JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW

RN BREAKFAST

WEDNESDAY, 14 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison hiding while Australians were hurting; PM more interested in avoiding blame than avoiding job losses; Morrison Government spending $500 million a week but unable to guarantee locked-down workers will keep their jobs; Income tax.

FRAN KELLY, HOST: The Prime Minister says it's in the national interest to increase financial support in New South Wales to help it survive the COVID-19 crisis. Emergency payments will be lifted to $600 a week for workers who lose hours, while small and medium sized businesses will be handed up to $10,000 a week to help with cash flow. While the support will be available to any other state or territory that suffers an extended lockdown in the future, Victoria has accused Scott Morrison of being quote "the Prime Minister for New South Wales". Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer, he joins us from Brisbane, Jim Chalmers, welcome back to Breakfast.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much, Fran.

KELLY: The federal Government's come up with a template now for the type of support that will be available for all states and territories in future lockdowns, but that's prompted the Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews to accuse this Morison Government of quote "double standards" and to complain that it's quote "sick and tired of having to beg for every scrap of support from Canberra". Should we have any tolerance for political brawling at a time like this?

CHALMERS: I think Victorians have got every right to be filthy at the petty politics which is being played by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. I think Victorians were left in the lurch because of the political stripe of their state government. I think it's well within their rights for them to raise those issues.

KELLY: So you think New South Wales is being preferenced because they're a Liberal state and Victoria was a Labor state?

CHALMERS: Well they've certainly been treated differently, Fran. I think it's entirely reasonable for the Victorians to point out that when they had their hour of need not that long ago the Prime Minister came forward with a package which looked very different to what New South Wales is receiving now.

But even then Fran, the people of New South Wales, the people of Victoria, right around Australia, people have been hurting while the Prime Minister has been hiding. And then when he did remerge, after the best part of two weeks, the best he could do was come up with a scheme which antagonises the Victorians, doesn't maintain the link between worker and employer, and fails to understand that some people have already been laid off in Sydney as a consequence of Scott Morrison's lockdown.

KELLY: Well, let's go to the Commonwealth support package, this Commonwealth and state support package, they work together in some large degree. Do you think it has come up with the right model for the future lockdowns, is this the targeted and timely response that other states and territories will welcome? Your particular concern seems to be it doesn't bind staff to employers, why don't you like this package?

CHALMERS: That is our concern, Fran. Obviously we want support to flow to workers and small businesses who are doing it tough and we don't stand in the way of that support.

But I think it's equally true that the workers and small businesses of Sydney wanted something like JobKeeper and they got something which falls far short of that. The main reason it falls short is because it junks what was the most important part of JobKeeper, which is to maintain that link between employer and employee.

The Prime Minister and Treasurer were asked repeatedly yesterday whether they could guarantee that link and they couldn't do so, they just said that business would have to provide some kind of undertaking and that's clearly not good enough.

KELLY: Yeah, what they said was that an entity quote "will be required to maintain their full time, part time or long term casual staffing level as 13th of July". Isn't that an order to maintain the link between boss and worker?

CHALMERS: No, Fran. They were asked repeatedly what they we doing to ensure that, what would happen if businesses didn't do that, they were unable to answer that question. All they're really requiring is the business make some kind of undertaking. We know that that's insufficient.

That's not the only problem Fran, of course. There's that issue. There's the issue of workers who were already laid off before yesterday. They've been left in the lurch. And there are other issues as well as we go through the fine detail of what's been announced here.

This package, Fran, is what you get when you have a Prime Minister who is more interested in avoiding responsibility than avoiding job losses. We saw that yesterday. He's gone into hiding while people were hurting. And that's why this package has not been well received.

KELLY: The Prime Minister said yesterday that JobKeeper was required when it was a national outbreak, this is a more targeted approach. He says we expect businesses to honour their commitments, that's the quote he got. The reality is the climate is different economically because the rest of the country has, I mean the economy has been, you know, going gangbusters on some indicators. Unemployment is down, in retail and hospitality areas the anecdotal evidence is good staff are thin on the ground. The experience so far is that after lockdowns the local economies roar back to life. Employers will need their workers won't there, they won't be laying people off lightly will they?

CHALMERS: First of all, Fran, we need to recognise that this Sydney lockdown has consequences for businesses right around Australia. That's an important point that shouldn't be lost. Secondly, we want the unemployment rate to fall, we want the economy to recover strongly, we want there to be more opportunities for people in more parts of the country. That's obviously incredibly important, but the recovery is hostage to the Prime Minister's twin failures on vaccines and quarantine.

KELLY: Sure, the Government can be criticised for their vaccine rollout but they have put billions of dollars here for the people of Sydney affected by this.

CHALMERS: And the Treasurer said last night that the economy is bleeding something like $700 million a week in lost economic activity as the consequences of these lockdowns.

We know that the Treasurer’s own budget papers assumes that there will be more of these lock downs for longer, which is a pretty stunning admission of failure when it comes to vaccines and quarantine.

So we don't want to see this recovery in the economy hostage to the incompetence that we've seen on vaccines and quarantine. You can't have a first rate economic recovery with a third rate vaccine rollout. That's very clear. We're seeing that in Sydney at the moment.

KELLY: And is there a tight enough definition in your view of what's an essential worker? There seems to be really no definition. We know that 40,000 workers from the Fairfield area will be required to be tested because they leave the area every day for work. That's a lot of essential workers?

CHALMERS: That's one of the things which is not yet clear as we work through the fine print of what's been announced. As always with this Government, it's not the initial announcement that matters, it's what's actually delivered. And we'll go through that. The essential worker definition is one part of that but not the only part.

KELLY: Can I ask you about another issue, the government stage three tax cuts. Can you confirm federal Labor, the leadership group, has decided to support them, that you'll be recommending that to Shadow Cabinet and Caucus?

CHALMERS: No Fran, no decision has been taken on that. We've said all along that our position will be clear at the election. That remains the case. Our focus, as is probably the whole country's focus, is on the Sydney lockdown, on the Prime Minister's failures on vaccine and quarantine, and also on making sure that we can have those secure well-paid jobs into the recovery and more opportunities for more people. That's our focus. Australians will know our position on the tax cuts well before the election.

KELLY: Well, how well before the election?

CHALMERS: We'll announce our position when we're ready to do so Fran, we haven't finalised our position.

KELLY: In the past you described the stage the tax cuts as quote "the least affordable, the least responsible, the least fair, and the least likely to get a good return in the economy". Why would you change your view then and support them?

CHALMERS: And the view that we expressed at a time Fran, when these tax cuts were announced many years in advance of actually coming into being, was that we didn't know what the economy and the budget would look like closer to the tax cuts coming in. That's been the case. That Government's racked up a trillion dollars in debt since then. So we'll weigh up all of those considerations. We've made our views clear. We've said the priority for tax cuts should be people on low and middle incomes. We've said that all along. We'll balance all the considerations, we'll finalise our discussions, and we'll announce a position.

KELLY: Alright Jim Chalmers, thank you very much for joining us.

CHALMERS: Thank you, Fran.

KELLY: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer.

ENDS