E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
LOGAN
MONDAY, 25 MAY 2020

SUBJECTS: The Morrison Government’s bungling of the JobKeeper program; Border closures; Bushfire relief.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: No amount of spin from the Government today will obscure the fact that Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are responsible for the biggest error made in any budget by any Government at any point in the history of this country. The JobKeeper program has the potential to do so much good in our communities and in our economy, but it's being badly implemented, badly communicated, and badly budgeted-for as well. That has catastrophic consequences for hundreds of thousands of Australian workers who've been excluded from JobKeeper on the basis of the program is full, when we now know after this humiliating admission that it's actually three million workers short.

This is much more than an accounting error. We know that the international ratings agencies have put Australia on negative watch as a consequence of the numbers that the Treasurer had released. We know that businesses are making decisions based on the amount of money that they expected to be injected into the economy. We know the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund based their forecasts on the figures that the Treasurer has provided to the Australian community in error. We know that heaps of people who've been excluded from JobKeeper payments have been raiding their superannuation with big consequences for their income in retirement.

This bungled implementation of JobKeeper has massive consequences for people and their jobs, but also for the recovery of this economy. The more this program is bungled, the longer the unemployment queues, the more damage is done to the economy over the longer term, the harsher and deeper the downturn, and the worse the implications for the budget. That's what we're dealing with here. It's time for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer not just to take responsibility for this humiliating error, but also to take responsibility for the consequences of this error as well.

Labor's position all along has been that this is a good program, but that too many people have been excluded from it. That means the unemployment queues will be longer, the recovery will be that much harder, and that there will be even more damage done to the budget over the longer term. We have said that if the Government is going to commit money of this magnitude, let's make sure that that money is effectively spent, that we get maximum bang for buck, and that we satisfy that objective that we began with; to keep more Australian workers attached their employer so that their recovery can be easier than otherwise. The way the Government has severely bungled this JobKeeper program means that unemployment will be worse, the recovery will be harder and that the budget will be in worse nick over the longer term.

Now of course, in the usual way, after seven years of Government, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have spent a lot of time in recent days talking about the Labor Party. We saw that again today in that pathetic opinion piece written by the Treasurer in The Australian. We won't be taking lectures about fiscal responsibility from a mob who had already more than doubled public debt before this crisis, who had delivered only deficits after promising only surpluses, and who have their names now on the worst budget stuff up in the history of the Commonwealth. The days of this Government being taken seriously on the budget or the economy are long gone.

The Prime Minister is at the Press Club tomorrow. We need to see a genuine, comprehensive plan to respond to this crisis more effectively, to bolster the recovery, not snap back all the support in the economy, and to set Australia up for the long term. We don't want from the Prime Minister all of the usual, narrow, ideological obsessions, all of the usual politicking, point-scoring and finger-pointing. We deserve better than that from this Prime Minister. He has an opportunity at the Press Club to clean up this mess that he and the Treasurer have made of the JobKeeper program, to outline what they're going to do to fix it, and to outline how he will create jobs in this recovery and to set Australia up for the long term.

The fear that many have in the community is this; having implemented JobKeeper too slowly and to narrowly, the Government risks now withdrawing that support too quickly and too bluntly. We need the Government to be smart here. This crisis has a long way to run yet. The Reserve Bank and others have said that unemployment will be higher for longer. The Treasury has said they still expect unemployment to hit double digits. We need from the Government a better effort than what's been revealed by these humiliating admissions over JobKeeper. We need a genuine plan from the Prime Minister at the Press Club. We haven't got that so far.

JOURNALIST: There could be an element of serendipity in this. Are you saying that JobKeeper really is the only way going forward to spend this money, to stimulate things, to keep people afloat?

CHALMERS: JobKeeper is obviously the central component of the Government's response to this economic crisis. We need to see those dollars spent effectively. That means no more of this bungling incompetence which has led to this humiliating admission. Clearly it's not the only thing that the Government needs to be doing. Anthony Albanese and Jason Clare, for example, have talked about the need to get investment in residential construction right because there is a fear that that will fall off a cliff in the coming weeks and months. Clearly there are issues in communities which rely heavily on tourism which need to be addressed. The point that we've made about JobKeeper is that it can be better targeted, it could perhaps be tapered, but don't just snap it out of the economy in a way that would jeopardise the recovery before it even gathers pace. There are a range of things the Government can be doing to make sure that the unemployment queues are not longer than necessary. So far their bungling incompetence has meant that more Australians have headed off to Centrelink. That means a longer and more difficult recovery, and it means even more implications for the budget in the long term too.

