as a chore, I think most people would enjoy it otherwise they wouldn't do it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, in my mind it's about the connection. I send personal ones but I don't send professional ones because I want the person to know, look I haven't seen you but you mean a great deal to me. And it's interesting how many people I'm sort of slowly getting crossed off my list, when you haven't heard from them in a few years it's quite a difficult process I'm finding.
CHALMERS: I send birthday cards to seniors in my electorate and one of the things you notice about that is quite often somebody will say I'm on my own now and yours is the only card that I get. Someone will ring the office or they'll send you a nice email and that really brings home to you how much something like that can mean to someone.
AUSTIN: My guest is Jim Chalmers. Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasury Spokesperson for federal Labor and the federal Member for Rankin, who is currently in home quarantine and for his sins he has to write 500 Christmas cards.
CHALMERS: It's meatball night tonight, Steve. I'm making meatballs at the moment. I'm in home quarantine with three youngsters and my task after I get off the phone to you, I've got a Zoom speech to give tonight, but in between that I'm making meatballs. I'm looking forward to it.
AUSTIN: Good luck. Alright. On the weekend, federal Labor - and today in the Press Club - Labor put more flesh on the bones of your climate change policy. You've announced that if Labor is elected you will reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030. The Coalition has a target by 2030 of 26% to 28%. This level is slightly less than the one Labor took to the last federal election. Tell me why.
CHALMERS: Part of the reason is because at the last election we had 11 years to get there, we had a longer run up to get to 45%. By the time of the next election, and hopefully a change of government, there'll be eight years left between then and 2030. What we wanted to do - and we obviously spent a lot of time working on this policy - is we wanted to work out what were the elements of the policy that could get us not just substantial reductions in emissions, but substantial reductions in power prices, plus more jobs, and more investment, more renewable energy, and work out what we can meaningfully do there and what target that would lead to. So that's how we got to 43% and we think that is the right target, that strikes the right level of ambition. We've done all this economic modelling, we've got an independent expert economic modeller to do all of the work, to show that what we are proposing has a massive upside for the economy, power prices, and jobs, and investment, and renewables, as well as getting those emissions down.
AUSTIN: Who did the work for you?
CHALMERS: A company called RepuTex. They're a very, very, well-regarded, credible, economic modellers who do work for governments of all persuasions. They've got a particular expertise in energy. So we had that done at arm's length. We had that work done because when we released our policy on Friday, we wanted to be able to show the opportunities for Australia and for Australians in adopting this policy that we're putting forward.
AUSTIN: Your leader Anthony Albanese said the plan would create 604,000 jobs, and five out of six of them in the regions. Which regions here in Queensland will have jobs created?
CHALMERS: All the regions of Queensland. That, I think, is the big really important point that often gets missed. People assume wrongly that if we do something meaningful on cleaner and cheaper energy, then some parts of Australia will win and some parts of regional Australia will lose. But what our modelling shows, and what the Business Council of Australia's modelling shows, is that regions like regional Queensland stand to be the biggest beneficiary of these hundreds of thousands of additional jobs, and the $76 billion in new investment that's expected from our plan. As well as all Australians benefiting from lower electricity costs. Whether it's our modelling done externally and independently or the BCA’s modelling, it all shows the same thing - that regional Australia can be the big winners from what we're proposing.
AUSTIN: Jennie George has questioned the figure about 604,000 jobs, she says it's unbelievable, quote-unquote. Jennie says that the multiplier effect used in your promise of 540,000 indirect jobs is so high as to make it unbelievable. Now Jennie George is the former head of the ACTU in Australia, very inclined to Labor, why is she wrong and your model is right?
CHALMERS: First of all, I've got a mountain of respect for Jennie, who for all the reasons you describe is a big deal in our movement. But Jenny is not right on this occasion. We're talking about independent modellers who have long-standing expertise in the detailed modelling that they conducted on our behalf. These are not numbers that Labor created or that Labor analysis threw up, these are numbers produced by the independent economic modellers, so I'm inclined to believe them.
AUSTIN: The indirect job multipliers is the thing she's particularly critiquing. So the overall job numbers were 604,000 but supposedly on your modelling 540,000 are indirect jobs. She says this is unbelievable. So what would be the indirect jobs that would come from your climate change policy, can you sort of label them for me?
CHALMERS: They're all the jobs that hang off the new industries and new economic activity that we'd been creating - whether it's renewable energy, whether it's cleaner and cheaper energy of all sorts.
AUSTIN: So what are they? Electronic engineers? Are they solar construction? Powerline construction, what are they?
CHALMERS: All of the trades are obviously relevant here. Clearly, some of the traditional industries like mining will be mining and smelting products which are important for cleaner and cheaper energy, as you and I have spoken about before. The hundreds of thousands of new jobs made possible by finally taking the handbrake of investment when it comes to cleaner and cheaper energy will be felt all around the country. And if people don't want to take RepuTex's word for it - I encourage them to, do but if they don't want to - the Business Council came to very similar conclusions with their modelling - hundreds of 1000s of jobs, direct and indirect, created by giving business and the broader community more investment certainly, getting power prices down, getting more renewables into the system. This is the jobs opportunity that Chris Bowen was talking about at the Press Club today, and that Anthony and I and others have been talking about for some time. We would be mad to turn our back on the immense possibilities and opportunities for more Australians in more parts of Australia if we didn't go down this path.
