JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE MORNINGS
MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2022
 
SUBJECTS: Those who know Scott Morrison best trust him least; The Morrison Government has become a bin fire of dysfunction and division and Australians aren’t getting a look-in; Liberal leadership; Josh Frydenberg talking about Labor and himself when Australians want him to talk about the issues impacting them; Real wages going backwards when the costs of living are skyrocketing; Jeta Gardens aged care COVID outbreak; COVIDSafe app; ABC and SBS funding; Back to school in Queensland.     
 

REBECCA LEVINGSTON, HOST: Liar. Fraud. Horrible. Hypocrite. Toxic texts describing Australia's Prime Minister. Have those messages changed the way you see Scott Morrison? Or perhaps the people sending the texts? And there's all kinds of allegations around who's doing what - Peter Dutton, Bob Carr, Barnaby Joyce of course is outed over the weekend. What does this internal conflict mean for the future of the Coalition, is a spill coming along? Jim Chalmers is Shadow Treasurer and federal Labor Member for Rankin. Jim, good morning.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good morning.

LEVINGSTON: Is the Prime Minister a liar?

CHALMERS: That's what his colleagues think, and I think that's what a lot of Australians think. This Government is a bit more like a bin fire than a government at the moment. It's not just Barnaby Joyce calling him a liar and a hypocrite - you've got cabinet ministers saying the same thing, you've got Gladys Berejiklian who is of the same view, the President of France. It's really becoming  pretty common view. When people are trying to work out which cabinet minister sent the text message about Scott Morrison, I think it could have come from any one of a number of people because the people who work closely with Scott Morrison, the people who know him the best, trust him the least and I think Australians are coming to that view too.

LEVINGSTON: Well, have you spoken to Bob Carr or tried to clarify his tweet yesterday, suggesting that Peter Dutton was responsible for the original text at the Press Club that called the Prime Minister a 'fraud' and 'a psycho'?

CHALMERS: I haven't spoken to Bob, and Bob can speak for himself. I think he's been out in media again this morning, if what I read on Twitter is right. So Bob can explain his own views. My view is that the Government has become this bin fire and what it means is that some of the big issues in our country that need attention - like skyrocketing cost of living, real wages going backwards, the crisis in aged care - all these issues aren't getting a look in and so ordinary Australians are paying the price for a government that's become this divided, and this disunited, and this dysfunctional.

LEVINGSTON: We'll get to aged care in a moment and in particular a home that's quite close to your electorate Jim Chalmers, but do you believe Peter Dutton when he says that Bob Carr's tweet is baseless, untrue and should be deleted?

CHALMERS: I don't know if was Peter Dutton or not, I've got no way of checking. That's for him to explain his position, for Bob Carr to explain his position. Ideally, we'd find out which cabinet minister has been dishing out these free character assessments of the Prime Minister, but again, it sounds like it's a pretty common view of Scott Morrison amongst the people who work most closely with him.

I think it's increasingly becoming the view of Australians and people are frustrated because they look at this Government, it's been there for almost a decade now, they know the Prime Minister went missing during the bushfires, missing at key stages of the pandemic, the Aged Care Minister's off at the cricket, all the rest of it, at the same time as some of these really important issues aren't getting a look-in. Whether it's Peter Dutton or not, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know who it was.

LEVINGSTON: Is there going to be a leadership spill do you think?

CHALMERS: Look, I wouldn't have thought so, but who knows with these characters. Nothing would really surprise you now. When you think about this smoking ruin of a government, nothing would really surprise you. Josh Frydenberg is out there this morning playing his usual game of look at me, Peter Dutton has been doing the same. There's certainly enough people who have worked Scott Morrison out and are not particularly supportive of him in the Government, but whether or not that leads to a spill or not I'm not sure.

LEVINGSTON: Labor would prefer Scott Morrison was the Prime Minister going into the election wouldn't they?

CHALMERS: Our view is that the Government can’t be salvaged. Even if they change the Liberal leader, even if they change the Nationals leader, there's no salvaging this Government. It would still be responsible for all of these unintended issues around wage stagnation, and costs of living, the aged care crisis, some of these other issues that we'll talk about. Whether they do ditch Scott Morrison and go on to their fourth Prime Minister in a bit under a decade, it's a matter for them. I think a lot of the problems would still be there. There's no salvaging a government that's become this bad and this disunited.

LEVINGSTON: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer. This is ABC Radio Brisbane, my name is Rebecca Levingston. You mentioned Josh Frydenberg there, this morning he's in the media and he's talking about you. He's talking about Labor's record in government, saying unemployment was 5.7% and rising, he says real wages were falling under the last Labor Government, and electricity prices doubled. Is he right?

CHALMERS: Poor old Josh hasn't noticed that real wages are falling now, on his watch. He likes to talk about Labor from a decade ago, and he likes to talk about himself, frankly, when Australians want him to talk about the issues that matter to them.

