JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
RN BREAKFAST
TUESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2022
SUBJECTS: Government playing politics with national security makes Australians less safe; Low and Middle Income Tax Offset; Liberal calls for death taxes; Josh Frydenberg’s pathetic scare campaign on tax falling down around him; Labor and the Greens; Labor’s positive policies to ease the costs of the living and grow the economy the right way.
PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Jim Chalmers is the Shadow Treasurer and he joins us this morning. Welcome. Now we're going to get to tax in a moment, but if you don't mind, first to deportations. Parliament will debate legislation to strengthen the character test, which would then allow the Government to deport more offenders. Will that be supported by Labor?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Well, it's unclear to us Patricia whether or…
[Line drops out briefly]
KARVELAS: I am, yeah. Sorry, I’ll ask the question again. Will Labor support this?
CHALMERS: It's unclear to us whether it will actually come to a vote, PK. It's been on the list for some time now and it's not clear to us with the diminishing amount of days left in the parliamentary year. What we've said about this bill is that we know from the Novak Djokovic debacle that the Immigration Minister already has all the powers that they need to kick people out. We know that this sort of policy is best worked through in a bipartisan way. We've actually tried with the last three Immigration Ministers to ensure the right balances are struck here but, as we know, as we get closer and closer to the election, the Government will get more and more desperate with each passing day. They'd rather play divisive political games than work together to keep Australians safe, and that just plays into the hands of people who want to do the wrong thing.
KARVELAS: Okay. So you don't like the policy? You don't want to vote for it?
CHALMERS: We've said for some time that we think we should be able to work together with the Government to understand what they're trying to achieve here. That's not clear to us when the Immigration Minister already has the powers to kick people out. We saw that with the Novak Djokovic debacle.
KARVELAS: They say that under the crackdown an offender would be deported even if they receive less than one year of a sentence. It's believed that would capture around 10,000 extra people who hold Australian visas. Do these people deserve to stay in Australia once they've served their sentence for offences such as assault, domestic violence and child abuse?
CHALMERS: Clearly, governments should have the power to kick people out if they've done the wrong thing. Our argument is that the Immigration Minister already has that power. We saw that with that spectacular debacle around Novak Djokovic in recent times. I don't think the Government wants an outcome here, they want to play these desperate and divisive political games. They don't want to work together in the national interest to keep Australians safe. That's why all of our efforts to work with the last three Immigration Ministers have been rebuffed - because they don't want an outcome here, they want a fight.
KARVELAS: Can Labor really afford a brawl with the government over who's tougher on national security? Are you prepared to have that?
CHALMERS: Whether it's this issue or some of the other rubbish that Peter Dutton has been going on about the last couple of weeks as he trails his coat for the leadership, they are united by one thing and that's this - the more the Government tries to shatter what should be a bipartisan consensus on national security and foreign policy, the more they play into the hands of people who want to do the wrong thing, the people who don't want to see us succeed. All of this stuff, all of this petty politics, all the divisive and dangerous games being played right across the Morrison cabinet, are designed to get a political outcome but they diminish our national security and they actually make Australians less safe. I think Australians are working this government out. They know, as we get closer to the election, there'll be all kinds of lies, all kinds of desperate and unhinged scare campaigns on Labor. That's because the Government is bereft of any ideas about how to deliver for Australian working families into the future, so they have that better future that they need and deserve. They've been in office for a decade now and they haven't graduated from some of these ridiculous political games.
KARVELAS: Let me go to the next battleground. The second big battleground is the economy and taxes, they are squarely in your portfolio. Does Labor have secret plans to introduce an inheritance tax, which Josh Frydenberg says has been Anthony Albanese’s dream for the past 30 years?
CHALMERS: Absolutely not. Of course we are not introducing a tax of that kind. The only people proposing that are the Liberals. If you look at the Australian Financial Review today under the headline “Liberal MP backs higher inheritance taxes”.
KARVELAS: Jason Falinski, I think you're referring to?
