E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE MORNINGS
MONDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2020
SUBJECTS: Growing up in Logan; School lunch and breakfast programs; ‘Logan Together’; Intergenerational disadvantage; Economic policy; Peter Beattie, Wayne Swan and Anthony Albanese.
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. There are a lot of people in our community who understand these issues and are prepared to do something about it. I'll give you one quick example. There's a group called Logan Together. It's run by a terrific guy called Matthew Cox. It's got a whole team of service providers and what they say is if we can change the life prospects of kids under eight years old, we can change almost anything about our community. If we intervene and guide as early as we can, we can change those kids' lives and we can try and break that intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. At the end of our professional lives, whether it's me in politics, people working with Logan Together, or our teachers, if we can do that I think we’ll be pretty pleased with ourselves.
LEVINGSTON: Jim Chalmers, Australia's Shadow Treasurer. He's also the member for Rankin, born in Logan. We're talking about his mantra, his approach to money and politics. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison says if you have a go, you'll get a go. Do you believe that?
CHALMERS: I think it's a marketing term and not to be too partisan about it, slogans won't fix the challenges that we've got in Logan or in communities like Logan around Australia. He doesn’t have the kind of policies that will create that situation. It's not good enough that we've got fewer apprenticeships now than we had when this Government came to office. It's not good enough that we still have a Budget where some of the big multinational corporations don't pay any tax or pay very little tax.
LEVINGSTON: Yes but every Government has talked about that problem. Why are those multinationals still not paying tax?
CHALMERS: There have been steps taken and policy changes but clearly more can be done. The reason I raise that in this context, talking about a local community like Logan, is we need to give people the sense that the economy and the Budget is being managed in their interest. I try and be as engaged as I can with my community. For those people who know what my other job is as the Shadow Treasurer, the real sense I get from people is they feel like the Government is being run for the benefit of somebody else at their expense and that's wrong. I want to shift that. I want to turn that around. That's why so much of what we talk about in the economy, or in the Budget, or in policy more broadly has to be about how we write a big national success story where the people of Logan and communities like it feel like they have a genuine place in that success story and where they get a slice of the action when it comes to decently growing the economy.
LEVINGSTON: Yeah. Let me play you just 30 seconds of someone who I reckon would like a slice of the action. This is Karen who called into ABC Radio Brisbane the other day off the back of a conversation that started with people saying, I don't really like people going through my recycling bin, that's happening in my suburbs, and then Karen picked up the phone.
RECORDING OF KAREN: I call myself a ‘bin chicken’ after someone called me that and I decided to own it.
RECORDING OF LEVINGSTON: Yeah. Why not? Have it with pride. What are you looking for in other people's bins?
RECORDING OF KAREN: The recyclables and if anyone throws out any small electrical equipment I also scrap those as well. The thing that upsets me the most is that it's not a job you do if you have other choices really. It appals me that I get yelled at and sworn at when the first thought in their head would be, geez the poor person is doing that and they're not doing something else, they must be really hard up.
LEVINGSTON: So that's Karen, the proud ‘bin chicken’. Jim Chalmers, what's your reaction to that?
CHALMERS: I like where Karen's coming from. I think she made a lot of sense in a couple of different ways. First of all, nobody wants to be doing that but people will do what they need to do.
LEVINGSTON: They'll have a go to get a go?
CHALMERS: They'll have a go to get a go. They'll do what's necessary. It's a very determined community. There's a real sense of 'do what you need to do to get by'. Karen's clearly being judged by for what she's doing. We need a bit less of that and we need a bit more understanding that different people will do different things to get by. That's totally understandable. Our job as people who represent the community is to provide opportunities for people so that they don't have to do some of these things that they don't want to do.
LEVINGSTON: Jim Chalmers, Australia's Shadow Treasurer. He comes with Labor political pedigree, if you like. He's worked under Kim Beazley, alongside Wayne Swan and Peter Beattie. What did Peter Beattie teach you about politics?