This is the guy that spends all of his time taking credit for recovery without actually doing his job to secure it. When it comes to jobs, and when it comes to the labour market, of course we want the unemployment rate to be as low as possible. But it doesn't tell the full story of almost ten years now where we've had all this wage stagnation, we've had all this job insecurity, and until he pulls his finger out and deals with that job insecurity, then we're going to continue to have real wages going backwards as they are now and wage stagnation into the future. That's what the Reserve Bank and others have been saying. It's not a recovery in the economy of people are left behind, and as it stands right now on his watch people aren't getting the wages growth that they need to provide for their loved ones.

LEVINGSTON: How would you stimulate wage growth?

CHALMERS: There's a couple of different ways, but most importantly you need to deal with that insecurity. We've got policies around labour hire, and the Fair Work Commission, and the gig economy, and other ways to try and make sure that we can make work more secure. A lot of people are working fewer hours than they'd like, might be casuals, when they'd rather be permanent part time. So we need to give people a pathway to that job security. That's part of the story, but also growing the economy in a broader and more inclusive way with things like cleaner and cheaper energy, and a better NBN, and cheaper childcare and more accessible childcare, investing in advanced manufacturing and the care economy, training people for opportunities because we've got these skills shortages around the country. All of these sorts of things would give us a chance to grow the economy the right way, a recovery that works for everyone, where we get some decent wages growth for the first time in a decade.

LEVINGSTON: If you make childcare cheaper, and if you pay aged care workers more, how do those two sets of figures eventually add up?

CHALMERS: You've got to work out what your priorities are in the Budget. If you take, for example, our childcare policy, that's not just some kind of handout as so many of your listeners would understand. It's absolutely crucial for people who are making that decision about whether they return to work or whether they do more days at work. The key part of that decision is an economic decision, and we want more workers in an economy where we've got people who are insecure, we've got skills shortages emerging, it's a really important economic reform. That's a big priority for us. When it comes to aged care, we've said one of the big glaring issues here is around the workforce. We've seen that, unfortunately, during the pandemic, but before that as well. So you need to make aged care a priority. This Government, as I said before, we've got an Aged Care Minister that ducks off to the cricket when people are dying in aged care facilities. You need to make it a priority, In the Budget, in the government, that's what we’d do.

LEVINGSTON: On aged care Jim Chalmers, Jeta Gardens, the home in Logan, it's not too far from your electorate. Fifteen residents have died. 100 residents and 82 staff members have tested positive to COVID 19. Everyone knows about it. Is anything going to change at that home this week?

CHALMERS: Well, it needs to. It's absolutely unacceptable what we're seeing at Jeta Gardens, just to the south of my electorate down there in Bethania. I think the really troubling thing is that the federal government has known since October that there were issues at Jeta Gardens, before these people passed and before these people contracted the virus.

There's been a lot of finger pointing and a lot of buck-passing, but if the federal government knew in October that there was an issue there, and people have been rightly raising their concerns with the place, then it seems very strange now that the federal Member and the federal government only seems to have started talking about it now. If they really cared about the people at Jeta Gardens there would have been action before now.

LEVINGSTON: Two quick questions just to finish off Jim Chalmers, because I know it's a big week for you and indeed all federal politicians, the first time federal parliament will sit in 2022. The COVIDSafe app. The Conversation website has crunched the numbers this morning about the federal government's app. It traced something like seventeen people in six months, it costs $7.7 million dollars. Was it a waste of taxpayer dollars?

CHALMERS: Of course it was. You think about the big failures in the pandemic, obviously testing, and quarantine, aspects of the economic support, and this is another big one - the tracing failure from the federal government, all that money wasted on an app that didn't work. I think it will stand out when we look back on this period, it'll look like one of the big failures of this period. When it comes to the waste of money this Government’s turned it into an art form. Whether it's that app, whether it's JobKeeper - tens of billions of dollars for companies that didn't need it- right across the board, there's lots that the Government should have and could have done better if they'd actually done their job and taken responsibility.

LEVINGSTON: They have found some money for the ABC and SBS though, our funding will be reinstated. Why do you think there's been a change of heart from the Coalition?

CHALMERS: Because we're five minutes to an election, because they want the votes of your listeners. After attacking public broadcasting for the best part of a decade, they're hoping that your listeners won't remember that and we get this last minute political patch-up, but I think people will see through it.

LEVINGSTON: Back to school for the kids and back to parliament.

CHALMERS: It's my Annabel's very first day at school today. Like those kids you played just before I came on, she's absolutely pumped about it, so all the best to all the families and kids who are going back today.

LEVINGSTON: Appreciate your time Jim Chalmers, thank you.

CHALMERS: And yours, thank you.

ENDS