JIM CHALMERS MP
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
SHADOW TREASURER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE
THURSDAY, 13 MAY 2021
SUBJECTS: Federal Budget; Anthony Albanese’s Budget Reply.
PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: For more I'm joined by the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Jim Chalmers welcome.
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks very much Patricia.
KARVELAS: Is there an opportunity for Labor to cast itself as the most fiscally cautious or conservative party? Or does the budget give you a license to outspend the government?
CHALMERS: I don't think that’s the right way to come at it Patricia. I think the best way to think about it is, that we would do a better job, spending in the right areas to get the economy growing in a way that gets wages growing again. One of the defining failures of this budget that was handed down a couple of nights ago was that even after racking up $100 billion in new spending. Even after racking up a trillion dollars in debt. We've still got real wages going backwards in the Government's own budget. I think that's an admission of failure. I think there's an opportunity for us, for Labor, but also for the country to spend money in the budget more effectively, prioritise jobs, not just unemployment but underemployment, and to do what we can to get wages going. That's how we ensure that workers get a slice of the action in this recovery.
KARVELAS: Do you believe Labor should take a plan for a return to surplus to the next election?
CHALMERS: We'll finalise obviously our budget bottom line, closer to the election, people will know what it is so that they can make a choice. I think that what guides our decisions about the necessary investments in people and in the economy is what's best for the economic conditions. So when we think about the budget that was handed down on Tuesday night, obviously there'll be some measures that we can support but I think overall it was quite an expensive missed opportunity to invest in the future of the country. That's one of the things that Anthony Albanese will be talking about tonight, in his budget reply is to try and provide some of that vision and leadership over the longer term, which was absent on Tuesday night.
KARVELAS: You say missed opportunity and yet, the Coalition made announcements to invest in a range of areas that that were essentially areas that are the ones you've been focusing on.
CHALMERS: Well not in every instance. I mean clearly some of the areas that the government threw some money out on Tuesday night were areas where a problem had either developed for the last eight long years of this government or in some cases where the government's cuts to aged care or skills had actively made things worse. So the eighth budget is obviously not going to undo all the damage done by the first seven but some of the areas that we've been identifying, aged care, childcare and the like, the Government made a kind of a half hearted attempt to plug up some political gaps in advance of an election. I don't think their hearts in it, they're certainly not interested in getting the system right for the long term.
KARVELAS: Do you accept that you'll face the same challenges as the Coalition in terms of winding back spending or raising taxes to return the budget to surplus?
CHALMERS: Well certainly we would inherit from the government, a budget which has got debt at record highs, many multiples of what the Coalition inherited.
KARVELAS: But do you accept that's because of the pandemic?
CHALMERS: I don't accept that debt is entirely because of the pandemic. I mean, most of the debt was racked up before COVID-19. That's the thing that people don't really grasp. The Government wants your listeners to believe that all of this debt is purely a consequence of the pandemic, JobKeeper and all the rest of it, but most of the debt was racked up before. So the Government shouldn't be using that excuse. There has been an issue in the budget for some time. There's been a lot of debt in the budget for a long time, some big deficits. We understand when the economy is weak, the budget needs to step in and help and sometimes that necessitates debt. But we don't think the Government's getting maximum bang for buck. There's 21 slush funds in the Budget on Tuesday night at last count. That's because they like to spray money around to fix political problems when they should be investing in people and their opportunities and their jobs.
KARVELAS: What's your strategy for delivering high wages? You're focusing on wages, you're saying wages aren't keeping up with inflation. That's in the Budget papers, fair enough. But how do you fix that? Is it industrial relations reform that you're going to campaign on?
CHALMERS: It's a combination of things. I mean first of all it's growing the economy in the right way to get unemployment down but not just unemployment also underemployment, which has been a big problem for eight years as well. Those are the sort of cyclical issues and then there are the structural issues. So industrial relations are a really important one. Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke have made announcements in that area around casualisation and insecure work, that's an important part of the puzzle. Childcare is a big part of the puzzle as you know, as is skills and training. In some communities long term unemployment has meant that there's concentrated and cascading disadvantage which makes it hard for people to grasp the opportunities of a recovering economy. So all of these issues together, the Government's focused somewhat on getting the unemployment rate down we all want there to be more jobs but that's only part of the story, we need to address some of these other issues as well.
KARVELAS: Do you believe the economy needs the stage three tax cuts for higher income earners?
CHALMERS: I think it remains to be seen. I mean the stage three tax cuts don't come in for more than three years. So the Government made those massive commitments, tens of billions of dollars, which overwhelmingly benefit the highest income earners in the economy. They made that commitment before they'd racked up a trillion dollars in debt and before the pandemic. What we said at the time and our view has been vindicated, was it made no sense to commit such a massive amount of money that far out when you didn't know what the budget would look like, you didn't know what the economy would look like and you didn't know how that money was best spent. So that view has been vindicated. I know the Government wants to talk about stage three tax cuts because, the budget isn't even 48 hours old yet and they want to talk about the Labor Party, I think that's an indication that things aren't going that well.
