E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN
TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2016

Subjects: Budget Savings; Newspoll; Marriage Equality Plebiscite

FRAN KELLY: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Finance Minister and he joins us in our Parliament House studios. Jim, welcome to Breakfast.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Good morning Fran.

KELLY: The Prime Minister is portraying Budget repair as a fundamental moral challenge. Do you accept that this issue of repairing a Budget goes beyond just the raw numbers?

CHALMERS: Well yesterday, Fran, the Prime Minister was talking about morals and today they’ve been caught lying about the contents of their savings legislation. So I think that’s pretty humiliating for him, to talk about moral challenges at the same time as they’ve shown again, when it comes to the Budget, that they are morally challenged.

KELLY: Nevertheless, the question more broadly though – do you accept it is more than just about raw numbers? It is about not just heaping debt on to the shoulders of the next generation?

CHALMERS: I think it is a crucial task, Fran – to repair the Budget in a fair way. That’s why we have been so constructive on the Labor side – proposing more than $100 billion worth of measures to improve the Budget bottom line. We’ve given the Prime Minister a way out of his superannuation mess. Time and time again we have led the conversation about Budget repair that’s fair.

KELLY: Well you might have led the conversation, but you didn’t win the election; so the Government has won the election, which presumably means it has some expectation that its blue print will be supported. Do you accept that?

CHALMERS: The Australian people want the Parliament to work. We want to play a constructive role in repairing the Budget in a fair way. That’s why we’ve done what we’ve done to date – proposing all of these savings measures, which are there for the Government to pick up and run with.

When it comes to the so-called Omnibus Bill – the savings legislation we received last night after it’d been given to media – we will go through the 650 pages or so of that legislation. But it is a fact that the Government, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Finance Minister have gone around the country for two weeks lying about the contents of that savings legislation. We now know, in their characteristically underhanded and sneaky way, they’ve snuck more savings measures into that bill. So our caution on that Omnibus Bill has been warranted.

KELLY: So which savings measures are there that you didn’t support in the election campaign? I’m not sure how long a list that is.

CHALMERS: The best example I can give you, Fran, is the one about welfare payments for psychiatric patients. That’s something that we’re on the record as having not supported in the past. All of the –

KELLY: The measure would cut welfare payments for psychiatric patients who have committed a crime. Is that right?

CHALMERS: Correct. And it’s around $30 million; $37 million or so. And that’s just an example, Fran, of why our caution on this Omnibus Savings Bill was so warranted. We have said that we’re not prepared to accept the Government’s word on the contents of the Bill. It turns out that we were right. They’ve been lying about the contents of it.

So, we will go through it. We’ll be as constructive as we always are. The position that we take will be consistent with our values. It will reflect the directions that we’ve set out in the past and we will play that constructive role.

KELLY: Now that’s all fine language and that’s fine and reasonable, but are you just buying time here because the two biggest measures at the heart of this Omnibus Bill are the $1.3 billion saved by scrapping the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the more than $1 billion paid currently to pensioners and people on Newstart as the Clean Energy Supplement? In the election campaign, Labor banked both those savings. Now we’re hearing – as Anthony Albanese said just the other day – that the decision on whether to cut that Clean Energy Supplement, for instance, will be made in accordance with Labor values. Are you walking away from those cuts?

CHALMERS: It’s hardly buying time, Fran, when we got 650 pages last night and I’m talking to you this morning.

KELLY: Yeah, but you know your policy. What is it?

CHALMERS: We’ll have a discussion about that in our party room, which is the usual process. When we get legislation, it gets introduced to the Parliament and then our usual process kicks in. And everybody will make a contribution to that.

We’ve all been saying for some time that the position we take will be consistent with our values. Anthony said it; many of us have said that. And, of course, Labor is the party which looks out for the vulnerable within our community. Those are the values that we take to the task of repairing the Budget in a fair way.

KELLY: So if I listen to that, I assume that means that you won’t support scrapping the Clean Energy Supplement, which tops up Newstart allowance, for instance, for $4.40 a week. But, you did bank that in the election campaign. So, you can understand why there’s some confusion on my part, but also the part of the Government.