AUSTIN: My guest is Jim Chalmers, he's the Shadow Treasury Spokesperson for federal Labor. He's also the Member for Rankin, the federal electorate here in Queensland. We're talking about the climate change policy announced by federal Labor on Friday. How will this reduce the amount of coal that Australia exports? This is not a jobs program, it's a climate change program, and it's a climate change program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 emissions. So how will this policy reduce the amount of coal that Australia exports?
CHALMERS: I'm happy to come to the coal question, but I need to pull you up there. It is a jobs policy, it is an energy policy, it is an investment policy, and yes it is a policy to get emissions down, obviously. But it's all of those things at once. And when it comes to coal, there is nothing in our policy itself which would reduce the world's appetite for coal. The decisions about how much coal we sell in the world market will be made by our customers in the boardrooms of Tokyo and around the world. And what we're proposing...
AUSTIN: So this won't reduce coal demand at all?
CHALMERS: What we've announced will not impact on our coal exports. The decisions about coal exports are made by others. For as long as there's a global market, our businesses will sell into it. Our policy is not about shutting down coal mines. It's not about shutting down power stations. Our policy is about building that additional energy capacity to get our energy mix cleaner and cheaper. Our exports will be determined, as I keep saying, by decisions made around the world by our customers.
AUSTIN: So is this because you know that Australia actually needs the revenue from coal exports?
CHALMERS: I think it just reflects the reality that there will be appetite for our coal for some time. Our responsibility is to work out how we can make our energy mix here cleaner and cheaper, how we can introduce additional sources of renewable energy without abandoning some of those traditional strengths, and I think the direction of travel around the world is obvious. There is more appetite for renewable energy around the world, but there is still a market for our coal. Remembering as well that there are two kinds of coal - thermal and met coal, steelmaking coal - and so there will be a lot of appetite for that for some time and we will continue to sell into those markets.
AUSTIN: So how does it help climate change?
CHALMERS: Because the additional energy that we're introducing into the system is more and more likely to be renewable energy. And what the mechanism that we're using here - the thing called a safeguard mechanism - is to recognise that for a couple of hundreds of the biggest emitters in Australia, most of which already have plans of their own to reduce their own emissions, they will be subject to a reduction of emissions over time. That's the safeguard mechanism that the Government introduced. We want it to work as it was originally intended. Most of the entities and businesses that we're talking about here have got their own emissions reductions plan, and what our policy does will support them and provide some certainty around that.
AUSTIN: Is there anything in this policy that will encourage or assist the Queensland Government, which also has a 2030 target for 50% renewable by 2030? In which case they'll have to shut down some of the coal-fired power stations in Queensland. Is there anything in this policy that helps them do that?
CHALMERS: There's nothing in the policy that closes down power stations faster than is already intended. What our policy will do, whether it's Queensland or in other parts of Australia, is it will encourage companies, when they're adding new sources of energy, for that new source of energy to be renewable energy.
AUSTIN: My guest is Labor's Jim Chalmers. Given that new forms of energy is sort of what you see as the key element of this policy, will a Labor Government lower the tax rate on electric vehicles?
CHALMERS: Yes. That’s the short answer to that. That’s our policy.
AUSTIN: To what?
CHALMERS: What we're saying, is we would exempt electric vehicles from the import tariff. If you think about that in an example, with a $50,000 electric vehicle there's about $2,000 of import tariff on that. If your business is providing the EV we will also exempt that EV from fringe benefits tax, which is a saving of about $9,000 per vehicle to the business. So we're talking about thousands of dollars in savings to make EVs cheaper because what we know and what I think everybody knows is that there's an appetite for people to drive EVs, but for the time being they're a little bit out of reach of people when it comes to the cost. So we want to make them cheaper. Once we do that, and we turbocharged the appetite for them, then it's more likely that the big manufacturers will sell more choice into our market, which we need as well. We're not at the front of the queue when it comes to these manufacturers at the moment. We don't have all the choice that we would like, or the volume that we would like, and part of that is because a lot of people who might want to get one can't quite afford one. So our policy is to take thousands of dollars off the price by exempting them from key taxes.
AUSTIN: So let me just make this very clear. Your plan to lower the tax on electric vehicles, electric cars, in Australia, should you be elected, is to exempt them from the import tariff, which is on average around about $2,000.
CHALMERS: Correct.
AUSTIN: And business to exempt them from fringe benefit tax, which is about $9,000 per vehicle.
CHALMERS: Correct.
AUSTIN: I'll leave it there. Jim Chalmers, thanks for your time.
CHALMERS: Thanks for your time, Steve.
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers is Labor's Shadow Treasury Spokesperson and the Member for Rankin.
ENDS
