JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC SYDNEY DRIVE
WEDNESDAY, 1 DECEMBER 2021
SUBJECTS: Background in politics; National Accounts; Wages and costs of living; Vaccines.
RICHARD GLOVER, HOST: The National Accounts for the September quarter were released today, figures that cover the COVID-19 Delta lockdowns in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. It was a 1.9% contraction, that's smaller than some economists feared but it's still, well, the third biggest contraction in Australian economic history. The Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called the figures a lockdown story, noting that Sydney was in lockdown for the whole quarter, while Melbourne was in lockdown for about two-thirds of that period. He's obviously hoping that the December figures will bring a bounce back that is as significant - as dramatic - as this downturn. Does everyone agree though? Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer and he's on the line from Canberra. Jim, good afternoon.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks for having me on your show, Richard.
GLOVER: Well, this is the first time we've talked to you here on Drive. I think with the election looming, we should get to know you a bit first. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
CHALMERS: Thanks Richard for the opportunity. I'm from a place called Logan City, which is just south of Brisbane on the way to the Gold Coast. Born and raised there. It's a community with its fair share of challenges. The reason why I'm involved in politics is because I feel like areas like ours need someone to speak up for them and stand up for them. So that's why I'm here.
GLOVER: Have you always been in politics or are you one of those people who've done something else?
CHALMERS: I've done a little bit of other things, but mostly in politics. I was the Chief of Staff for Wayne Swan when he was the Treasurer and the Deputy Prime Minister. I've done some teaching at university, I've run a little think tank, but mostly I've done government work because I think I worked out pretty early on that if you want to do the best combination of something that looks a bit like social work and something that looks a bit like economic and international policy, then the best combination of those things is in government and politics, and particularly federal politics. So here I am.
GLOVER: And what have you learned, cause Logan is quite a disadvantaged community, what have you learned from living in one of Australia's disadvantaged communities?
CHALMERS: Just that the most important thing you can do for people is to give them opportunities. If there's one thing that I'm involved in politics to attack intergenerational inequality. If you're born into a certain part of Australia or a certain family type, we want to make sure that you get the same opportunities as people born in the in the fancy suburbs, to put it bluntly. And that's really my animating motivation for being involved in politics, because I want to break the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage. I want to make sure that we don't just create opportunities in this country, but that everyone can grab them.
GLOVER: Yeah. Of course at the last election Bill Shorten tried to do something about some of those things anyway, through changes to negative gearing and changes to the amount of money you got back from share payments through the government, but the electorate didn't seem to like that. And the view seems to be that this time around Labor is going to be a much more of a small target party, where you won't be doing, won't be offering, real change like that.
CHALMERS: I don't like that description, as you'd imagine. I think we will be ambitious, and we are ambitious for the country, and our policies reflect that already but will increasingly reflect that as we get closer to the election. I think one of the lessons from last time is that we need to be more focused, we need to have not less ambition but more clarity around our initial priorities. We've said we want cleaner and cheaper energy so that we can get more jobs and investment opportunities for people. We want better skills so people can keep up with technological change. We want to get better at turning our ideas into jobs. We want to do something meaningful on childcare. A whole range of priorities that we've set out, but I think if you want to cut through in today's politics you need to have a really focused agenda. Not less ambitious, but more focused.
GLOVER: And an agenda that's released at the last minute. Some people say that Labor believes that last time they made the mistake of giving the Government ammunition too early on, and that's why, according to some people, you're kind of holding a lot of the detail close to your chest, until what feels like the last minute. Is that a fair criticism?
CHALMERS: It's not entirely fair, but I know why people are saying that. That's because at this stage of the last cycle, we did have, numerically, we had more policy out there. There are a couple of good reasons for that. First of all, we are more focused this time for the reason I just said. But also, when the situation is changing so fast, if we had locked down our policy agenda in the second half of 2019, and then the pandemic, you know, a trillion dollars in debt which limits our choices, you've got all of these issues that have emerged out of the pandemic, we learned a lot about each other, and about ourselves during the pandemic. We've still got another Budget to come, and another budget update in December, and then May. So for all of these reasons it wouldn't make a lot of sense to nail down a big agenda eighteen months or two years out, when you consider how much change there is in the economy and in society. We want to make sure that when we go to the election we've got the best possible agenda for the people. That means taking into account the situation as it develops.
GLOVER: Okay. COVID and the lockdowns doesn't stop you telling us what your target for 2030 is for instance, in terms of carbon.
CHALMERS: And we'll be doing that very soon Richard. we'll be doing that in the next couple of weeks. We've said that. We will strike the right level of ambition there when it comes to our medium term targets. I think one of the reasons why this has been a decade of missed opportunities, where jobs and investment have gone begging, is because we haven't had a meaningful climate change policy in this country. We want to change that. We don't want to just give you a pamphlet about climate change, we want to give you a comprehensive plan, and we'll be doing that in the next couple of weeks.
