JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
ANTHONY CHISHOLM
SENATOR FOR QUEENSLAND
RUSSELL ROBERTSON
LABOR CANDIDATE FOR CAPRICORNIA
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
MACKAY
MONDAY, 19 JULY 2021
SUBJECTS: Mining and regional Queensland; Lockdowns; JobKeeper; Newspoll; Katie Hopkins; George Christensen.
RUSSELL ROBERTSON, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR CAPRICONRIA: We're here at the Resource Centre of Excellence and I've got with me the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Queensland Senator Anthony Chisholm. Once again looking around at something that's close to my heart, and that's safety, and particularly mine safety. This Centre provides some great experience and some great training to try and make our workforce safer and to try and make our mines safer.
We visited a coal mine just this morning, with Anthony and Jim, and it was a great eye-opener for these guys to see again what I do on a daily basis. These centres are critical to making our mine safer and providing a more stable and safer workforce in the mining sector. We highlighted again how important this sector is to us. And being a coal miner and a Labor candidate in Capricornia is a great challenge. And it's a great excitement that I can bring the industry, in which I'm a third generation, to show people like Anthony and Jim. So it's exciting, and it's fun, and I want to make sure I can impress upon people the requirement for mine safety everywhere and in particular in these Queensland coal mines. I want to hand over now to Jim, who'll have a quick chat around some of the key issues facing us.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much, Robbo. And well done putting your hand up again to run for the seat of Capricornia - a champion of the working people and working families of this really important part of regional Queensland. Anthony Chisholm and I are back in regional Queensland once again. We're spending the next few days in Moranbah, Mackay, Rocky, and Emerald. We're spending time in the mining and resources industry and also agriculture, transport and logistics, hospitality and tourism as well. These are really important local economies and they are so crucial to the recovery of the Australian economy more broadly.
This morning we were at the Peabody mine at Coppabella and now we're here at the Resources Centre of Excellence. We want to thank both of those organisations for briefing us and for giving us a tour and an understanding of developments in mining, in particular.
As I've said before, we do understand just how important these industries are to the regional economies of Queensland, but also to the national economy more broadly. And when it comes to mining we want to make sure - and Russell Robertson and Shane Hamilton next door - are always championing the workers of these industries, because we want to make sure that people who are doing the same job can get the same pay. We want to make sure that people are safe at work, and that they can get safely to and from work as well, that's really important.
This is a two-speed economy right now. As we emerge from the worst part of the recession there's still so much uncertainty around. That's not news to the people of Sydney and Victoria in particular. This is a two-speed economy: some parts of the Australian economy are in second gear, other parts are in reverse. What that means is that the national economy is hostage to the Prime Minister's failures when it comes to vaccines and quarantine.
I think the Australian people are very disappointed in the Prime Minister, that he hasn't been able to get those two basic things right. They understand, in this two-speed economy, that some parts of Australia are going okay and other parts are going into reverse. And that's because Scott Morrison hasn't got his act together on vaccines in particular but also quarantine and managing this pandemic more broadly.
We are very grateful to the workers and industries who are keeping the wheels of the economy turning in places like regional Queensland. We are very grateful to the people of Sydney and Victoria who are doing the right thing by each other in these really difficult times to make sure that we can get on top of this virus and try and limit the spread in these really challenging times. The people of Australia have risen to the occasion during this pandemic and the Morison Government has fallen short. That's what we've seen time and time again - the Australian people doing the right thing and the Morison Government getting it wrong.
That’s nowhere more obvious than vaccines and quarantine but also JobKeeper. Scott Morrison's decision to end JobKeeper is looking dumber by the day. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg's decision to end JobKeeper - which was such an important part of government policy - to end that is looking dumber and dumber by the day.
This Government has now had three cracks at replacing JobKeeper and they still haven't got it right. The people of Sydney and Victoria are crying out for assistance. The Government’s had three cracks at providing that and they still haven't come anywhere near anything as good as JobKeeper, when it comes to maintaining that link between employers and employees.
So to the people of regional Queensland, doing so much to keep the wheels of the national economy turning, we say thank you. To the people of Sydney and Victoria more broadly, we say thank you for doing the right thing by each other. The Australian people are very disappointed with Scott Morrison and his mismanagement of this pandemic. Australians have risen to the occasion, the Morrison Government’s fallen short.
