LAURA JAYES:

Let’s get back to this Jobs Summit. Joining me live now is the Treasurer Jim Chalmers who is just in a morning tea break and the first session has now been completed. Equal opportunity for pay for women was the first session, Jim Chalmers. Now, I think women are becoming a little bit impatient, would you agree? There’s a lot of things on the table here. What are you willing to do and do quickly?

JIM CHALMERS:

I think you’re right, Laura. There is a sense of that and that’s a welcome contribution, I think, to the discussion so far. The task now for Katy Gallagher, my colleague the Minister for Women, is to pull together the proposals and the ideas that were put forward in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration a moment ago and to make sure that this is something that features heavily in the outcomes documents that we’ll release tomorrow.

JAYES:

Okay. So, what about paid parental leave, more generous there, also bringing forward the childcare package? Are they two things that are on the table or off the table, because you’ve talked about no unfunded policies?

CHALMERS:

There were a range of really good ideas put forward including those ones that you’ve just mentioned and what we said in being upfront with people is that we would like to make room in the Budget for as many of these good ideas as we can, but we need to be honest and say that when you’ve got a Budget which is heaving with that trillion dollars of debt that we inherited, you’ve got to prioritise, you’ve got to sequence.

We’ve got a massive, game-changing investment in childcare and early education in the Budget that I’ll hand down in October. That will be a game-changer for Australian parents along the lines that you have talked about many, many times before. It’ll ease people’s cost of living pressures but it will also have an economic dividend, and that was a big feature of the conversation this morning – how do we take full advantage of that game-changing investment in childcare so that we can get more parents, particularly more mums, earning more and working more if they want to.

JAYES:

Okay, give us a bit more of a hint, Treasurer? You say it will be game-changing in the Budget. Are you talking about more generous subsidies or are you talking about actually changing the infrastructure of how childcare, the subsidies and the whole system works, because a lot of women, families that interact with this system, it is pretty broken and I think the infrastructure is a problem, right?

CHALMERS:

There are a number of elements to it and we focused, as you know, on the subsidy because we want to ease people’s cost of living pressures and we want to make it easier for all of those mums and dads who are sitting around the kitchen table and working out how much more they can work, and for a lot of people it hasn’t made sense because the subsidies haven’t been generous enough, so we want to make that decision easier.

We’ve got a labour shortage and a skills shortage. We’ve got this huge untapped potential when it comes to Australian women in the workforce, in particular, and so we want to make that decision easier. One of the reasons why it’s been too difficult is because for too long childcare policy has been seen as a social security measure. We want to see it as a crucial economic reform that eases people’s cost of living pressures. There was broad support for that at the Jobs and Skills Summit already, as we expect, and if there are other ideas about how we implement that more effectively, then we’re obviously open to them as well.

JAYES:

Right; okay. So, this is music to many working women’s ears that you now see this as a productivity measure, not so much a welfare one. In my view that is a huge turnaround. When you talk about subsidies and women who are essentially penalised for earning too much, are you trying to sort out that higher end?

CHALMERS:

We are, Laura, to be frank about it. For too long, I think, as I said, it’s seen as some kind of handout, and what we really want to see it as instead, is an opportunity to make it easier for people to go back to work if they want to – work more and earn more. You and I know – we’ve both got young kids, a lot of our mates and our sort of generational equivalents that we knock around with – this is probably the main cost of living pressure that new parents worry about, so we want to ease that but we want to do it in a way that isn’t some kind of handout. We want to recognise the absolutely extraordinary potential that we could unleash in this economy if we try and make it easier for more parents to return to work, particularly more mums.

JAYES:

So, in the past Labor in opposition had railed against – and we’ve even heard the slogans or the words “more subsidies for rich women”. It sounds like you’re ending that here today.

CHALMERS:

We’ve taken a different approach and I pay tribute to Anthony Albanese, also to Amanda Rishworth, Jason Clare and Anne Aly, Katy Gallagher and others who have, I think, engineered a real improvement in our thinking in this area, and I think whatever we’ve said in the past, for the last few years we have recognised the economic opportunity here. It’s not cheap. It’s not a small investment that we’re making. It might be up towards $5 billion when the final numbers are tallied in the October Budget that I’ll hand down. It was the biggest commitment, the biggest on Budget commitment we took to the last election and that’s for a reason. This is a crucial piece of economic reform. It will make life easier for people, but it will help build that bigger, more productive, more skilled workforce that we desperately need in this country if we are to grow the economy the right way and in ways where people can actually work hard and get ahead if they want to.

JAYES:

You’ve talked about the end of making unfunded promises. We all know where the Budget is at. We are at a difficult period here. Again, there’s questions, almost daily, about whether you will maintain these stage three tax cuts. Anthony Albanese seems to be signalling that they will be in place for now. A lot of business leaders privately are worried that you will actually backflip on that. Can you just talk us through your thinking as to why the Budget and why the economy needs to maintain those stage three tax cuts?

CHALMERS:

I think we’ve made it clear that our position hasn’t changed on the stage three tax cuts and that our focus is elsewhere. In tax reform, our focus is on multinational tax reform and in the economy, our focus is squarely on the issues we are talking about here at the Jobs and Skills Summit - whether it’s stagnant wages, whether it’s labour and skills shortages, the gender pay gap, some of these issues we’ve just been talking about around participation. That’s the focus of the Government. The tax cuts that we’re talking about here are not slated to come in for another couple of years. Obviously, we listened very respectfully to all of the views that are put to us about that, but our focus is elsewhere, and our position hasn’t changed.

JAYES:

Okay, let’s talk about TAFE – $1.8 billion, I believe for 180,000 fee free TAFE places. Speaking of unfunded promises, how are you going to pay for that and where are you going to find all these teachers to teach these new skills?

CHALMERS:

This is what happens when you have a Commonwealth Government prepared to work with the states and territories to do the right thing by our people and by their economy. One of the issues we’ve got here is we’ve got these big skills shortages, we’ve got an opportunity to tweak the migration settings, but that should never be a substitute for training more Australians. So, what the Prime Minister announced today after his discussions with the chiefs and the premiers yesterday in Sydney, is all about making sure we can bring forward some of those fee-free TAFE places in a way that will deliver an economic benefit.

For too long people say if you want to deal with our issues in our labour market you’ve got to either do migration or skills or participation. The reality is, and the truth is, we have got to move on all of those fronts simultaneously. The situation is that challenging. There’s a lot of goodwill in the room to recognise that not everybody will get what they want, but we need to move on these areas simultaneously. That’s what bringing people together around these big economic challenges is all about.

JAYES:

Treasurer, thanks for talking to us in the break. The room looks like it’s a pretty good vibe in there. You’re happy with the guest list. Is everyone happy? Enough snacks going around?

CHALMERS:

I think so, but look, I am really encouraged, frankly, Laura, by the spirit in the room here today. People have genuinely come here looking for common ground which is absolutely terrific, and it makes me cautiously optimistic that we can make some genuine progress. I’m not unrealistic about the contentious issues. I know that there won’t be unanimity on every issue, but people have come here in the right spirit. There’s a lot of goodwill in the room and let’s see what we can do with that.

JAYES:

Jim Chalmers, thanks so much for your time. We will speak soon.

CHALMERS:

Thanks, Laura.