with
SENATOR ANTHONY CHISHOLM
SENATOR FOR QUEENSLAND

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC WIDE BAY
WEDNESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2019

SUBJECTS: Regional economies: election in Queensland; Ageing population; Record household debt.

DAVID DOWSETT, ABC WIDE BAY: A few weeks ago, Labor Senator Anthony Chisholm was in Harvey Bay for an anti-Cashless Debit Card gathering. Now he's in Bundaberg, along with Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. First of all, Anthony Chisholm, what brings you to Bundaberg?

ANTHONY CHISHOLM, SENATOR FOR QUEENSLAND: It's a good opportunity to be here today. We got an invite from the Mayor to come up, have a meeting with him and hear about the work the Council have been doing. Given the fires that have occurred recently it's an opportunity to get a briefing from the Council about the impact of those and how the community has responded, because it is such a significant issue for the whole of Queensland at the moment. It will be good for us to get a firsthand briefing on the Council’s response and on how the community has been impacted.

DOWSETT: You're spending a fair bit of time in our region of late. You were in Harvey Bay recently arguing the case against the Cashless Welfare Card?

CHISHOLM: As the Duty Senator for the area it's important that I get out and about here as much as possible. It's fantastic today to have the Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, a fellow Queenslander with me. So we're really focussed on the local economy today and hearing about the challenges. Our concern is around the lack of Federal Government action in the area. We're really looking forward to a briefing from the Council to give us a good understanding about what the Council want to focus on. Federal Labor want to be on the ground listening and ensuring that we've got a good handle on the important local issues.

DOWSETT: Jim Chalmers, what do you see as the important issues for our region?

CHALMERS: First and foremost, jobs. Nationally the economy's slowed a bit. Unemployment has risen. Wages growth has slowed. People have got more household debt than they've ever had before. Businesses aren't investing as we would like them to. Labor recognises that to get the national economy growing again, that won't happen without getting regional economies growing, or without creating good jobs in places like Bundaberg and Wide Bay. We spend a lot of time in the regions and in Queensland listening to councils, the economic development team, local businesses, whoever has a view about how we create good jobs and get the economy moving again.

In the last couple of years half of the jobs that have been created in this country have been created within 10 kilometres of the CBDs of the major capitals. That's not sustainable. We need to make sure that the regions are growing strongly. If we get the regions growing strongly then we give ourselves a chance to grow the national economy more strongly as well.

DOWSETT: So how would you go about creating good jobs in a region such as ours?

CHALMERS: We need to get the local infrastructure investment and training right. We need to make sure that local businesses can get a slice of the action when the Government buys goods and services so that those benefits stay in local communities. We need to get some certainty around energy policy. We need to make sure that people are getting good wages so they can spend that in the shops and in local communities. All of these things together matter a great deal.

Unfortunately right now there's not a national plan from the Government or a regional plan from the Government to create jobs and to get the place growing again. The reason we spend so much time in regional Queensland is because we do want to listen to people as we come up with our own plan for the election in two and a half years' time. We want to make sure that that plan is a bottom up plan, that it's fed by real conversations with real people, and that it's not just something which is imposed on communities after discussions in the boardrooms of Sydney or Melbourne.

DOWSETT: You wrote a book recently about the changing nature of jobs in the machine age. Is there something we can learn from that in Wide Bay where jobs are changing and what we can do about it?

CHALMERS: Absolutely. We get caught up in this argument about which jobs will be lost and created as technology impacts our workforce but the best way to think about is that all jobs will change in one way or another. We need to give our people the capacity to keep up with that change and to benefit from it so that it works for them and not against them.

That book is a couple of years old now. I recommend your listeners check out a great speech that our leader Anthony Albanese gave about this in Perth a couple of weeks ago. It is our view collectively in the Labor Party that one of the main anxieties that people have is what kind of jobs will their kids work in. There's an issue right now with unemployment. There is a big spike in people over 55 years old getting Newstart so we've got some very near-term challenges. But when you speak to a lot of people around the country, really what is making them anxious is that they don't know where the jobs will come from. That means new industries, making sure people are trained up, and that we have to have connected regions. From Anthony Albanese right down through our Shadow Cabinet, right down through our Labor Party representatives around Australia, that is one of our chief concerns.

DOWSETT: Anthony Chisholm, as we said Labor hasn't had a very good foothold in our region in recent elections. How are you going to turn it around?

CHISHOLM: Obviously, it was a disappointing election result. We've had our really frank and blunt review that's been done into the election campaign. We have really drawn a line in the sand now and want to get out on the ground and ensure that we're listening to local communities. That's part of the visit today, to ensure that we're on the ground listening, but we want to continue that so it isn't going to be a one-off, as you alluded to earlier. I've been through Harvey Bay recently, and I'll continue to be a regular visitor to the area, keeping an ear to the ground, but also providing the criticisms of the Government when they're failing to deliver. We see a local member here who does take things for granted. I think that he is a divisive figure within the community and he isn't really delivering on the important local issues to drive this community forward.

DOWSETT: Jim Chalmers, at the last election, many voters felt that they couldn't trust Labor with the economy. That was a sticking point, I think, for Labor. As Shadow Treasurer how will you turn that thought process around?

CHALMERS: It's important that we do and it's like that old adage, you win or you learn. We've had a lot to learn from that last election, especially in regional Queensland. It was a big focus of the review that Anthony just referred to. We need to do better in Queensland and part of that is making sure that we do a good job explaining why we think it's important that we create good jobs in the regions, and get regional economies growing as part of growing the national economy.

It is a big job but the Government has largely failed when it comes to the economy. We haven't had economic growth this slow for the 10 years since the Global Financial Crisis. We've got record household debt, stagnant wages, and declining living standards. The retail sector hasn't been this week since the early 90s recession and business investment hasn't been this weak since then. Productivity has gone backwards. I could go on and on. We do understand that we need to have a strong offering on the economy, but we also need to point out that it's not enough for the Morrison Government to pretend they're doing a good job of managing the economy when the facts tell a very different story, especially in parts of Australia like this one.

DOWSETT: Are we going to need to work longer? Josh Frydenberg, the Federal Treasurer, says he wants older Australians to retrain and work longer to help improve the national economy. And we are going to need to do that?

CHALMERS: As I mentioned before, one of the fastest growing areas of people who can't find work is people over 55 years old. There's been a 45 per cent increase in older workers on Newstart. Almost two million Australians can't find work or can't find more work. When a lot of people hear Josh Frydenberg talk about how older Australians have to work longer firstly it'll remind them that he tried to increase the pension age to 70. Secondly they'll think, we can't find the work that we want to do.

I think he is horrendously out of touch with the community. I spend a lot of time speaking to a lot of workers, a lot of people who would like to work more but don't either have the capacity to do that or don't have the opportunity to do that. If he spent more time working out how to get the place growing again and creating good jobs, I think people would be more willing to listen to this kind of stuff.

The other thing I'd say about that is that yet again he's giving a speech - and he's given a range of speeches the last couple of weeks - but doesn't have a plan to turn the economy around. The economy is floundering right now. Unemployment is rising. All of these speeches are designed to give the illusion of activity when in reality they are refusing to act on the economy right now. If they did something responsible, proportionate and measured to boost the economy right now, we'd support it but they've shown no willingness to do that.

DOWSETT: Jim Chalmers and Anthony Chisholm, enjoy your time in Wide Bay. Thanks so much for coming in.

CHALMERS: Thanks for the chat.

ENDS