ANTHONY CHISHOLM, QUEENSLAND SENATOR: Thanks Jim. It’s great to be back in Mackay and great to be here with Russell Robertson our federal candidate for Capricornia. And also, we're pleased to have Shane Hamilton running in Dawson as well. It's really important that we have the Shadow Treasurer, the senior Queensland Shadow for Labor, out in regional Queensland this week. This is on top of also having Anthony Albanese through this region recently as well. It shows federal Labor's commitment to regional Queensland and also ensuring that we understand the resource industry, what it means to the local economy and what it means to local businesses and workers as well. So it's really good to get a first hand experience of that from Peabody, then hit the highway into Mackay and seeing how busy it was with workers coming to and fro. It's also good for us to get a sense of that local economy, but also how hard it is for workers in this region as well. The use of labour hire and the detrimental impact that has on local communities are all things that Russel Robertson has first hand experience of. And they are things that he is passionate about fixing, which is why he is an important part of the federal Labor team. And I know that an Anthony Albanese Labor Government would be so much more effective if we had someone with Russell's experience as a voice in that government. So that's something that we're committed to working hard on over the next couple of months in the lead up to an election, because we know how important it is to have people like Russell as part of that federal Labor team.
JOURNALIST: Jim, you were talking before about JobKeeper. So in your eyes what's exactly wrong with the current support package that's being offered in Sydney and other parts? And do you think JobKeeper then should just be brought back as it was?
CHALMERS: The main problem with the support that's being offered is it doesn't do the most important job that JobKeeper was doing, which is maintain the link between employer and employee. We've been saying for some time that if the Government insists on ditching JobKeeper don’t ditch the most important part of JobKeeper, which is to maintain that link between employer and employee.
The Government’s now had three cracks at replacing JobKeeper - every time it's been inferior to JobKeeper. We call on the Government to either reinstate JobKeeper or to do something as good or better. The communities of Western Sydney, throughout Victoria, they are crying out for something like JobKeeper. The Government doesn't want to be humiliated into admitting that they got it horribly wrong to cut JobKeeper in the first place. And that's why they haven't reinstated that really important element of JobKeeper.
The time has come for the Government to either reinstate JobKeeper or come forward with something as good or better. The people of locked-down communities really deserve extra assistance. People know that they wouldn't be in this position if Scott Morrison had done his job on vaccines and quarantine. These lockdowns are Scott Morrison's fault, the least he could do is come forward with a more effective package of support.
JOURNALIST: Katie Hopkins has had her visa cancelled. Should she have been granted a visa by the federal government in the first place, given that her character is questionable?
CHALMERS: It’s worse than that, it's despicable. Katie Hopkins should never have been given a visa in the first place. This is a person who has espoused despicable views, which have absolutely no place in a tolerant society like Australia. She should never have been given a visa in the first place. The Government has been sprung here encouraging someone who holds these despicable views. They've only revoked this visa because they've been sprung. She should never have been given a visa in the first place.
This is the type of person who describes migrants as cockroaches, who describes different religions in despicable ways, and talks about a final solution. There is no way she should have got a visa in the first place. And now, I think it really is especially troubling, that the Morison Government Minister in charge of visas is now trying to pretend that this is the New South Wales Government’s fault. I mean, does anybody in the Morison Government take responsibility for anything? She should never have got this visa in the first place. And it's very troubling that the federal Government is blaming the states once again.
JOURNALIST: A parliamentary inquiry has heard that the carpark program focused on marginal electorates wasn't open to all electorates. Should all funding programs be open to every electorate?
CHALMERS: Every funding program needs to have the most robust arrangements to prevent the kind of rorting which has become commonplace under this Morison Govrrnment. If only this Government spent as much time rolling out the vaccine as they spend rorting taxpayer money, Australia would be better off. This is a Government which treats taxpayer money like it’s Liberal Party money.
We now know today that the same people responsible for the sports rots out of the Prime Minister's own office were also responsible for this ‘pork and ride’ issue that has emerged. This is a Government with a Budget which is riddled with rorts and weighed down with waste. When the people of Western Sydney or Victoria say that they need more help to get them through Scott Morrison's lockdown the Government says that there's no money. But if there's a rort to be had, or political advantage to be wrung out of rorting taxpayers money, then there's plenty of money to spray around.
JOURNALIST: To some local issues now. We’ve had Michelle O'Neill from the ACTU in town last week to do with all this Senate Inquiry into job security. While she was here she was speaking about how casual labour hire through labour hire firms in the mining industry, could discourage workers from speaking out on safety issues. And that was something that the recent Queensland Board of Inquiry also into the Grosvenor mine explosion last year also highlighted. What can the federal government do to address some of those issues around labour higher and concerns around labour higher in the mining industry?
CHALMERS: Robbo might want to add to this in a moment, but let me just provide some perspectives from my point of view. One of the reasons why we are worried about the casualisation and the increasing use of labour hire in the mining industry is because it keeps people in a precarious position, less likely to speak out on issues like safety. And some of these issues have been raised by Michelle O'Neill, and by Robbo, and by Anthony Albanese and others for some time.