GLOVER: Alright, look forward to that. Jim Chalmers is here, the Shadow Treasurer. Of course the big news of today is there's 1.9% contraction in GDP, a bit smaller than some economists feared, still the third biggest in history. You can't blame the government can you. Josh Frydenberg made the point that Sydney, for instance, was in lockdown for the whole of this period. Melbourne for most of it.
CHALMERS: What he doesn't tell you Richard, is why were we in lockdown? Why were your listeners in lockdown? Why were they in lockdown in Melbourne as well? Because the lockdowns were made necessary by the big stuff ups on not ordering enough vaccines and not building purpose built quarantine, you can trace those lockdowns back to those two federal government mistakes. I do think that they should take responsibility for this downturn. The other way for your listeners to think about it, yes the third biggest in our history as you said in your introduction, but also there are 28 countries in the OECD who’ve told us what their economic performance was in the September quarter and ours is the worst out of all 28. The difference is those big mistakes that were made at the federal level. We want to see this economy recover strongly. We hope that that is the end of the really difficult downturn, but what we've learned in the last year is you can't be complacent about this. The Government was telling us this time last year the economy was about to come roaring back, and they said it in the May Budget, instead we got the third biggest downturn ever in the September quarter. So we can't be complacent about things as they unfold.
GLOVER: It sounds very dramatic when you compare us to the score or more of other countries. It is hard to compare GDP because of course declines in GDP depend on what the last quarter did. And because we went up in the last quarter where many other countries didn't, therefore we now go down when we've got a lockdown. It's not a kind of easy comparison to make when you're comparing other countries because some of them didn't have a good quarter last time.
CHALMERS: Two things about that. The Government, when it suits them, uses these quarterly international comparisons. We're using the same comparisons that they use. Another way to think about it is this downturn in September was so big it actually unwound all of the growth of the two quarters before that. And our economy is actually smaller now than it was at the end of 2019, just before the pandemic. So there's lots of ways you can slice and dice the data.
GLOVER: We have got a growth of 3.9% though for the year.
CHALMERS: The last quarter available to us, we went backwards substantially. The economy's smaller than it was a couple of years ago, which is not the case all around the world. There are a whole range of ways you can slice and dice it. I think people understand that the economy has gone backwards substantially. It's hopefully recovering now, but as it recovers, what matters isn't just the size of the recovery, but the nature of it, the type of recovery. A lot of people are working out, well, we went through all this together and our reward for that is our real wages are going backwards at the same time as petrol, and rent, and all the rest of it, is going through the roof. So the kind of recovery matters as well as the size of it.
GLOVER: What's your model for getting wages growth because none of the usual economic models seems to have worked for a long time now.
CHALMERS: First of all, in terms of the economic model, there was a burst of frankness when Mathias Cormann was the Finance Minister. He said stagnant wages were a deliberate design feature of the Government's economic policy. Some people want downward pressure on wages, we think it's one of the defining problems in the economy of the last eight years. You need to come at it in two ways. The economists will say that wages are a function of productivity and investment. That's why we've got to get energy right, skills right, the NBN, and all the rest of it. That's at the kind of macro level. And at the personal level, you've got to attack this problem we've got the economy, which is insecure work. That's what's feeding into these stagnant wages, all this underemployment and insecurity that's in the labour market. We announced about a year ago now, a policy to help turn a lot of the casual insecure jobs into more secure jobs, via Fair Work Australia and some other mechanisms. Because we think unless you deal with job insecurity, you won't deal with stagnant wages. If you don't deal with stagnant wages, then we won't get that kind of enduring economic growth that we need.
GLOVER: We're talking to Jim Chalmers, the Shadow Treasurer. Jim, you're critical of the vaccine strollout, and I think most listeners will cheer you on there and agree there were problems. Those listeners might also say though, that you've got to give a nod to the Government who finally have - well, the Government together with our health officials, together with the people of this country - have in the end got right. We've ended up one of the most vaccinated nations on Earth. We are now in a position to start spending. A lot of economists believe that the next quarter will be a boom quarter. Do you accept that?.
CHALMERS: I think the economy will recover, partly because of the reason you identified before – the December quarter will be measured in relation to the September quarter, because September was so bad and then December will be better. I accept that, we want the economy to grow strongly. In terms of the vaccine rollout, very pleased to see some of these high numbers in parts of Australia. And I do think, as you said, it's a credit to people who are doing the right thing. But we can't forget in my in my home state of Queensland, we're not yet at 80% double vaxxed, and my own community's about ten percentage points behind that. Yes, we've got some great results in parts of Australia. Yes, we need to get it up as high as possible. We applaud some of the great numbers that we've seen around the country, but there's still a lot of communities, particularly vulnerable communities, who are nowhere near where we need them to be. So there's still a lot more work to do.
GLOVER: Yeah, and boosters as well. Jim Chalmers, very nice to talk to you. I'm sure we'll talk again before the election, but thanks so much for your time.
CHALMERS: Thanks for having me on your show, Richard.
GLOVER: There's Jim Chalmers, the Shadow Treasurer.
ENDS