JOURNALIST: On super, a third of people who've access their super early because of the pandemic are under the age of 30. What do you make of that?

CHALMERS: A lot of people who've been excluded unnecessarily from the JobKeeper payments have been forced to withdraw their super and that will have devastating consequences for the type of income that they can rely on in retirement. Clearly, this crisis is disproportionately impacting younger workers who are forced to take more of their super out, and in doing so, the Government is in many ways robbing them of a decent retirement. I'm conscious that my colleague Stephen Jones will have more to say about this later today so I'll leave it at that.

JOURNALIST: Jim, on borders and in light of the disastrous situation here for domestic tourism operators, do you believe Queensland should open its border considering the Deputy Chief Medical Officer has stated that there's no medical reason to keep state borders closed?

CHALMERS: First of all, Queenslanders and the Queensland Government have done a really good job limiting the spread of this virus. That needs to be acknowledged. They've done a good job because they have relied heavily on the advice of the medical officers here in Queensland. They've made difficult but careful and cautious decisions about limiting the spread of the virus, because if the virus was to break out here that would have devastating economic consequences. Clearly, everybody wants the border reopened when it's safe for that to happen, when it's responsible and appropriate for that to happen. We all know that every tenth job or so here in Queensland relies on tourism in one way or another. We know that in towns like Cairns that reliance on tourism is even more pronounced. We want to see the border opened when it's safe, appropriate, and when the medical advice is consistent with that. I know that a lot of the mayors around Queensland have said publicly, and not just Labor mayors, that we need to have an abundance of caution here because an outbreak of the virus will be devastating for the state economy. I'm also conscious that Annastacia Palaszczuk will be meeting with the mayor of the Gold Coast to talk about this. We do need to be cognisant of the fact that our Queensland-New South Wales border has a couple of very big population centres either side of it. That means that the decisions taken in this space by those two states are more consequential than otherwise, and we need to factor that in as well.

JOURNALIST: I mean, what she said was that the borders could stay open until September. The flipside of that message is that the roadmap says, all going well it'll open in July. I mean, is that something she could equally have emphasised and not scared the horses?

CHALMERS: One of the things that's been missed in all of this is that the Premier has said that the border closures are under constant review. That means that if the medical advice changes, or the circumstances change, or there is an extra level of confidence that we can contain the virus even with the borders open, then obviously she will consider all of that. All around Australia, Premiers are taking the best decisions they can about very complex and consequential matters based on the advice that they all receive. That's what Premier Palaszczuk is doing. She's being supported in that by a number of the mayor's around Queensland. She's been carefully managing the expectations of the public at the same time as pointing out that it's under constant review so that if the borders could be opened earlier, I'm sure that she would take that on board.

JOURNALIST: Just in regard to bushfires, can I ask what Labor would have done differently to help with the recovery for people affected by the bushfires? Do you think charities should have spent all the money that was donated by now?

CHALMERS: These bushfires were unprecedented but they weren't entirely unexpected. The experts have been warning for some time of the potential for these kinds of catastrophic fires. I'm conscious that the Royal Commission is underway now and that's an important way for us to get to the bottom of what's happened here, and what we can do better in terms of preparing Australia for more and more frequent and more and more intense bushfires like the ones that we have just been through. I think the Government has a lot to answer for when it comes to the way they've responded to the bushfires. The Morison Government is good at announcing support, but very bad at getting that support out the door. We've seen that in the bushfire season and we've seen that with the JobKeeper program as well. The Government has a lot to answer for. They announce big numbers and big dollars, they do the press conferences and all of that when the cameras are around, but a lot of these communities have been more or less abandoned.  When it comes to charities, clearly a lot of Australians did a magnificent job, digging deep into their own pockets to support charities to support some of these communities. We do want to see that money reach those communities and be an important part of the rebuild of communities which have been absolutely devastated by some of the worst fires that we've seen in our history.

Thanks very much.

ENDS