CHALMERS: Correct. The Chair of the Economics Committee appointed by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, says that the problem with the tax system is inheritances. Josh Frydenberg can't even organise a decent scare campaign without the wheels falling off it. It is ridiculous. They've been combing through things that Anthony Albanese is alleged to have said more than 30 years ago. We're talking about a Chair of the Economics Committee - appointed by the Liberals - who has been proposing this in the last 31 hours.
KARVELAS: Let me take you to this. The Treasurer is making much of the Labor-Greens alliance after the election. He says that would lead to death duties and higher taxes on trusts. He referred to going to the Greens website and seeing what they think and that if you were in an alliance that you will be pushed on certain issues. So what would happen if you needed to govern with the Greens? You'd have to make some compromises, wouldn't you?
CHALMERS: We won't be doing that. We won't be governing with the Greens, we've made that clear. This country needs a Treasurer that doesn't spend all his time trawling the Greens website. No wonder we've got all these rorts, waste and mismanagement, a trillion dollars of debt but not enough to show for it, skyrocketing cost of living and declining real wages. It's because Frydenberg is over in his office trawling the Greens website and trying to come up with these ridiculous and unhinged scare campaigns about the Labor Party. Do your job mate! Same with the Prime Minister.
KARVELAS: If there is a hung parliament you'd have to work with the Greens to get legislation through?
CHALMERS: We're not interested in an arrangement with the Greens, we've made that clear.
KARVELAS: It's seems implausible to me that you'd prefer to stay in Opposition than actually work together if you were in that situation?
CHALMERS: We want a stable, majority Albanese Labor Government so that we can deliver a better future and deal with skill shortages, get cleaner and cheaper energy into the system, and cheaper childcare, and all of these sorts of things. We've been talking about a future made in Australia, advanced manufacturing, and the care economy. All of these parts of our economic agenda will best be delivered with a majority Labor Government delivering for Australians. The big risk when it comes to parliamentary shenanigans after the election, is we get this kind of coalition of chaos, where the Liberals are returned and the shots are being called by Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson and Campbell Newman.
KARVELAS: Josh Frydenberg told us yesterday the Government is still considering whether to pay the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset for another year. It's a tax break worth up to $1,080, but it was only ever supposed to be a temporary measure to help with the COVID recession. What's Labor's position? Do you want it to continue?
CHALMERS: We've been supportive of tax relief for low and middle income earners for some time now. We'll see what they come forward with in the Budget. There's still another Budget between now and the election. We want to be responsible about it. It comes with a cost of about $7 billion plus, so we want to see what Budget we would inherit, how it weighs up against other priorities, and we want to see whether the Government is going to extend it.
KARVELAS: It's a question of principle, isn't it? Do you think it's a it's a good thing to continue or not? Why do you need to wait for the Government to make a determination?
CHALMERS: It's a question of policy.
KARVELAS: Principle is policy as well. Let's not have that debate. The question is, what do you think? Why are you waiting for the Government to tell you what to think?
CHALMERS: We think tax relief for people on low and middle incomes is important. We want to go about it in a responsible way. That means understanding what we would inherit from the Government, but also when it comes to the skyrocketing costs of living, this is not the only part of the story. We need to get power bills down. We've got a policy there. We need to get child care costs down. We've got a policy there. We need to get wages growing again because real wages are going backwards. We've got a policy there. We have to think about the costs of living right across the board. Tax is an important part of the story, but it's not the only part of the story.
KARVELAS: Do you think it could push up inflation and place more pressure on interest rates if it's continued for another year?
CHALMERS: What matters when it comes to inflation is the quality of your spending and not just the quantity of the spending.
KARVELAS: Could this though?
CHALMERS: Well, it depends what else you're doing in the Budget. If you think about our economic agenda, some of those things I talked about - dealing with skills shortages, cleaner and cheaper energy, modernising the NBN, cheaper access to child care so we've got a bigger workforce, investing in advanced manufacturing and the care economy - all of those sorts of things are about making sure we can grow the economy the right way, in a way that works for everyone and takes some of the inflationary pressure out of the economy, but still delivers that strong growth. That's our priority. Whoever wins the next election has got to have a plan for the future of the economy. We've already staked out some really important parts of that, the Government has vacated the field.
KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us.
CHALMERS: Appreciate it Patricia, thank you.
ENDS
