E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN BREAKFAST
MONDAY, 3 JUNE 2019
 
SUBJECTS: Appointment as Shadow Treasurer; Labor’s economic policies; income tax; interest rates; slowing economy under Liberals; Queensland; emissions reductions; religious freedoms
 
FRAN KELLY: Jim Chalmers, welcome back to Breakfast.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Happy Monday, Fran.
 
KELLY: Jim Chalmers, you say you're spoiling for a fight on the economy. How do you plan to do that, given such a bruising election outcome for Labor? You couldn't miss the message from the voters, could you? They didn't like what you had to offer on the economy.
 
CHALMERS: Obviously, we need to listen and learn from the election result 16 days ago. We'd be mad not to. We'll take our time to do that. But while the Government's engaged on this kind of orgy of self-congratulation over the election result, what they haven't noticed is that the economy is weakening further. We've got slowing growth in the economy. We've got stagnant wages, we've got weak consumption, low household savings. Debt has doubled on their watch. All of these economic challenges are still there. They were there before the election, they're certainly there after the election. And my job will be to take the fight up to the Government on those issues.
 
KELLY: OK, so you'll be focusing on the fight rather than putting forward your positive policies at the moment. Labor's going to review all of the policies you took to the election - negative gearing, capital gains, franking credits. You want Labor to "reclaim its rightful place as the party of aspiration". Is that a pretty big clue that you want all of those policies junked?
 
CHALMERS: A couple of things about that. Obviously, when we have the election result that we had a couple of weeks ago, we need to reconsider our policies. We need to work out which ones we'll keep, which ones we'll ditch and which ones we can improve upon. That's entirely normal. When you think that the election was only 16 days ago and we might have 1000 days or so, give or take until the next election, I think it's fair enough that we take our time to do all of that. When it comes to aspiration, there's a big difference between us in the Labor Party and certainly me, and the Liberal Party and people like Josh Frydenberg. We don't need aspiration explained to us by focus groups. We understand that aspiration means if you work hard, then you should be able to provide for your family. Under the Liberal Government, we've had these stagnant wages; people feel like no matter how hard they work, they can't provide for their loved ones. That's because for six years now, we've had this weakening economy where people aren't getting reward for effort. People aren't seeing in their pay packets the sorts of return that they need for all this effort that they're putting in. So we want to make that a focus. That's what aspiration actually means, independent of some of these other considerations around policy.
 
KELLY: OK, do you see now looking back though, that language, "reclaim the rightful place as the party of aspiration", very different to the messaging you had during the election which was the constant attacks on the top end of town, which made people who were on pretty modest incomes, middle income earners at best, feeling that they were somehow being lumped in as wealthy and greedy and undeserving. Do you see that that language, the top end of town, was old fashioned, exclusive and doesn't speak to aspiration, didn't speak to inclusiveness?
 
CHALMERS: I'll leave that for the pundits, Fran.
 
KELLY: Well, have you thought about it? Because you've changed your language, is what I'm saying.
 
CHALMERS: Obviously we've thought about the election result. We've thought about the perception that people had about us and about our policies. I've thought of very little else, Fran...
 
KELLY: (Laughs) I'm sure.
 
CHALMERS: ...in the last 16 days as you would imagine and you would appreciate. I guess the point that I'm making is that Labor is the party of aspiration. We are the party of growth. We are the party of opportunity. We need to make that clearer. Our policies need to speak to that reality, because I think there is a difference. The difference is, the other guys have had six years now Fran. And they've spent those six years talking about the Labor Party, talking about us, pointing the finger in all kinds of directions. While they've done that, the economy's slowed dramatically. We've got a big problem with disposable incomes. We've got a big problem with investment, with productivity growth. Debt has doubled on their watch. All of these challenges are there, and they own these challenges. And the onus is on us to say to the Government, what are you going to do about these problems that you've created?
 
KELLY: Just before I leave your policies, there's just one more I want to ask you about. It's negative gearing. Does Labor in your view – you’re the Shadow Treasurer now - still need to wind back negative gearing concessions? Do you still argue that tax concessions for people to buy many houses are unfair?
 
CHALMERS: I think that there's an issue in the Budget in that we do have a range of tax concessions which cost the Budget a lot of money, and that comes at the expense of investment in other areas. But on the specifics of those policies, whether it be negative gearing or franking credits or all of the other policies that we took to the last election, I think that it's entirely reasonable for your listeners to expect that we won't take identical policies to the 2022 election that we took to the 2019 election. And we'll take our time to work through those, and work out which ones we want to keep, and which ones we want to discard.
 
KELLY: It's 19 minutes to 8 on Breakfast, I'm speaking with the new Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. You've got three years to stew over what stays and what goes, as you said 1000 days. But a decision is pending on the Government's tax cut package, which will be introduced when Parliament's back next month. The Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has re-affirmed the Government will not split the bill. Given the Government's election mandate, will Labor support all three stages of the tax relief plan?
 
CHALMERS: I thought it was very disappointing to hear Mathias Cormann yesterday say that he wouldn't split the bill.
 
KELLY: Well that's their policy.
 
CHALMERS: I think what it shows is that they're more interested in a fight with Labor than they are in giving tax relief to people on lower incomes.
 
KELLY: So will you give them a fight?
 
