SUBJECT/S: Wentworth by-election; polls; Labor’s fairer and more responsible Budget alternative; TPP.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: We are joined now from Parliament House by the Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers. Jim Chalmers, good morning.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Good morning, Michael.
 
ROWLAND: Is Bill Shorten running dead in Wentworth?
 
CHALMERS: Not at all, Michael. I mean we are contesting Wentworth, we’ve got a great candidate there in Tim Murray, an outstanding local person and we're doing what we can to convince the people in Wentworth that we are worth supporting. It is a remarkable thing that in Liberal heartland, a seat with such a massive Liberal margin, which has been held by the Liberal Party for so long, that we are even having a conversation about what might happen on the weekend in Wentworth. That's a reflection of the so-called Muppet Show on the other side and the fact that people have an opportunity to send a message to the Liberal Party that their chaos and disunity and their division is not what we want in this country. 
 
ROWLAND: I ask that question because as you know Bill Shorten has yet to make a visit to Wentworth electorate to back his candidate Tim Murray. If he was sharing your opinions of the importance of it and wanting to boost the Labor vote, surely like the Prime Minister has done, he would make several visits to the seat?
 
CHALMERS: Well, I think Bill as made a big contribution to the Wentworth campaign by announcing policies like our policy for universal access for three- and four-year-olds for preschool, things like our game changing investment in school education. Right across-the-board, he's made a number of announcements in the last few weeks since parliament last sat. I think the people of Wentworth are looking for that kind of leadership. They're looking for leadership on climate change as well and not the shambles that they see on the other side. So I think whatever happens on Saturday in Wentworth, it is remarkable that it is even up for grabs given it has been a Liberal seat for so long and it has a massive Liberal margin.
ROWLAND: Two opinion polls out today, Newspoll and IPSOS, a slight improvement for the government in Newspoll. It goes the other way in IPSOS. Is the biggest danger for the Labor Party, complacency setting in? 
 
CHALMERS: Not at all Michael. We don't take anybody's support for granted. We have been working our tails off for years now on good policy which puts middle Australia at the absolute centre of our plans for the future. We don't obsess about the polls whether we're up by a lot or up by a little or somewhere in-between, we have always maintained that focus on people, on policy and on reversing Scott Morrison's cuts to schools and hospitals and penalty rates.
 
ROWLAND: The treasurer Josh Frydenberg is today having another go at Labor's plan to go after dividend imputation if you win government claiming that 900,000 mainly small families in Australia will be affected. 80, according to the Treasury's figures, 84% of those on incomes of less than $37,000. What do you say to the criticisms?
 
CHALMERS: Josh has only been the treasurer for a couple of months and he spent almost all of that time obsessing about the Labor Party. And when you have a Treasurer who is so obsessed with Labor you can see why national debt has doubled under the Liberal Party. We have put our policy out there some months ago. We have explained why we think it is necessary to pay for schools and hospitals and to pay down that national debt which has ballooned. It has indeed doubled under the five years of the Liberal Government. We have made our priorities very clear. We've got a series of tax changes that we are proposing because we don't want to go down the Liberal road which which is to hack into schools and hospitals and the social safety net and watch public debt balloon. We have an alternative approach, which is the best possible combination of fairness and responsibility.
ROWLAND: Are those figures correct though and according to the Treasurer they come from the Australian Taxation Office? 84% of those affected by this dividend imputation plan on incomes of less than $37,000 a year.
 
CHALMERS: I will have to have a look at those figures that Josh has produced, but the mistake that they quite frequently make, Michael, is to confuse taxable income with other kinds of income. That's what they have done repeatedly. They have been caught out lying about our policy before, not just this policy, but the policy on negative gearing and some of the other tax changes that we have proposed, so we will take our time to go through what he has put out there. I think the Australian people understand and appreciate that what we are trying to do here is to make the tax system fairer, pay down that national debt which has doubled on the Liberals’ watch and also make room in the budget for the things which we as a society truly value, things like educating our three and four-year-olds, things like investing in our schools and hospitals.
 
ROWLAND: OK, finally the Labor Party is poised in the Senate to back the legislation facilitating the latest Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. As you know, Jim Chalmers there has been considerable angst within some sections of the Labor Party about the impact of this deal on Australian workers. Do you share those concerns?
CHALMERS: There has Michael and I do share some of those concerns. I think right across-the-board we have said for some time now that there are issues in this agreement around labour market testing for the local workforce and also some of the legal arrangements, the so called ISDS clause, which we don't like and which we wouldn't have included were in Government. What we've done is made an on-balance call. We have said that we want to get the benefits for our farmers and our businesses and the broader economy, but we also want to fix the mistakes that the Liberal Party has made in negotiating that deal. We share the concerns that some of the unions have raised about the deal in particular and we will go out of our way to do what ever we can to make those aspects of the deal better in government by fixing it as the New Zealanders have done and others have done. That's our intention. 
 
ROWLAND: Big week ahead Jim Chalmers. Thank you very much for coming on News Breakfast to talk about it this morning.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you, Michael.
 
ENDS