E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST
WEDNESDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2020
SUBJECTS: National accounts; Border closures; JobKeeper.
FRAN KELLY, HOST: Jim Chalmers, welcome back to Breakfast.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much, Fran,
KELLY: Before we get to JobKeeper, we know the National Accounts today will be a shocker, but the consensus amongst economists is that the slump could have been a lot worse. Do you agree, and do you give the Government some credit for that?
CHALMERS: It’s going to be a dark day today. I think we'll learn for sure what a lot of Australians and their families already understand, which is that we are in the midst of a deep and devastating recession and that has consequences for millions of Australians. It won't come as a shock that that is what those numbers will show. The shocking and surprising thing is that we've known for some time that we're in a recession and that we're in the depths of a jobs crisis, but the Morrison Government still doesn't have a jobs plan to respond to that. You say that it might not be as bad as some economists feared some months ago. That will be cold comfort for the million Australians who are already unemployed, a new record, and for the 400,000 Australians the Government expects will join the unemployment queues between now and Christmas.
KELLY: But isn't it reasonable for the Government to say - and get some praise perhaps - that its policies and income support, for instance JobKeeper which we're going to be talking about in a while, have meant that the downturn here is nowhere near as bad as it is elsewhere? For instance, the UK economy declined 20 per cent, the US suffered close to a 10 per cent fall in economic growth. Even the RBA said yesterday that as difficult as things have been here the decline has not being as severe as earlier expected?
CHALMERS: All of those comparisons are absolutely meaningless if you've lost your job.
KELLY: Why?
CHALMERS: If you've lost your job, if you're wondering if your small business can cling on, or if you can't access JobKeeper because you're a casual worker, or work in aviation, at a university or in the arts and entertainment sector then the comparison between here and whether or not it's better than Donald Trump's America is completely and absolutely meaningless. It goes to a bigger issue here, which that while these will be the worst numbers we've seen, the worst quarterly GDP since these records were first kept, we need to be able to go beyond the numbers and understand what it means for real people in real communities. That's why those comparisons are meaningless. If you've lost your job in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth or any of our regions, the idea that things are a bit better than in America or in the United Kingdom doesn't matter a lot to you.
KELLY: Alright, let's talk about the real people in Melbourne. The pace of the recovery and the decline in the jobless rate will be largely influenced by what happens now in Victoria, which of course is in the hands of the Victorian Labor Government. Pressure is mounting on the Premier Dan Andrews to come up with a roadmap out of the state's lockdown and he will deliver that on Sunday. You're calling on the Morrison Government to have a jobs plan. Has it taken too long for Dan Andrews to offer Melbournians and Melbourne businesses a plan on the way out of this?
CHALMERS: It's important that he does provide that information to businesses, workers and communities in Victoria. He said that he will do that on Sunday and that's appropriate. Our issue here in the federal parliament is to make sure that the Morrison Government does a better job managing the economy out of this recession than they did managing it into the recession. That's going to be our focus. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are guilty of always wanting to focus on Dan Andrews. They always want to focus on the Labor Party, state governments or other issues as a distraction from their failures on the economy which are costing jobs and their failures in aged care which are costing lives. We need to not fall for that. Our job here is to get the federal settings right. I don't think that any objective observer of what the Government has done here in managing this recession would say that they've got everything right. They've got some things right but not everything right. Josh Frydenberg keeps talking about the $314 billion that he's injected in the economy. We asked him how much of that has actually been injected into the economy by the Federal Government and he could only get to $85 billion. He's come up short there and that's one of the reasons why this recession is deeper than it needs to be and it's one of the reasons why unemployment is still rising even after the period covered by the numbers we'll receive today.
KELLY: Yes, but it's all very well for you to call on the Federal Government to manage the economy but it makes it more difficult when states are locked down. We've seen the impacts. We've seen the numbers from Treasury of the impact of the Victorian lockdown. The Prime Minister is urging the states and territories to open their borders for the sake of the economy. The Queensland Premier says that certainly won't be happening in September and she doesn't know when it will happen. You're a Queenslander, do you support the Premier and her strong stance in keeping the border closed or do you think that the states and territories should open up to give everyone the best chance of managing this economy?
CHALMERS: I do support Premier Palaszczuk. I think she's been right, she’s been resolute, she’s been careful and cautious. If she'd opened up the borders and lifted the restrictions when the Liberal Party and the National Party were calling on her to do so, that could have had catastrophic implications for lives and jobs in my home state of Queensland. But nobody, Fran, is contesting that some of these necessary restrictions have consequences for the economy. Absolutely nobody is contesting that and nobody wants these lockdowns and these restrictions to be in place even one day longer than is necessary. I spend a lot of time with the business community, and their peak organisations, and I understand that they would like to see the economy open up as soon as it's responsible to do so. But they also understand that the absolute worst thing we could have for local economies, the business community, for communities more broadly, and for the nation would be to have another outbreak which would absolutely devastate the economy and would cruel the recovery before it even gathers pace.
KELLY: You've been critical of the Government for cutting JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments right now, but Labor waved through the Government's six month extension to the program in the Senate yesterday which will do just that. JobKeeper recipients will lose $300 a fortnight in a month's time; JobSeeker recipients will see their coronavirus supplement cut in half. Why did you vote for these cuts if you say they're going to be bad for people and bad for the economy?
CHALMERS: It's not right Fran to say that we voted for the reductions in JobKeeper and JobSeeker.
KELLY: You voted to pass the legislation.
CHALMERS: No, Fran. I need to correct you on that. It's very important that your listeners understand that all the legislation did was to extend JobKeeper beyond the September snapback that the Prime Minister wanted to see. We campaigned for those payments to be available for longer. We said that unemployment is rising; it makes no sense for there to be that hard snapback at the end of September. The legislation does not set the rates or the eligibility for the JobKeeper payment. We did not vote to reduce those payments. The rate of those payments is entirely the responsibility of the Treasurer. It is entirely up to him to set the rate and the eligibility for those payments. What we said all along is that they need to be tailored to economic circumstances., The economy and especially the labour market has got worse, not better, since he announced those changes. He should be reconsidering those reductions. It's still before him to do that. We want him to do the right thing. The Reserve Bank has said that we need to do more in the economy to support jobs, in their announcement yesterday, but the Government seems to think we should be doing less. It makes no sense when unemployment is rising for the Government to be withdrawing support from the economy without a comprehensive plan for jobs to replace it.
KELLY: Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for joining us.
CHALMERS: Thank you, Fran.
ENDS