KARVELAS: Well now let me interrupt. I think it's fair enough that people are seeking, yes your opponents, but others too, your vision on whether those tax cuts are now affordable.
CHALMERS: What we've said, repeatedly, is it makes more sense to make a judgment on the affordability of those tax cuts, closer to when those tax cuts will occur. They're more than three years down the track -
KARVELAS: You have to tell people before the election right?
CHALMERS: Of course.
KARVELAS: So people will know going into the election, whether those tax cuts will go forward or that Labor has decided they're affordable?
CHALMERS: We will come forward with a view about income tax, and not just stage three, but the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset and all of the associated issues around income tax. People will know our position on that. But we're entitled to point out, they are three years down the track. They cost a lot of money, there's already a trillion dollars of debt in the budget. The point I'm making, forgive me a partisan point PK, but I heard you play Simon Birmingham before and I think it speaks volumes that when the Budget's not even two days old, Liberal ministers are out talking about Labor's position on tax. I think that's an indication that this Budget has sunk like a stone.
KARVELAS: Okay, so, you know, budgets do sink sometimes because they’re slash and burn budgets. I don't know about whether this is really being repudiated by the public, you're gonna wave it through and the Senate is going to wave it through, it's not a contentious budget.
CHALMERS: I think the reason why it's sinking is because there's a deficit of vision in the Budget, there's not something that people can grasp onto. They know it's a political Budget, a series of cobbled together political fixes to get the Government through the election. There's no vision it. There's no story being told by the Government with people, at its core, about what the future looks like and where people fit in that, and how they can work hard and get ahead and provide for their loved ones. That's entirely absent from the Government's Budget and that's why I think people have lost interest in it already.
KARVELAS: Is there any difference between your start-up policy which offers loans for aspiring entrepreneurs and Bill Shorten's 2015 policy?
CHALMERS: Well for eight years now this is something that the Government has not implemented so I think it's entirely reasonable for us to say in the absence of any leadership from the Government, and providing this kind of mentorship and these kinds of scholarships, is to say that there's still a need for this policy.
KARVELAS: The suggestion from your opponents is that it shows that you're short on fresh ideas.
CHALMERS: I think it's an illustration that the Government's short on ideas. They haven't implemented anything that looks like this and there's still a need for it. If anything the need for this policy has grown since then. So I think it's entirely reasonable that we say that there's still a growing need for it. It's all about helping particularly young people create new Australian businesses and new Australian jobs and we're unapologetic about that.
KARVELAS: If you're just tuning in this is Radio National Drive, I'm Patricia Karvelas. My guest is the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. 0418226576 is our text line. In just over an hour, an hour and sort of 15 minutes or 14 minutes. I'm too specific, but that's the kind of person I am. The Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese will be delivering his budget in reply speech. I know there are some new announcements around social housing tonight, around funding measures to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace and also renewable energy jobs. Is that the three main areas of focus?
CHALMERS: Well they are three of the areas of focus.
KARVELAS: What more can you tell us?
CHALMERS: We typically have this conversation every year PK.
KARVELAS: Just give us an idea. I know it's embargoed until 7:30pm. We all know that. For anyone who doesn't understand what that means because not everyone's into our world, it means, you know, but you're waiting for the big announcement at 7:30. But just in terms of the direction you're going in, what will this budget reply speech tell us?
CHALMERS: Well I think the best way for your listeners to think about this speech is that it will provide some of that direction, that was missing on Tuesday night, in some of those areas that you've rightly identified. I think if you think about the Government's Budget a lot of money srayed around but a lot of missed opportunities. I think the big missed opportunities are in those areas around social housing, around jobs for cleaner and cheaper energy. Obviously in the innovation policy that we talked about in terms of startup year. All of these sorts of things are the types of things that the Australian people have a right to expect from their government as we emerge from this recession. We have an opportunity to think about what we want our economy to look like in the future and where people fit in that economy. That's what Anthony will be talking about.
KARVELAS: Just briefly does the decision to purchase 25 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which will offer greater protection against variant strains of the virus show the government is actually now very much thinking ahead and is getting on track with its vaccine rollout?
CHALMERS: I think it shows they're scrambling.
KARVELAS: But we want Moderna vaccine don't we?
CHALMERS: Well sure but everyone else has known for a year or so that we need to have more deals with more vaccine providers and they're scrambling to make up for the fact that the vaccine rollout is horrendously behind schedule. We asked a lot of questions about this in question time today. The Government can't even get their story straight about when people will be vaccinated or what the costs and consequences are for the budget, that the Prime Minister stuffed this up so badly. So to the extent that there's another deal obviously that's a good thing. But they're scrambling and playing catch up and I think that's another illustration that they haven't put the thought into this and people will pay a price for it.
KARVELAS: Jim Chalmers thanks for coming in.
CHALMERS: Thanks PK.
ENDS
