JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC TELEVISION BUDGET SPECIAL
TUESDAY, 29 MARCH 2022
SUBJECT: Federal Budget.
LEIGH SALES, HOST: For the Opposition's view of this year's election Budget, the Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, joins me now. Jim Chalmers, thanks for coming in. What's your overall assessment of the Government's economic plan?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Nothing in this Budget, Leigh, makes up for almost a decade now of attacks on people's wages and job security and pensions and Medicare. It's a pretty desperate political ploy when the country needed a plan for the future. It doesn't make up for the fact that people's real wages are falling. We've got a trillion dollars in debt with almost nothing to show for it. And all we've done here, all the Government's done here, is take a whole bunch of economic challenges before the election and push them to the other side of the election. So it's very short sighted, very desperate, very panicked and I think the country deserves much better.
SALES: I didn't interrupt you because it was your first answer, but nothing to show for it? I mean, when you look at what's happened around the world in the past two years, Australia has come out economically in a stellar position compared to almost every country in the world. And it's come out with better COVID outcomes than almost every country in the world. Doesn't the Government deserve some credit for that?
CHALMERS: No Leigh, we should do better than the rest of the world. We've got some tremendous advantages. You know, we've said, for example, when it comes to the unemployment rate, we want that to be as low as possible. That's been falling in welcome ways. But the big challenge in the economy, the big risk in the economy, the big risk of another three years of this government, is that wages are falling, real wages are falling again. We do have that trillion dollars in debt. I don't think we've got enough of a legacy to show for all of that money that's been borrowed. We've got this big cash splash before the election and hidden in the Budget papers is at least $3 billion in cuts which the Government won't come clean on until after the election. And so I don't think the self-congratulation from the Treasurer is warranted when Australian working families dealing with the skyrocketing cost of living and falling real wages are falling further and further behind.
SALES: You mentioned cost of living, the Treasury papers note, as I said to Josh Frydenberg, that household disposable income is up 11 percent in the past two years. Inflation is less than half of that. Are politicians overstating cost of living pressures for political reasons?
CHALMERS: Of course not. We've got petrol prices, grocery prices, building materials, rent all going through the roof at the same time as real wages are going backwards. And so we do have families under genuine cost of living pressure and the Government is now pretending to care about those cost of living pressures because Scott Morrison has to call an election in the next fortnight. If they cared about cost of living pressures they wouldn't have spent the best part of a decade coming after people's wages and job security.
SALES: The Government's cutting the fuel excise immediately with a plan to return it to normal in six months. Firstly, do you back it? And then secondly, if you're in government will you put it back to normal in six months’ time even though you will no doubt then be accused of slugging Australians with higher petrol prices?
CHALMERS: I think that's part of the motivation from the government, frankly, I think they're taking a challenge from one side of the election and pushing it to the other side of the election. Clearly we're not going to stand in the way of delivering relief for working families whose real wages are falling. We've foreshadowed that for some time, that we won't be standing in the way of that cost of living relief. But it is a fact, under a government I think of either political persuasion, it would be very hard to see any government being able to afford to maintain this fuel excise cut after the price of fuel goes up in September. I think one of the motivations from the government is to take this problem from March 2022 and just to delay it until September 2022. There'll be some cost of living relief in the interim but there'll be a difficult period when the price of fuel goes back up.
SALES: You might have heard me point out to Josh Frydenberg that Treasury is warning that the inflation risk to Australia is on the upside. Do you genuinely think that it's economically prudent for the nation to have government spending so high at the moment?
CHALMERS: I think it's the quality of spend that matters when it comes to inflation. That's why our economic plan, which is all about dealing with skill shortages, investing in the digital economy, cleaner and cheaper energy, a future made in Australia - all of these sorts of issues - child care reform to make it cheaper and more accessible, it's all about growing the economy strongly without adding unnecessarily to those inflationary pressures.
SALES: That is literally what the Treasurer just said. Almost the exact same form of words.
CHALMERS: They don't have a plan, Leigh, that goes beyond the May election. This is the most short-sighted Budget in memory. It has a shelf life of about six or seven weeks. That's how the government intended it. We've got a genuine plan for a better future which strengthens the economy without adding to those inflationary pressures. We recognise that there's a need for cost of living relief in the near term.
SALES: As Treasurer, would you be looking to reduce that spending as a percentage of GDP figure?
CHALMERS: I've said before Leigh - and I mean it, and my view's been reinforced tonight - the quantity of spending does matter, obviously, but what matters more is the quality of that spending. We've had almost a decade now of rorts and waste and mismanagement, money that would have been better invested in the future growth of this economy adding more opportunities for more people. So I'd like to reprioritise the Budget. I've already pointed to a few areas where the waste could be trimmed and so that we could get some of this investment because the quality of spending is what's been missing. There's been money spraying around for the best part of a decade now. The Government's racked up a trillion dollars in debt, a big chunk of that before the pandemic, but we haven't had that value for money for Australians and that's what I'd like to change.
SALES: Jim Chalmers, thanks for your time this evening.
CHALMERS: Thank you, Leigh.
ENDS
