Interview with Sabra Lane, AM, ABC Radio

SABRA LANE:

First off, National Cabinet meets this afternoon and on the agenda is a discussion about shortening the COVID isolation period from seven days to five. And then tomorrow, the Federal Government's Jobs and Skills Summit kicks off in Canberra with more than 140 business, union and advocacy leaders meeting to discuss everything from skilled migration to industrial relations changes. To discuss it all, I spoke earlier with the Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Jim Chalmers, welcome. As long as there's some sort of COVID isolation period in place for workers, should the COVID pandemic payments of up to $750 continue?

JIM CHALMERS:

That's a matter for the Prime Minister to discuss with his state and territory colleagues. Today in Sydney, there'll be a COVID update where the relevant health advice will be presented to the leaders in the usual way. So they'll discuss that and they'll discuss other important issues in the lead‑up to the Jobs and Skills Summit ‑ issues like skills, like migration, and I think it will be a good opportunity to set the tone for the rest of the week.

LANE:

To that Jobs Summit, while there'll be equal numbers of union and business reps, only 14 per cent of Aussie workers are union members. So is this Summit really all about giving unions some big new powers veiled by the fig leaf of consensus?

CHALMERS:

That's just the language of the Opposition really, Sabra. I think what we've tried to do here with this invitation list ‑ and it hasn't been easy, if I'm honest ‑ is to strike the right balance. Whether it's gender, whether it's employers, unions, community groups, state and local governments ‑ we've tried to strike a good balance. We've got a good problem here in that we've got hundreds of people who've got a legitimate reason to be there. We've got people absolutely clamouring to be involved, which is better than the alternative.

LANE:

To help fill skills shortages, Victoria's Premier Dan Andrews believes it's time to give foreign students and those on benefits like part‑time and full‑time pensioners more flexibility to work without being penalised. Is the Federal Government prepared to do that?

CHALMERS:

These sorts of issues do belong at the Jobs and Skills Summit. If there's an idea about making our workforce more relevant to the skills and labour shortages that we have in our economy, if there are better ways to set our migration settings which are more appropriate to the economic conditions that we confront, then we want to see that teased out over the next couple of days.

My colleagues Clare O'Neil and Andrew Giles have been working hard on the migration front. And other colleagues have been working in their relevant areas too, because we can have better migration settings so long as they're not a substitute for training Australians for more opportunities. And those issues are really important, really central components of what we'll be talking about at the Summit.

LANE:

And on those who are on support payments who'd like to work more but fear they'd be penalised, are you able to quantify, for example, how many pensioners and part‑pensioners want to work but don't because they fear that they'd lose their government support payments?

CHALMERS:

We've put a lot of thought into this and a lot of work into this. In fact, we started working on this before the election and talking with the relevant advocacy groups. It's hard to get a handle on exactly how many pensioners would be in that boat ‑ they want to work more. And we have to weigh up this policy idea of suspending or increasing the work test against the costs and how effective it might be. But again, I've tried to be really open‑minded about this. I've had a heap of conversations with employers, with unions with advocacy groups like National Seniors. We've got an open mind to doing something here, but it needs to be cost effective. It needs to make sense because we have a Budget which is heaving with a trillion dollars of debt and we can't afford to fund every idea, even ideas which might sound like good ideas on the surface.

LANE:

Once the Summit's over, when will there be a clear plan for skilled migration and when will any changes to industrial relations laws go before Parliament?

CHALMERS:

What your listeners should expect to see from the Summit, Sabra, is really two sets of issues. First of all, the issues where there's sufficient common ground that we can move forward together more or less immediately, by which I mean, this calendar year there'll be, hopefully, a handful of issues in that category. And then there'll be a whole set of things where there's sufficient common ground and sufficient appetite to work together to do more work on issues which might inform subsequent Budgets or the Employment White Paper or other processes of government including the Commonwealth‑state processes as well. And so what I've detected ‑ myself and my colleagues have had more than 100 consultations in the lead‑up to this Summit ‑ and what I've detected is that there is a real appetite to try and agree on some immediate actions but also an appetite to ensure that this spirit of collaboration and consensus doesn't end on Friday afternoon, in fact, it's just the beginning.

LANE:

The Government has been very clear that the halving of fuel excise will end next month. Is the Government planning any other relief for everyday Australians in the October Budget?

CHALMERS:

The Budget will have some cost‑of‑living relief but it will be familiar to people because it's what we've committed to and announced already. So there'll be cost‑of‑living relief in childcare, for example, which will be a game‑changer for Australian parents and it will have an economic dividend because it will make it easier for people to work more and earn more if they would like to. So childcare will be central to the Budget in October. There'll be relief for medicine costs as well which has an important health dividend. And of course, so much of our economic plan is about getting wages moving again which is the key thing if you care about cost‑of‑living. So there will be cost‑of‑living elements in the Budget. We've been pretty up‑front with people, Sabra, I think you'd agree about our capacity to fund much beyond that given the Budget circumstances that we've inherited. But we think we've got a good, responsible set of cost‑of‑living measures which will make a real difference to the lives of Australians.

LANE:

Jim Chalmers, thanks for talking to AM.

CHALMERS:

Thank you, Sabra.