CHALMERS: I worked in his department. I was a public servant then. I knock around a bit with Peter now, but I didn't really much then. I was more in the public service side.
LEVINGSTON: I'm sure it gives you some advice from day-to-day.
CHALMERS: I admire Peter's enthusiasm. He is a positive, future focussed, enthusiastic spruiker of opportunities and that's what I like about him.
LEVINGSTON: As Madonna King said once to me, he could sell ice to Eskimos. Wayne Swan, the best Treasurer in the world. He won an award for that.
CHALMERS: He did.
LEVINGSTON: You want to be the Treasurer of Australia. What did Wayne Swan teach you?
CHALMERS: Wayne was a really dogged, hardworking Treasurer but the most important thing about him was he never forgot where he came from. He never forgot who sent him to Canberra. He never forgot who he was there to represent. All those decisions which turned out to be such a big part of saving Australia from a recession during the Global Financial Crisis were because he could remember the recession of the early 1990s. A lot of his friends lost jobs and couldn't find another job and he was really guided by that. He never lost touch. When I think about what I want to do, how I want to represent my community and how I want my community of Logan to be proud of what we do together, then that's a really important model for me.
LEVINGSTON: How much time do you get to spend in Logan these days? Do you still live there?
CHALMERS: Of course! I live in Logan. I've lived in about five or six different places in my electorate. I live in a suburb called Springwood which is not far from where you're broadcasting.
LEVINGSTON: There'll be a lot of people thinking, you live there, but you've probably got other houses elsewhere, maybe you spend a lot of time in Canberra. Your daily travel allowance probably matches the weekly income of some of your constituents. Late at night, in your honest moments, how do you reflect on the fact that you were a kid from Logan who's earning way more than most kids probably dream of?
CHALMERS: Yeah I'm conscious of that. I'm not pretending that's not the case. My answer to that is we need to do better for people who are doing it tough. For example, one of the reasons that we think Newstart's inadequate is because there is too big a gap between people doing it tough and people doing well. We want people to do well. We want people not just to get by, but we want them to get ahead. The Labor Party really is about more people doing well for themselves and for their families. I do lie awake thinking about people in our community doing it tough. I think I have a responsibility to them to represent them when I do go to Canberra. The Canberra part is compulsory, unfortunately. 18 or 20 weeks a year away from family and away from Logan but that's compulsory. The value I get in this job is really the work I do locally.
LEVINGSTON: Is that hard? You've got a wife and three children.
CHALMERS: Yeah, three little ones. Yeah.
LEVINGSTON: How do you manage that juggle as a dad?
CHALMERS: Probably badly like a lot of parents with busy lives that take them out of town but I do my best. One of my New Year's resolutions is to try and have a bit less time on the phone, a bit more time reading to the kids. I probably averaged about three books a week last year. I'd like to try and average more like three books a night when I'm home. One of the things I've really discovered since the kids arrived - I've got three under five - you spend a lot of time in local parks and doing activities with the kids, you meet a heap of other parents and it's a real icebreaker. In the last five years after having kids, people are more likely to come up to you and talk to you about things they care about. They know that you're a federal politician, but you're there at Underwood Park with your children. It makes you more accessible when you're out and about in the community with your kids.
LEVINGSTON: Jim Chalmers, years ago I was talking to someone who's well-connected in politics and they said to me, watch Jim Chalmers. He's Labor's best chance of leading the country. Do you want to be the Prime Minister of Australia one day?
CHALMERS: No, I want to be the Treasurer of Australia. I want that to be in an Albanese Government. It's no secret that after the last election I thought about putting my hand up to lead the Labor Party and one of the reasons it wasn't that difficult a decision in the end is because I think Anthony is going to be a really great Prime Minister. Ever since I started thinking about being involved in politics, I wanted to be a senior part of a really good Cabinet under a really good Prime Minister. I think Anthony's got the capacity to do that and that's what I want to do.
LEVINGSTON: Jim Chalmers, good to catch up. Thank you.
CHALMERS: Thank you, Rebecca.
ENDS
