E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SBS NEWS
TUESDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2020
 
SUBJECT: Federal Budget.
 
BRETT MASON, HOST:  Jim Chalmers, welcome back to SBS.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Thank you.
 
MASON: The legislation for the budget will be presented to the parliament tomorrow. Will Labor support it?
 
CHALMERS: We've been in favour, for some time, for tax cuts for low and middle income earners and we'll be supporting that aspect of the package. We've been calling for that for some time. We're now told that all of the tax measures will be wrapped up in one Bill. We're inclined to support the other tax measures as well, but we only saw them for the first time a few hours ago. I think viewers would understand that the right and responsible thing for us is to go through the detail. We're inclined to support it, but let's just see that it's properly designed. One of the measures alone is $27 billion. We want to make sure that's an effective way to spend so much money.
 
MASON: Do you have any initial concerns about what was announced tonight? There's lots of money if you're under 35. What's in this budget for a woman in her 50s who may have lost her job?
 
CHALMERS: Precisely. I think it's it's a rare feat to rack up more than a trillion dollars in debt and still leave so many people behind. No plan for the future, doesn't make enough inroads into unemployment which is still too high for too long. In terms of what's not in the budget; a trillion dollars in debt and nothing for the care economy, nothing meaningful for climate change, no local jobs programs. All of these sorts of things missed out. I'll give you one example which is especially troubling. You think about those hiring incentives; 928,000 Australian workers who are on unemployment benefits are not even eligible for those hiring subsidies. That's obviously a concern to us.
 
MASON: But how do you get those 900,000 people back into the workforce during a global recession, the likes of which we haven't seen for nearly 100 years?
 
CHALMERS: The whole point of the budget in such difficult times, and recognising the Government has racked up a trillion dollars in debt, there's been a lot of spending, we want to make sure that spending is effective. You measure that effectiveness by its capacity to get people back into work. One of the issues that we have is even after all this borrowing, at the end of the four year forward estimates we've still got unemployment higher than it was before COVID-19. That's a concern as well.
 
MASON: We know population growth has had its biggest revision in Australia's history, a million fewer people expected in Australia between now and 2022. That's devastating for the economy isn't it?
 
CHALMERS: It’s a massive challenge. It's something that the Government needs to respond to. We also need to recognise, and I think this crisis is teaching us this, just how reliant the Australian economy is on population growth, including migration. We're learning, unfortunately, we're learning the hard way, that when migration isn't there, when the international borders are closed, we don't have that source of growth. The onus is on the Government to come up with a plan to kickstart the recovery in other ways so we can fill that hole.
 
MASON: Do you think this is the moment the recession becomes real for a lot of Australians? The fact that long term unemployment, for many Australians is now going to be a longer term reality. It's not going to be a snapback like the Government said it was going to be.
 
CHALMERS: Well snapback was always absurd. Already, there's almost a million unemployed. They have felt the consequences of this recession very deeply. The Government now says they expect an extra 160,000 people to lose their job between now and the end of the year. It will get very real for those workers as well. This is a very dark period. I am concerned about a lost generation of workers. I am worried that this spike in unemployment becomes long term unemployment, which concentrates and cascades through the generations, including in areas like the one that I represent. That's what we need to avoid.
 
MASON: Just finally, you worked for the last Treasurer to steer Australia through a global downturn, Wayne Swan. He was relentlessly attacked by the Coalition for what they called a debt and deficit disaster. What's it like now seeing the tables have turned and has the Coalition learnt perhaps what you experienced back during the GFC?
 
CHALMERS: What we're seeing now is stupendous hypocrisy. Labor has been consistent all along. There's a role for the Government to step in when the economy is at risk like it is now and like it was then. The Government has been extraordinarily inconsistent and hypocritical. They described debt a tiny fraction of what it is now as a disaster and now they say that it's manageable. It's for them to explain that hypocrisy. Our primary concern is jobs, how we get bang for buck for all this money that the Government is borrowing. We measure that by what it means for jobs, people and real communities right around Australia.
 
MASON: Jim Chalmers thanks very much. Thank
 
CHALMERS: Thank you.
 
ENDS