E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE MORNINGS
THURSDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2020

SUBJECTS: School lunches.

REBECCA LEVINGSTON, ABC BRISBANE: Here's a Logan lad, a Logan lad done good. Jim Chalmers, he is now Australia's Shadow Treasurer and he's the Member for Rankin. Good morning, Jim.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good morning, Rebecca, and thanks for broadcasting from Logan.

LEVINGSTON: I was talking to a school mum yesterday who had been chatting to a teacher who was upset at the number of kids who were turning up to school without lunch. This is Australia in 2020 and kids are going to an average state school without lunch. For you as the Shadow Treasurer of Australia, what's your reaction to that?

CHALMERS: Obviously it's not good enough. There are a lot of groups who run breakfast clubs in our schools. From time to time I'll go and lend a hand where I can at Berrinba East State School or St Francis' or other schools - there's a lot of breakfast clubs. What they recognise is that there are a lot of kids coming to school hungry and that means they find it really hard to concentrate and it makes it really hard for them to do well. It is a big challenge. It's one of those challenges though that we have a response to. It's not an unfixable problem.

LEVINGSTON: Yes, but it speaks to a much bigger challenge, doesn't it? Of course, it's not down to one person or one politician to solve that. It's more of a broader observation about where we're at in the lucky country. I'm curious for you in the role that you have, do you have a gut reaction, like "I want to solve this?" or is it more about budget surpluses and jobs on a grand scale?

CHALMERS: No, I really come at it the first way you described it. Almost everything that I believe in and care about has in some way or another come from the community I grew up in. I've spent most of my 41 years in Logan. I grew up there. I was born there. I think that gives me an understanding of some of the fairly substantial challenges that we have. Every community has its challenges but we've got some pockets of disadvantage. We've got issues around intergenerational disadvantage which is really the main thing I care about. The main thing I want to change in this country is the idea that kids can get born into a situation that they can't change. That would be a horrific outcome for a country like ours, as wealthy as we are, as successful as we are. That's the thing that we really need to crack.

ENDS