JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC TROPICAL NORTH

THURSDAY, 8 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Labor’s candidate for Dawson Shane Hamilton; Listening to mining communities; Labor’s plan to govern for all Australians not divide the city and the bush; Morrison Government’s failures on vaccines and quarantine mean more lockdowns for longer.

MEECHAM PHILPOTT, HOST: Jim Chalmers is in town at the moment, he came in yesterday, and the first question I asked Jim Chalmers, of course from the Australian Labor Party and the Opposition Treasurer no less, I said, so what are you doing in Mackay?

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: I'm here with Anthony Albanese and our new candidate for Dawson Shane Hamilton.

PHILPOTT: Oh yeah.

CHALMERS: He's a local family man and mine worker, a really passionate local guy. I spent some time with him last night and with some of his local supporters and we'll be spending some time with local industry today. We're out at one of the suppliers for the mine sites and that'll be a good opportunity to speak to the workers and the managers there about the local economy.

PHILPOTT: The Labor Party is really trying to get out there and hang around with everyone involved with coal. Is that because last federal election you kinda got dusted in this area?

CHALMERS: I don't think it's any secret that we underperformed here last time, Meech. I think that's a charitable way to describe it. It is the case that we support the local industry - we support the mining industry, we support the coal communities, and particularly the workers. So we do want to spend a lot of time in places like Mackay, but not just Mackay, all over Queensland and all over Australia, because we want to do things a bit differently to the Prime Minister. If there's one thing you'd say that Anthony Albanese, he wants to govern for the whole country - all the industries, all the workers, and all the communities. We're not interested in dividing the city against the bush like the Prime Minister is. And that means spending time in communities like this one.

PHILPOTT: As the Opposition Treasurer, can I ask you how important is coal mining to Australia, just from a monetary point of view?

CHALMERS: Oh, it's a crucial export, absolutely. I don't think anybody disputes that. It's been a really important part of the mix for the economy. And I think as we recover from this pandemic we need to recognise that if the national economy is going to recover strongly we need regional communities and regional economies to be a bigger part of that story. Clearly, mining, and resources, and coal is a big part of that. And no doubt we'll be spending a lot of time amongst that industry in the course of this visit.

PHILPOTT: Jim, you mentioned that the Prime Minister, in your words, that there's a lot of division that he's driving between city and country. But living out here in the bush, how do you explain to someone in a Sydney, a Melbourne, or a Brisbane - which is more than half of Australia's population - that farmers do need room to swing harvesters around. They might chop a tree down here but grow 30 more over there. And that they do need to put these particular chemicals on their crops to make them grow so they can feed Australia. Or that the miners, they really do need to fix these roads because you’ve got tens-of-thousands of people driving out there to work in the mines. It seems to fall on deaf ears in the city. How do you explain it to city people?

CHALMERS: Yeah, well I think there is a job to do to explain to people. You mention local roads for example, that's a massive part of the story. I was speaking to our candidate Shane Hamilton last night and he'd just done the three-hour drive from his site to the function that we had in Mackay. And we were talking about the local road that he takes, that three hour drive he takes to get home. And no doubt heaps of others are in the same boat, so the roads are a big part of the story.

Some of those other issues you raised, obviously, as the national government, you've got to get the balance right. But that means actually listening to people in regional communities, which is again why we're here - to make sure that we can strike the right balance. We do want good economic outcomes. We do want good, sustainable outcomes as well. And that begins with understanding all sides of the story.

PHILPOTT: There's been a bit of activity here with a number of unions talking about this situation in Australia where one in four workers are on contracts and they just can't get off them. George Christensen, then federal Member for Dawson, really has been fighting hard against that. But as soon as you move this piece of legislation, something else pops up. It always seems that the powers that be are one step ahead of the Government on this one?

CHALMERS: It won't surprise you to learn that I don't think George has been fighting hard enough on this. I mean, this is an issue that's been around for a while. We've got some pretty severe discrepancies on mine sites between people being paid different rates to do the same job. That's a big issue. Contracting and labour hire, that's an issue that's been around for a long time, more or less unaddressed. Issues around pay and also around safety. And so I think it's not what you say that matters, it's what you actually do. And we're here to represent the workers in these communities. And that means trying to do something about the failure to pay the same people, the same pay, for the same work.

PHILPOTT: Been a while between drinks though, since you've had Dawson though eh?

CHALMERS: We had it in 2007 to 2010.

PHILPOTT: Yeah, Jimmy was there.

CHALMERS: Yeah, Jimmy Bidgood. He's a friend of mine. We haven't had it since, but we're working on that!

We definitely want to win Dawson and we've picked this terrific candidate, local mine worker Shane Hamilton. And so that's a good start I think. We're working to make sure that we've got the right policies. But as part of a bigger story I think Meech, we want to win these seats, that's obvious. We think we need to win those seats in order to form a government. And that's important so we can do good things for the country. But there's a bigger story here as well and I touched on it before. We genuinely want to be a government for all of Australia, that includes regional Queensland. We don't want to divide people, we want to bring people together. And so we want to have Shane's voice in our team in Canberra, if and when we form government.

PHILPOTT: Let me get your take on the whole COVID thing. Obviously, the pandemic was a nightmare. And kudos, and this has been proven a number of times in research. Kudos to all Australian politicians for coming together to fight the good fight. But since we had National Cabinet, good God! You look at the situation we're in now! You've got Premiers screaming at the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister involved in debate and what not. I mean, you must understand Jim, there are so many Australians who are saying for the love of God will you get on and fix the problem?

CHALMERS: As you know Meech, we've been dealing with this pandemic for 18 months now.

PHILPOTT: Yeah.

CHALMERS: What we've tried to do under Anthony's leadership is to be as constructive as possible, to agree where we can and only disagree where we have to.

But I think what's becoming really clear, and this is why the Premiers - and not just Labor Premiers but Liberal ones too - are dark at the Prime Minister, is because it's all come back to really two stuff-ups. The vaccination rollout is a shambles. And we haven't built purpose-built quarantine facilities so we keep getting these leaks out of hotel quarantine. And so those were the two jobs the Prime Minister had. Those are the two things that aren't going well.

So you can understand that as we move through this pandemic, and other countries are opening up and we're still locking down, a lot of people are seeing with a bit of clarity now that it's those two stuff-ups that are holding us back.

PHILPOTT: At the same time though Jim, I could argue how do you have a 20-year-old receptionist in the COVID part of the hospital that's not been inoculated? What is that about? And you can't blame that on the Prime Minister?

CHALMERS: Clearly, that's not good enough. Nobody's defending what happened with that young woman, obviously. Nor is the Premier. Nobody is. That's a shocker. But when you look at the whole situation, the two big failures here are on vaccines and quarantine.

We wouldn't be having these lockdowns if we had heaps more people vaccinated or if we didn’t have a way to deal with these leakages out of hotels which are built for tourism and not for quarantine..

PHILPOTT: Yep, yeah.

CHALMERS: ...and not for medical purposes. So those are the two defining stuff-ups here. And that's really why we're locking down.

PHILPOTT: My conversation with Jim Chalmers. Jim's the Opposition Treasurer. He's in town with Anthony Albanese, the Leader of the Opposition.

ENDS