I think the most important thing as a first step is to not do what the Morrison Government is doing, which is to try and support the further casualisation and the further use of labour hire. It beggars belief that the federal government supported that court case for example, which sought to address some of these sorts of issues. We want people paid the same for doing the same job in the mining industry. The state government has taken some welcome steps, and we will look to take additional steps as a federal government. We don't want people to be employed in precarious ways that prevent them from speaking out on issues like safety. We want people paid the same pay for the same job. And one of the reasons why I think the local LNP Members and Senators have let down the mining industry and the workers in the industry so badly, is because they're more or less silent on these issues. I'll just see if Robbo wants to add to that.
ROBERTSON: Thanks, Jim. That’s exactly right. As Michelle has identified, and the Senste Inquiry is identifying, is what the LNP Members are trying hide from. And that’s that labour hire is a key - I’ll repeat that - labour hire is a key problem when it comes to mine safety. We saw, only just down the road at the Grosvenor mine - a complete labour hire mine - workers were reluctant to speak up about that catastrophic disaster. It's important that we fix it. We've got a policy of same job, same pay. That will fix the issue. You won't be able to have labour hire companies rorting the process and putting miners at risk. So it's important that we get that message out. It’s important that we actually call the LNP Members who constantly support coal mine owners not coal miners.
JOURNALIST: We’ve seen, the past couple of weeks, you were up here last week, Anthony Albanese was up here twice last week, we’ve had Richard Marles up here as well. This morning Newspoll came out that showed 53/47 to Labor in the two party preferred. Do you think that's translating to the regions, given this big PR push here in recent weeks?
CHALMERS: First of all, we don't need a poll to tell us that Australians are unhappy with Scott Morrison's handling of vaccines and quarantine, in particular. You can walk down the street of most places in Australia and more and more people are disappointed, not just in Scott Morrison's mismanagement of vaccines and quarantine, but the fact that he doesn't seem to take responsibility for it. We don't pay attention to the polls. At times like these the most important thing is vaccines and quarantine, and jobs and industries, like those that we're talking about here in regional Queensland.
I think it's quite obvious that Australians are unhappy with Scott Morrison failing on vaccines and quarantine, and not taking responsibility for those failures. When it comes to regional Queensland, it's a massive priority for us, regional Queensland. This is the second time I've been in Paget in the last 10 days. And yes, Anthony Albanese’s through here all the time, it's like a second home for him. Richard Marles has been here. We’ve been here a couple of times. This is a high priority for us. And not just in political terms, but in economic terms.
We want the Australian economy to recover strongly. We want regional Queensland - and the industries and workers of regional Queensland - to be a bigger part of that story. That means spending time with local industries, local workers, local communities, to make sure that we can properly represent the people of regional Queensland, including here in Mackay and the surrounding areas. It's also why we preselected Russell Robertson. It’s also why we preselected Shane Hamilton. We want to make sure that we give these parts of regional Queensland the strongest possible voice in an Albanese Labor Government after the next election. We will be here many times between now and then.
JOURNALIST: This is the last one for me. The Guardian this morning had a story about the LNP’s upcoming Women's Conference in Brisbane. And part of that was a motion before that conference, basically calling on the federal party to support George Christensen’s children born alive protection bill. Is that something that internally the LNP should be focusing on given everything else that's happening in the world at the moment?
CHALMERS: I'll tell you, I've been through regional Queensland so much the last couple of years and not one person has raised that with me as an issue. Of the 20 or 30 different issues that people have raised as we come through here, nobody has ever raised that issue that George Christensen seems to spend all of his time on.
The most important thing we need to be focused on is vaccines and quarantines, jobs in local communities like this one, and how we're going to provide more opportunities for more people in more parts of Australia, George Christensen is notorious for banging on about some of these sorts of issues to distract from his own failures when it comes to representing mine workers, when it comes to representing local industries, when it comes to being part of a government that can’t deal with this pandemic so that we're not locking-down while other countries are opening up. These are always designed as distractions from George, nobody's raised it with me in the streets and lunchrooms of these towns. Our priorities lie elsewhere.
JOURNALIST: Looking back at the history of this kind of subject. In recent days the ABC has put out that Miss Represented, so I don't know if you've had a chance to watch it yet. They had an episode that was focused on the RU489 issue. I guess, what does that say about the topic of abortion in the federal space, is it ever going to you know resolve or is it just going to be an issue that's always there? There will always be people like George Christensen raising things like this?
CHALMERS: Well, that's up to George if he continues to raise it. I think that there is a sensible, largely settled view, in the Australian community that George doesn't represent. And more importantly than that, I think the Australian people - certainly the people of George's electorate - are focused on other things, many of the things I ran through a moment ago.
ENDS
