JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN BREAKFAST
THURSDAY, 3 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: South East Queensland floods; Emergency support must flow quickly to those who need it; National Accounts; Many of the issues in the economy - stagnant wages, job insecurity, real wages going backwards, costs of living going through the roof, productivity going backwards, business investment going backwards – existed before the pandemic, floods, and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine; Labor’s policies to grow the economy the right way.
 

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: South East Queensland is bracing for another battering today, with fears large hail and heavy rainfall could cause more flash flooding in towns and suburbs that are already inundated with water. More broadly, the ongoing flood crisis is expected to act as a drag on the economy, which has begun to recover from the COVID pandemic. Logan, just south of Brisbane, is regarded as ground zero for the devastation in Queensland. Its federal Member is the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who's my guest this morning, Jim Chalmers, welcome.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks, Patricia.

KARVELAS: There's a heavy band of rain bearing down on the South East of the state. How much could this exacerbate the flood crisis in Queensland, what are your fears for today?

CHALMERS: We've already had some of these storms this morning Patricia, and that's probably been pretty distressing for a lot of people that are going through a lot of pain in the last few days - not just in Logan, but also right throughout South East Queensland, into New South Wales. We feel for friends around Sydney who are copying this diabolical weather at the moment as well. We expect that it will at the very least hamper the clean-up that had begun and that at worst could see some more flooding, so it's very distressing.

There are a lot of people doing it incredibly tough. We know from earlier natural disasters that usually when the floodwaters start to reside is a really difficult time for people, when they start thinking about clean-up, and I think this extra storm activity is going to make that more difficult. I think the message is in this country we look out for each other, we look after each other. That's true when the floodwaters are coming up, it's true when they start going down, and people aren't on their own.

KARVELAS: The people of Logan and across South East Queensland have already been through so much - you know that better than anyone - are they getting the necessary support to help them through this?

CHALMERS: Certainly at a community level, as always - the local SES volunteers, and all the emergency workers and first responders, and all of the absolutely amazing community groups and charity organisations, and even at the neighbourhood level - neighbours cooking for neighbours, helping each other clean up - it's been really quite remarkable and quite inspiring. When it comes to the government response, obviously there are payments being made available and that's very important too. We spent a big chunk of the last few days trying to help people access those payments. I think we can't ignore the fact that it has been hard, in some instances, to help people prove their eligibility for these payments. We've been asking for Services Australia teams to be in our communities. Unfortunately, they have been disproportionately sent to other communities. That's troubling and we've raised our concerns with the Government publicly and privately about that, but it's just absolutely crucial that the support flows to people who need it. It's been hard enough on people already the last few days, we shouldn’t be making that harder by not providing that support that people need and deserve.

KARVELAS: The clean-up bill is already estimated at $1 billion, that's just for Queensland. Given all of the distraction, could that just be a down payment?

CHALMERS: It will be very costly. Costly in terms of lives lost most importantly, and damage done to communities, but there will be a cost to the economy, it will be expensive. The full cost will be revealed once we know the full extent of the damage. The other thing that people are worried about - and people understand this - is that it was hard enough to get building materials and skilled workers even before these floods. The cost of building materials and the skills shortages that we're seeing around the country will actually hamper the rebuild as we turn our minds to that.

KARVELAS: The floods coincide with the latest GDP figures, which show the economy rebounded by a very welcome 3.4% at the end of last year. So the economy is now more than 3% larger than what it was in 2019 before the pandemic. So we're faring better than many other OECD countries. Doesn't that suggest that something is going right here?

CHALMERS: A couple of things about that. Obviously, clearly, we want the economy to recover strongly. Every single economist expected that the December quarter would be relatively strong because it came off that really low base in the September quarter, which was dogged by those lockdowns caused by the failures on vaccines and quarantine, and all the rest of it. So everybody expected there to be a strong rebound. Indeed, some economists expected the rebound to be even stronger and many have pointed to the fact that even in those numbers we still have productivity going backwards, business investment going backwards, and cost of living going through the roof. Overall, we welcome a rebound in the economy, we expected it, but it's still a bit of a mixed bag. I think the most important thing, Patricia, for your listeners to understand, is that these numbers are from last year, and there's been a lot that's happened since then.

KARVELAS: There is.

CHALMERS: We've had the Prime Minister's rapid test debacle, we had the grocery shortage, the worker shortages.

KARVELAS: I think you're right there, there's a lot of other factors since. Let's go to that then. Josh Frydenberg concedes that the recovery is not yet locked-in, it could be curtailed by the floods and the war in Ukraine - but those factors are beyond the Government's control. You can hardly blame the Morrison Government for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine, right?

CHALMERS: I think it's entirely reasonable for us to point out that a lot of issues in the economy that we're seeing now have been hanging around for a long time - stagnant wages, job insecurity, real wages going backwards, costs of living going through the roof, productivity going backwards, business investment going backwards. We shouldn't just pretend that every challenge in the economy is consequence of the floods or what's happening in Ukraine, as important and crucial as those two things are to the economy. So that's the first point.

Secondly, the real issue here is the Government is complacent about the recovery. We've had now five or six times where the Treasurer has come on programs like this and said the economy's roaring again and it’s all fine, and because they've been complacent and haven't done the right thing on the rapid tests or vaccines or quarantine or some other aspect of the pandemic, that recovery has been cruelled. The economy would be stronger today were it not for these mistakes that have been made in mismanaging the pandemic and failing to recognise you can't have a healthy economy without healthy people.

KARVELAS: And it will be your job to manage the economy if Labor wins the coming election. Where is it heading for the rest of the year? How much could it be dragged down by flood damage and the war in Ukraine?

CHALMERS: It will definitely have an impact, there will be billions of dollars in damage done by these floods, obviously. The war in Ukraine, this unprovoked act of aggression, is already sending energy prices up, it’s causing some issues around food security in Europe and it’s making investors very jumpy. All of those factors will matter. It's why we can't be complacent about the recovery. It's why we need a genuine plan to get the economy growing the right way, and not just more of these billions of dollars in political patch-ups and rorts and waste and mismanagement that we currently see in the Budget. Because there is some uncertainty around and we need to deal with it.

KARVELAS: Yeah, there certainly is. We are out of time. Jim Chalmers, I'll speak to you again no doubt. Thank you.

CHALMERS: Thanks, Patricia.

KARVELAS: Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers there.

ENDS