JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
RN BREAKFAST
TUESDAY, 12 APRIL 2022

SUBJECTS: Leadership is taking responsibility; Costs of living skyrocketing under Scott Morrison while real wages go backwards; Labor’s plans to ease the costs of living beyond the election; Labor’s commitments cost a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars the Coalition has wasted.

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Jim Chalmers joins us now. Welcome to the program.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good morning, Patricia. Thanks for having me back.

KARVELAS: Anthony Albanese wants to be Prime Minister. How could he not know something as basic as the unemployment rate or the official cash rate for that matter?

CHALMERS: He put his hand up and said that he made a mistake and he took responsibility for it, and that's the difference between him and Scott Morrison. If he doesn't get something right then he's prepared to say so, fix it, and move on. We've had for too long now a Prime Minister who can never admit his mistakes, and they have been substantial. A Prime Minister that never takes responsibility and always points the finger at others. I think the country is ready for somebody who's prepared to show up and take responsibility and do the right thing, and that's what we saw yesterday.

KARVELAS: With respect, it seems to me Labor is spinning this as a virtue that he's, you know, owned it, so therefore it's all fine. But the unemployment rate is 4 percent. Anthony Albanese took a stab and guessed at 5.4. How could he be so way off? And clearly, obviously, this was at the centre of the Budget. Everyone was talking about. And I think I said that figure a gazillion times. Has he offered you an explanation or an apology?

CHALMERS: We've had a chat about it, obviously, but there's no need for him to do that with me. He knows, he appreciates and understands - I think better than the Prime Minister does - the issues in the economy around the fact that everything seems to be going up except people's wages, and interest rate rises are about to be part of that pain. He understands that deeply, I think better than the Prime Minister does. Now he has said, he has put his hand up and said he made a mistake yesterday. I think it is a crucial element of leadership to be able to do that and take responsibility. The Prime Minister is incapable of taking responsibility for his mistakes, whether it's going missing during the bushfires, or getting the vaccine rollout right, or getting the rapid tests wrong. All of these sorts of things, all these mistakes that Scott Morrison has made, he pretends they're somebody else's fault. What Anthony Albanese did yesterday, I thought was admirable, he didn't get it right but he put his hand up, he fixed it, he took responsibility. And I think that's what Australians expect from their leaders.

KARVELAS: The national unemployment rate is not an obscure economic indicator. It's the key driver when it comes to people's financial welfare, which is really central to Labor's election pitch. If the leader can't name the jobless rate, what does that tell us about how serious you are when it comes to generating better paying jobs?

CHALMERS: I think we've demonstrated our seriousness when it comes to this. The unemployment rate is an important number, but it doesn't tell the whole story of the labour market. I think the defining feature of the labour market right now is the fact that even though we've got the unemployment rate falling in welcome ways, we're still not generating the real wages growth that we need to keep up with the skyrocketing costs of living, and the government doesn't have a plan to deal with the skill shortages and labour shortages that come with an unemployment rate at 4 per cent. So it is an important indicator - nobody's pretending otherwise - but it doesn't tell the full story of the labour market. It doesn't tell the full story of the economy. If you walk down the street of almost any community in Australia, they will say the thing that matters most to them is the fact that their costs of living are going through the roof. Their real wages are going backwards. And I think a lot of people are asking about this Government, why don't we have more to show for the trillion dollars in debt that they've racked up?

KARVELAS: Jobs figures out on Thursday could show unemployment falling below 4 percent. The Budget forecasted it to be 3.75 percent by September. As the labour market tightens, won’t we finally start to see wages rising?

CHALMERS: We haven't seen sufficient wages growth yet, as the unemployment rate has been coming down. We want to see that unemployment rate as low as possible but we also want to see it generate some decent wages growth in this country. We've got inflation running at three and a half percent. We've got wages running at 2.3 percent. So ordinary working families are in a hole, because their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living. And if you look throughout the Coalition's almost decade in office now, this Government's got the worst record on wages growth, and that's because they said that stagnant wages are a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. They’ve forecast wages growth, I think 55 times throughout their Budgets and got it wrong 52 times. So they keep saying that this wages growth will come. We hope that it does. But even the unemployment rate falling hasn't delivered sufficient wages growth for ordinary working families in this country to keep up And I think this is one of the defining issues of the election campaign. The Prime Minister says he wants to run on his economic record, that means running on a record of historically stagnant wages where ordinary people are falling further and further behind because they can't keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living.

KARVELAS: If you're just tuning in, you're listening to ABC RN breakfast. Our guest is The Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Scott Morrison will today promise 1.3 million new jobs by 2027. Would a Labor government be able to match that kind of employment growth?

CHALMERS: I think that our economic plan gives Australia a better chance of creating more jobs than what the Coalition is offering. The Coalition today are putting forward a promise but not a plan. If they were serious about creating good, secure, well paid jobs, they'd have a plan for cleaner and cheaper energy. They'd have a plan to make childcare cheaper. They'd have a plan to deal with these skill shortages with fee-free TAFE. They'd have a plan to modernise the NBN in the context of an economy where more and more people are working from different places. They’d have a plan for a future made in Australia to co-invest in advanced manufacturing.

KARVELAS: Sure, you say your ideas will - I just heard you say - give it a better chance of creating more jobs. But that's not a promise. You think it gives it a red hot go. Like, what is the guarantee from Labor?

CHALMERS: The point that I'm making Patricia, is that they have a press release today, but not a plan to actually deliver it. They've got a promise, not a plan. And the point that I'm making is if you want to create the right kind of jobs and the right kind of growth and opportunities in our economy - and most importantly, in our society - then you need to have a plan for a better future. We have that plan for a better future, the Government doesn't. And so there is a much, much greater chance of creating more secure, well paid jobs under a Labor Government with a plan to create those jobs than with a Government that just has all of the usual spin and marketing before an election, and then goes missing afterwards.

KARVELAS: The Coalition has analysed a number of your policies and has worked out that they will cost taxpayers more than $300 billion over 10 years. Is that in the ballpark?

CHALMERS: Of course not, Patricia. If only they spent as much time tracking their own spending, as they spend making up stories about our spending, then maybe they wouldn't have a trillion dollars of debt with nowhere near enough to show for it. These are the same characters that got their JobKeeper sums wrong by $60 billion. This is the same Finance Minister and Treasurer that wasted five and a half billion dollars on submarines that will never be built. Tens of billions of dollars on rorts and waste and mismanagement. They sit around all the time worrying about making up stories about Labor's costings. If only they spent as much time…

KARVELAS: Okay, so if it's not 300 billion, what is it?

CHALMERS: We will release our costings in the usual way. But our commitments, our investments in a better future are a fraction of what Simon Birmingham and Josh Frydenberg have wasted in their Budget. This is the most wasteful Government since Federation. They have almost nothing to show for a trillion dollars in debt. They spent $39 billion on Budget night without any talk of offsets. They committed $70 billion between December and March. They've wasted money on all kinds of rorts, all kinds of mistakes that they won't fess up too. We will not be taking lectures on responsible economic management from these bumbling incompetents.

KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us.

CHALMERS: Thanks Patricia.

ENDS