CHALMERS: I think we’ve shown, Fran, all throughout this process, that we are up for a constructive conversation about Budget repair. Yes, we presented to the people a whole range of savings and we have said to them we will go through the detail of that 650 pages of legislation that we got last night. And we will go through our usual process and we will announce our position. But we’ve said since the election that the positions we take in the Parliament will reflect the positions we took to the people and they will be consistent with our Labor values.

KELLY: A Newspoll out today – I think it might be the first one since the election; certainly the first one since this Parliament is starting today – indicates that the voters want the Parliament, including Labor, to get on with serious work in fixing the Budget. Do you accept that? Debt and deficit is the number one issue now for the public.

CHALMERS: I do accept that.

KELLY: That Labor will be punished if you get in the way of that.

CHALMERS: I don’t see it that way, Fran. I do accept that it’s a very high priority for the Australian community to fix the Budget in a fair way. And I think that Labor has been the more constructive participant in that conversation.

We’ve certainly put more of the long-term savings on the table for the Government to pick up. So yes, we take that task very, very seriously. That poll –

KELLY: But now we’re in the battleground of the Parliament and things have to get passed. So you can’t just say: “Well, we’ve put those forward.” You did put those forward in the election campaign, but you didn’t get elected. Now we have to get some movement here.

If we go back to ARENA – the $1.3 billion cut the government wants to make to the Renewable Energy Agency; the agency that Labor set up. Labor did bank that saving in the election campaign, in the dying days of the election campaign. But are you going to vote to abolish, basically abolish ARENA, which is effectively what taking that money away from ARENA would do.

CHALMERS: That saving is in the same category as the others that we’ve discussed this morning, Fran. We’re going through the legislation and the position we take in the Parliament will reflect the position we took to the people.

KELLY: Jim Chalmers, can I just ask you briefly about the Marriage Plebiscite? Because it now rests on Labor whether the Parliament does allow the Government to pass enabling legislation to have a Plebiscite. Every word that Bill Shorten has uttered in the last few weeks would indicate that the answer will be no.

Is that what you believe? That the answer will be no? Or should be no?

CHALMERS: Our position is that it shouldn’t get to a Plebiscite because the Parliament could do its job this week. We could make Marriage Equality a reality in this country sooner rather than later, which is what supporters of Marriage Equality want.

We’ve been voicing our concerns with the Plebiscite all along. The cost of it - $160 million wasted –

KELLY: Absolutely. But we’re at crunch time again now.

CHALMERS: Yeah, it’s crunch time in the Parliament this week, Fran. We can have Marriage Equality if people support our Private Member’s Bill.

KELLY: And if they don’t?

CHALMERS: Well we’ve been consulting with advocates in the community. We’ve been having conversations right around Australia about this.

The overwhelming priority of people who want to see Marriage Equality in this country is for the Parliament to do its job. We have an opportunity to do that this week and we should grasp it.

KELLY: And if you can’t get those numbers – and every indication is you won’t get those numbers and I know you think you should, but if you don’t – then the Plebiscite comes into play.

CHALMERS: It comes into play and we’ll have a position then. But I think you can tell from what many of us have been saying about our fears for how a Plebiscite will be conducted; the money that would be wasted on it; the fact that we could have an overwhelming result in favour of Marriage Equality and the Coalition could still ignore it. All of these things make us deeply sceptical about the value of a Plebiscite.

We think the Parliament should do its job. It has an opportunity to do it this week and we should take it.

KELLY: And just briefly speaking of the Parliament and tactics, Peta Credlin says Labor could force a vote on the issue simply by waiting until a Liberal MP leaves the chamber for whatever reason and move to suspend standing orders and then you could have the numbers. Did you consider that?

CHALMERS: Malcolm Turnbull might think he has a workable parliamentary majority, but I think all of these things show that a majority of one and the chaos in their internals on their side of the Parliament means that we might be in for a bumpy ride.

KELLY: Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for joining us.

CHALMERS: Thank you, Fran.

ENDS