JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE DRIVE
MONDAY, 9 AUGUST 2021
SUBJECTS: Sports funding; Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games; Morrison Government’s JobKeeper waste and secrecy.
STEVE AUSTIN, HOST: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasury Spokesperson and federal Member for Rankin. Jim, let me ask you about this. Now that the Olympics is over, there's still the Paralympics to come in Tokyo, but what are your thoughts on the way we fund our sports stars at the moment? They get paid a bit of money if they got gold, silver or bronze at the Olympics. How does Labor see the funding of Australian athletes in sport?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: First of all, I'm pleased you didn't ask me to describe CrossFit, Steve. I don't know if you've seen the inside of a CrossFit gym but if you look at me, I obviously haven't!
AUSTIN: You're fitter than I am!
CHALMERS: I thought Linda's contribution from a moment ago sort of hit the nail on the head when it comes to sports funding. There's so much rivalry between the various codes and sports. There's a big difference between sports that have big TV deals and can spray some money around versus other sports which aren't on TV every weekend and aren’t getting access to that kind of money. The mass participation sports versus the more kind of specialist sports. So it's a really difficult, highly politically charged environment that the sports administrators are operating in. I think anyone who looks at how we went in the Olympics, given the really terrific performance of the athletes, would conclude that we're not getting it totally wrong. If we can produce a team like that from our population then we're obviously doing something right.
AUSTIN: But eleven of the athletes basically got, were able to get, their medal because Gina Rinehart had to carry them financially.
CHALMERS: That's been part of the story in terms of private sponsorship. That's the most prominent example, but there's private sponsorship right throughout the team. There's sponsorship by different organisations and bodies. The best way to think about it is now is the time, if we're 11 years from our part of the world hosting the Games, now's a good time to think about where we've got the funding arrangements and to make sure we're striking the right balance between grassroots participation and elite sports. We need to make sure we get the AIS right. There's a push on amongst senior administrators that the AIS actually be moved from Canberra to South East Queensland, to the Gold Coast effectively.
AUSTIN: The Chief Executive lives here in Queensland anyhow at the moment.
CHALMERS: Why would you want to live anywhere else? There's that push on and people are thinking creatively about how we get the funding right. How we get the training right. But I think if you look at that team’s performance let’s not assume we got it all wrong. One of the memories that I was thinking about when Patty Mills had that amazing bronze medal game for the Australian Boomers in basketball, is I actually went along in 2006 to the AIS when he was a teenager playing for the AIS team in the state league. And I saw Patty Mills play for the AIS. That’s been a really successful program, the basketball program there. But others are trying to work out how can we get more out of the AIS. You mentioned in the United Kingdom before, they actually copied our AIS concept all those years ago and that's one of the reasons why they became so successful.
AUSTIN: Listeners tell me they're running a lottery in the UK, which seems like a reasonable option.
CHALMERS: A lot of people are focused on the UK example but I think once you start doing that for sport, I think a lot of people say well what about the thing that I would rather spend money on, could we have a lottery for that instead. So it invites all of the same kind of competition for scarce funds, which is inevitable in some ways. Let's just get the regular funding right, try and strike all those right balances, and let's recognise that it's a ten year investment to be competitive in the Brisbane Olympics. So we need to do that thinking now, whether it's the location of the AIS or some other way that we might be able to do things better, then let’s have the conversation.
AUSTIN: Here's what actually nags at the back of my head. So, back in the 1980s, and yes I'm old enough to remember the 1980s, you were probably just born then, Jim Chalmers.
CHALMERS: No, I'm a child of the 70s.
AUSTIN: So back then in the 80s, when Australia did pretty poorly at one of the Olympics, I think it was the Los Angeles Olympics but I can't remember well, there was a huge outcry. There was a KPMG bigwig by the name of John Crawford, who produced what was called the Crawford Report, but he recommended we tip the funding models for Australia on its head and he said stop giving all the money to the top end sport codes and put it right down into the grassroots sporting clubs in the community, so they could have decent sporting facilities for boys and girls. So they could have proper gyms, proper change rooms, proper fields, proper equipment, were well-funded. And wait. Let it grow over time and it's a much fairer, more equitable approach. But we still didn't do enough when he produced this brilliant report. And consequently, who gets all the money. Rugby League, Aussies rules, cricket, the Australian Institute of Sport, all these big organisations that all have lobbyists, they still suck up all the big money. It produces great sports and great athletes, but it just doesn't seem like the Australian way of fairness.
CHALMERS: I think a big part of the story with funding for the footy codes is they get those big TV deals as I said before, so a lot of that money that people see in those sports is a function of those deals. More broadly, if the argument is we can do better to fund grassroots sports then I think that's something that I would agree with. I think it was Einstein who said, if you want to have a really great idea, have lots of ideas. I think it's the same for if you want to have a really great elite athlete, then have lots of athletes at the grassroots level. There's also flow on benefits for preventative health and all those other things that we care about in my community. We have a big issue with childhood obesity and all the health problems that come with that. I think it was Mal that was talking to you.
AUSTIN: Mal from Noosa.
CHALMERS: Mal was a bit worried about screen time and how do we get kids out the house. I've got a six year old boy and I worry about that almost daily, so I kind of see where Mal is coming from too. If there's a way to do a better job funding grassroots sports, then great. I think a lot of that money that people think is coming from government is actually coming from TV.
