JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
THURSDAY, 13 MAY 2021

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: This was a Liberal budget because workers go backwards. The Budget has three defining features - a cut in real wages, costly confusion over the vaccine rollout, and 21 different slush funds to get the Government through an election.

This was Australia's most expensive missed opportunity. The eighth Budget from this coalition Government didn't undo all of the damage done by the first seven Budgets.

At the very core of this Budget was a deficit of vision. Tonight, Anthony Albanese will provide the leadership and the vision for Australia that was so noticeably absent from Tuesday night. We need to make sure we can make the economy and our society stronger and more inclusive and more sustainable after COVID-19 than it was before. We need to make sure that more Australians can get ahead in their recovery and aren't left behind. And that's what tonight's speech will be all about.

Part of that speech will be about a start-up year for thousands of mostly young Australians. That start-up year is all about making sure that we harness the talents and efforts and enthusiasm of young Australians to turn their ideas into new Australian businesses and new Australian jobs.

JOURNALIST: News today about a new deal on the MRNA vaccine that welcome or is it too little too late?

CHALMERS: What's been obvious to everybody else is that the Government didn't do enough deals to get the vaccination programme going as well as it should be. So to the extent that the Government is now scrambling and playing catch up, that's better than nothing, but it's been obvious to the rest of us that from the very beginning some months ago the Government didn't do enough deals. That has costs and consequences for the vaccine rollout and therefore for the economy.  

The Budget was an opportunity for the Government to come clean on the costs and consequences of the Prime Minister's vaccination debacle. Instead, even since the Budget, we've had four different Ministers say four different things about when Australians will be vaccinated and what that means for the economy.

This is a really crucial element of the Budget. The costly confusion over vaccines in the Budget will hold the economy back and compromise the recovery. Thanks very much.

ENDS