CHALMERS: We'll work through our usual processes, Fran. We've only had a Shadow Ministry for less than 24 hours now. We'll meet tomorrow in Brisbane and we'll start to discuss some of these issues. We've got a month to come to a position on those tax cuts. We've said for some time now, we enthusiastically support tax relief for people on low and middle incomes. The other parts of the package, which don't come in for three and five years...
 
KELLY: Which The Australia Institute shows high-income earners would be the overwhelming beneficiaries at a cost of $95 billion - is that a price you'd be willing to pay to do more for who you call the upward-climbing Australians who aspire for more and better?
 
CHALMERS: We've got more discussions to have on that, Fran. But I think you do raise a good point, and that is that the Government hasn't actually told us yet - they want us to make a decision on these tax cuts - we've been asking for more than a month now for them to tell us what proportion, how many billions of dollars, would go to people in the highest-income tax brackets in this country. And they've been unwilling to tell us that. Yet, they want us to make a decision on it. So I think we need some more information from the Government. We need to have more discussions at our end as well. We'll come to a view well before the vote in the Parliament in a month's time. 
 
KELLY: The Reserve Bank's widely expected to reduce the cash rate by 25 basis points tomorrow. On Wednesday, the GDP figures are expected to confirm the economy is slowing. So there is trouble ahead. Do you believe the Government will meet its forecast of a Budget surplus next year?
 
CHALMERS: That remains to be seen, Fran. But I think when it comes to the Reserve Bank, if the Government was doing such a good job managing the economy, the Reserve Bank wouldn't be contemplating cutting rates again. I found it very interesting listening to...
 
KELLY: Well that's not entirely true. Labor in Government had to cut rates during the GFC. That wasn't due to bad management. It was because of international troubles.
 
CHALMERS: Interest rates bottomed out at three percent from memory, during the worst of the Global Financial Crisis, Fran. We're at one-and-a-half percent now, and heading downwards if the market economists that Michael Janda was talking about are to be believed. So what that shows is that the economy is weak, particularly in the people-facing parts of the economy. The Government needs to own that.
 
KELLY: What are the people-facing parts of the economy? What does that mean?
 
CHALMERS: Wages, consumption, household savings - the bits that matter most to families around the kitchen tables around this country. The economy is remarkably weak, and the Government's wandering around patting themselves on the back for an election victory at the same time as people are faring badly in the economy. They need to take responsibility for that, they need to own that in the Government, because after six years, it can be nobody else's fault.
 
KELLY: A couple more questions. You're the most senior Queenslander in Labor, the state was a disaster zone for Labor at the election. Your primary vote dropped, I think, to under 28 per cent across the state. You now hold only six of the state's 30 seats. The result appeared to pivot on the tension between mining jobs and carbon reduction. Labor went into that election with a plan to cut carbon emissions by 45 per cent. There's also the 50 per cent renewable energy target. Are you sticking with those targets, or are they too extreme for Queensland? 
 
CHALMERS: Again, we'll have a discussion about those policies. We'll take climate change policies to the next election. I think again, just like with tax, people can reasonably expect us to take the time to get them right.
 
KELLY: It's a bit different this time, isn't it? Those target you said were based on the science to meet what the science said was required to meet the Paris targets optimally, so if you change them you're acknowledging we won't be doing enough. 
 
CHALMERS: There's a couple of hypotheticals there. We'll have discussion about it.
 
KELLY: Not really. They're not hypotheticals. This was Labor's position based on science.
 
CHALMERS: We don't know the situation we'll be in in three years' time at the time of the next election. We don't know what further damage the Government will do to the environment and how much higher pollution will rise under them. All of these sorts of things matter to our considerations. But I think on your broader point about Queensland - I think it is important that we get around and listen to the communities of Queensland. I think that the issues at play in the election played out differently in different parts of the country. And one of the things that I do want to do as Shadow Treasurer is to bring a Queensland perspective to the Shadow Cabinet, and to work with colleagues who understand this state and who understand if we are to get the national economy growing properly, we can't ignore some of our growth producing and job creating regions like those in regional Queensland. 
 
KELLY: Can I just ask you finally, we heard from Senator Eric Abetz, he and some of his colleagues are pushing for greater religious protections. Chris Bowen, Tony Burke and others have said Labor has a problem with people of faith not voting for you at the last election. How much was Labor hurt at the election by its support, for instance, issues like marriage equality, and would you stand in the way if the Government tried to legislate greater religious freedoms?
 
CHALMERS: I think on marriage equality, the plebiscite showed, or the survey showed, that that is the majority view of this country.
 
KELLY: It did.
 
CHALMERS: On the broader issues of faith, obviously we want to protect religious freedoms. I think it was one of the issues that played out in the election campaign, but I think it wasn't the only issue that the election turned on. We'll have a look at what the Government proposes. We'll see if it's sensible. We'll consider it and discuss it in the usual way and come to a view.
 
KELLY: Will it still be Labor's position, for instance, to not allow schools or change the law to make sure that church schools, religious schools, can't sack LGBTI people because they're LGBTI?
 
CHALMERS: I'm not going to be announcing our policy on that, Fran. Obviously there's lots of discussions to be had. We need to respond to whatever the Government proposes as well. But all of the policies we took to the last election, we're considering now in light of new circumstances and we'll take policies to the next election.
 
KELLY: Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for joining us.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you, Fran.
 
ENDS