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers is Labor's Shadow Treasury Spokesperson. He's also the federal Labor Member for Rankin, the electorate on the Southside here in Brisbane. Let me ask you about Canberra, so you're in Canberra at the moment I assume Jim Chalmers?
CHALMERS: I am, yes. Parliament's sitting today until Thursday.
AUSTIN: All right, so the JobKeeper wage subsidies last year were credited with saving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Australians but billions of dollars were also paid to businesses that it turned out didn't need it. Now independent Senator Rex Patrick successfully had an amendment put to a Government bill for the scheme, to allow the bill to be more transparent. It was allowed to sort of show who and what businesses got the money. The Coalition rejected it, and it turns out, Labor has done the same as well after initially having Andrew Leigh, your Shadow Finance Spokesperson, name a whole lot of people in federal parliament for taking the money and not actually needing it. Why has Labor backflipped on this transparency move?
CHALMERS: Well, it's been more complex than that Steve. What this bill in the Senate was all about was getting the new types of support out the door for workers and small businesses that need it. There was a transparency amendment put on that by Rex Patrick. It was a good one frankly, and what we're trying to do is to try and achieve the same objective of getting that transparency, so we know where the money's going to do it's not a secret, those businesses who are getting it and don't need it. But also we had to balance that up against not delaying the support getting out the door to lots of small businesses around Australia that have been waiting too long already. What we didn't want the Government to do was to use our amendment as an excuse to delay the actual money getting out the door. So, like a lot of things in the Senate, you've got to make a difficult, on-balance call. We support the money getting out the door, we'll try and get the transparency measure up another way. That should be possible in one way or another. We do want there to be more transparency. JobKeeper was a good program but there was too much waste in it. The Government has not tried to retrieve those billions of dollars that they gave to the businesses that are already profitable and didn't need help.
AUSTIN: So allow them to be named.
CHALMERS: We want them to be named, Steve. We've said that repeatedly. You mentioned the campaign that we've been running. The issue here is how do we get that support out the door for businesses that genuinely need it, and a lot do, given the lockdowns right around Australia. So, how do we get that money out the door and make sure there's transparency. It's not always as simple as what people would assume. And so, what we tried to do, was not hold it up. And we'll try and get the transparency measures up another way.
AUSTIN: Rex Patrick, the independent Senator, says the Coalition Senators tell him that they love it when this happens because you guys fold every time. Have a listen to this.
“I love playing chicken with the Labor Party because they always swerve. You have no courage. You need to stand up and actually support something that you believe in.”
AUSTIN: That was Rex Patrick today. Jim Chalmers, his point is that you guys say you're for it but when the pressure is on you always find an excuse for not standing for it?
CHALMERS: I understand his point. I've got a bit of time for Rex, to be honest with you Steve. I know him a little bit.
AUSTIN: He's calling you political cowards, Jim Chalmers.
CHALMERS: No, but like all crossbench Senators, they've got to get attention to their issues. Many of them are up for re-election so they say those sorts of things. I don't think any objective observer, who's paid attention in the last eighteen months or so, would say that Labor hasn't been the most prominent voice when it comes to JobKeeper payments to businesses that don't need it. You can say what you like and quote conversations that nobody else was part of, but at the end of the day we have been pushing hard for transparency. We've passed through the Senate transparency measures, we've done all kinds of things. We intend to continue with that because the Government's wasted a lot of money here, in an otherwise important program, and we have chased them for it harder than anyone.
AUSTIN: So what was the purpose of Andrew Leigh's campaign, highlighting all of those businesses that received JobKeeper money, that simply used the money to improve their share price and pay money back to shareholders?
CHALMERS: A small minority of those companies paid some money back, which was important. We've tried to shame the Government into chasing harder against those businesses that don't need it.
AUSTIN: But what they did was legal wasn't it, Jim Chalmers. They weren't doing anything illegal. It’s entirely within the rules.
CHALMERS: The reason for that is the JobKeeper legislation was actually a very basic piece of legislation that let the Treasurer determine the rules, the eligibility and all the rest of it, himself. So the parliament didn't have a say in every element of the implementation of JobKeeper, it was up to the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. This is the same Treasurer, and the same Government, that if you owed $100 in the Robodebt scandal they hounded some people unfortunately to death for that money. But when businesses make out like bandits on JobKeeper payments that they didn't need because their profits were rising, the Government gives them a free pass. That's what Andrew's campaign has been about. That's what Labor's campaign has been about. We want more transparency. There's more than one way to get transparency, in a way that doesn't jeopardise support getting out the door to people and businesses that genuinely need it.
AUSTIN: Meanwhile, a whole raft of small businesses, sole operators, mum and dad operators, didn't qualify for JobKeeper. It doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem like the Australian way.
CHALMERS: Totally, and the reason that the Government gave for not being able to include casuals, not being able to include university workers, not being able to include aviation workers, was that they didn't have the money to do it. At the same time as billions of dollars were being sprayed around to big businesses that didn't need it. That's what we've been saying for some time. This is the transparency campaign that we've been on, because to say to those businesses or workers that missed out ‘we couldn't afford to support you’ at the same time as billions of dollars were going into businesses that didn't need it, I think people have got a right to be furious about that.
AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers, thanks for your time once again.
CHALMERS: Thank you, Steve.
ENDS
