E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
MONDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2020
 
SUBJECTS: NRL Grand Final; Victoria; Scott Morrison’s failures; Josh Frydenberg and ASIC.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: I want to pay tribute to the Brisbane Broncos women's team who took out the Premiership once again yesterday, and also to the Melbourne Storm. Cameron Smith has been such an extraordinary servant of the game of rugby league. He means a lot to my local community in Logan City. He was a proud Logan Brothers junior, as was Brenko Lee. I want to pay tribute to the Broncos women and also to the Melbourne Storm. Victoria and Victorians have obviously been through. and are going through, a very difficult period, so to see the Storm, the Tigers, and the Vixens the weekend before win the premierships, I hope that makes a very, very difficult period just a little bit easier for a lot of Victorians. 
 
Our hearts go out to Victoria and to Victorians. They've done a really remarkable job getting on top of this second outbreak of the virus. The whole country pays tribute to what they have been able to achieve. It's very disappointing that Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg seem more intent on bagging the state government of Victoria than recognising the good that Victoria and Victorians have done in getting on top of this second outbreak. 
 
This is a Prime Minister and Treasurer who are always trying to point the finger and shift the blame to distract from their own failures. We'll see all these words today from Frydenberg in particular, but also the Prime Minister, getting all hot and bothered about the state government in Victoria which is having to make some really difficult decisions. We'd rather see from the government here in Canberra, an effort to stand with and to get behind Victorians and not just climb all over themselves to bag the state government, to try and distract from the federal government's own failures. Obviously, we don't want to see Victoria locked down for any longer than is absolutely necessary. Obviously, we want to see the health advice followed so that we don't have subsequent outbreaks which would be devastating for the state economy of Victoria but also for the national economy. We need to recognise that. 
 
The Prime Minister says that the announcement yesterday from Premier Andrews was profoundly disappointing. Let me tell him what's profoundly disappointing. It's profoundly disappointing that jobs were lost in every state and territory on the last available figures, in the same fortnight that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer withdrew JobKeeper support from the economy. It's profoundly disappointing to see hundreds of deaths in aged care, some of them preventable if the federal government took responsibility and had a plan. It's profoundly disappointing to see the Prime Minister point the finger and shift the blame to distract from his own failures to uphold basic standards of ministerial accountability and ministerial standards. 
 
The Treasurer himself has very serious questions to answer about the scandal surrounding Shipton, the chairman of ASIC. On Friday, on the eve of grand final weekend, Josh Frydenberg put out a statement saying that these matters were brought to his attention on the 22nd of October. We now know that those matters were actually brought to his attention more than a month before that, in the middle of September. Josh Frydenberg has serious questions to answer about why he sat on that information for more than a month. He needs to give a full statement today about what he knew, when he knew it, and why he sat on that information for more than a month. He has serious questions to answer today. We need to see those questions answered. What role has he played, if any, in the covering up of this scandal for more than a month? 

While he's at it, he can explain to the Australian people why in his budget he cut funding to the Audit Office when it's the Audit Office which is doing all of this work, uncovering this scandal and other scandals which are becoming a defining feature of the Morrison Government.
 
ENDS