E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
THURSDAY, 19 JULY 2018
 
SUBJECT/S: Morrison’s political appointments to public service; Banking Royal Commission; PBO report on tax; immigration
 
TOM CONNELL: First of all, to Labor's Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers, who's in our Brisbane studio. Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for your time today. I might just start on another point of controversy that Labor's certainly claiming is controversial - the appointments of two former Liberal staffers to positions; one of them is going to be the head of Treasury, and the other one within the Productivity Commission as well. What's your actual position here? If you get in to Government could they be removed?
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Tom, as you know, I've worked really closely with the Treasury over the last little while and it's a really fine institution. It's one of the finest institutions in our democracy and our public policy and our public life. So it pains us to have to make these points about a Treasurer in Scott Morrison who goes out of his way repeatedly to politicise the functions and the staffing of the Treasury. What we're seeing is not Treasury officials who spent a little bit of time in ministerial offices; we're talking about fundamentally ministerial staffers who spent a little bit of time in the departments. We think that's inappropriate. We don't think that these appointments should have been made on the eve of an election without any consultation whatsoever. The point that we would make about it is that if these appointments were above board, we wouldn't have had two out of three of them made late on a Friday afternoon snuck out via a press release, and we wouldn't have what we had yesterday, which was the Treasurer doctoring a transcript to hide what was legitimate questioning about these appointments.
 
CONNELL: Alright, so you say a transcript was doctored, and I'll get to that later on, we'll have a copy of that news conference, but on the actual positions themselves what are you saying? That these two men cannot be impartial?
 
CHALMERS: Well, there were three appointments actually - to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and to the Productivity Commission. I think Chris Bowen has made it very clear, reluctantly, frankly, that it will be hard for us to work with some of these people. Not because we're making a judgement necessarily about their character, but we're making a judgement about these being some of the key closest personal advisers to Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann and others, appointed in a dodgy way, frankly, late on a Friday in two out of the three cases on the eve of an election without any consultation whatsoever. What we're saying about the Treasury is, we value the Treasury enough to say that it shouldn't be politicised by Scott Morrison. He shouldn't be getting it to do political tasks and he shouldn't be staffing it at the most senior levels with his closest personal advisers on the eve of an election.
 
CONNELL: And so just to cut to what that means, if you get into power, you'd consider sacking them?
 
CHALMERS: I'm not going to get into that on the program this morning, Tom. That's a matter for others. It's not a department that I would be in charge of if and when we win office. I'm just making that point that if Scott Morrison was keen on preserving the reputation of the Treasury and not trashing it, he wouldn't have gone about these appointments in this way.
 
CONNELL: Alright, let's turn to APRA. The banking regulator has made a submission to the Royal Commission siding in part with the banks here, talking for example about the fact that banks do have to have enforcement action to recover loans. They are in the business of protecting deposits first and foremost as well. What did you make of this submission?
 
CHALMERS: I read the report on the front of the Financial Review. I haven't read the full submission yet. But I think it's thoroughly unremarkable for the banking regulator to point out some of the basic functions that banks perform in our economy. But I think there's no defence for a lot of the issues which have been covered at the Royal Commission. A lot of the rorts and ripoffs around charging people for insurance they can't claim against, charging fees for services not provided, lying to the regulator, falsifying reports, the list goes on and on and on.
 
CONNELL: I guess this drills down a bit more though, Jim Chalmers, to aspects, and some pretty heartbreaking stories where properties are seized by banks, but that's just what happens sometimes, isn't it?
 
CHALMERS: I think APRA was just making the case that in some instances property is recovered. But I don't think that is the main issue at the Royal Commission. Some of those issues that I just rattled off, for which there is no defence, those are the main issues at the Royal Commission. It beggars belief really that Malcolm Turnbull tried to keep this under wraps for something like two years. We are getting to the bottom of some of the real problems, the real rorts and rip-offs in our financial system. If we care about a strong financial sector, as we all should, then we should care about getting to the bottom of these issues, shining a light on these issues, rectifying them where they can be rectified, coming up with a compensation scheme where we can, and moving on so that people can have genuine confidence in their banks again.
 
CONNELL: Also today a report into our tax system by the Parliamentary Budget Office. It talks about a few difficult decisions. One is revenue, a shortfall for road users. It says either hike up the petrol tax or start charging for road use. What approach do you think would be a better one economically?
 
CHALMERS: We're not into either of those solutions, but what that Parliamentary Budget Office report did is it strengthened the case that Labor has been making, which is that for as long as we can have these big tax loopholes in the system for the people who need them least, ordinary working people in Australia will end up carrying a heavier and heavier burden. That's why we've said for some years now that we've got concrete proposals to close some of those loopholes so that middle Australia isn't carrying that heavier burden as time goes on. We've got structural tax reforms out there for people to consider which will do some of the work that the PBO identifies without having to go towards a fuel tax or congestion charging - all those sorts of things. The other mob, the Liberal Party, they want to continue to give the biggest tax breaks to those who need them least. They want to give $17 billion to the four big banks. They want to give big tax cuts to foreign multinational corporations. We think what we need to do is repair the revenue base in Australia and by doing that we can give bigger and fairer tax cuts to middle Australia for people who work and struggle in this country. The Government is taking the opposite approach; the PBO really strengthened the case that Labor has been making.
 
CONNELL: So on road use specifically though, basically you'd allow that revenue to dwindle? At the moment, at least road users pay for most or some of that use via that petrol tax. You'd allow that to dwindle rather than look at a switch with, for example electric cars coming on board, maybe some sort of usage charge there?
 
CHALMERS: We don't have any proposals to go down the path that you're identifying out of that PBO report. But we've got a better way to satisfy the same objectives, which is to broaden the tax base by closing down some of these loopholes at the top end of the tax system and by doing that we can pay down debt - debt's at record levels, as you know. But we can also give those bigger and fairer tax cuts to people who need it the most, who are more likely to spend and invest in the economy and that's people on low and middle incomes. So we are proposing some fairly ambitious tax reforms which will meet the objectives and the challenges identified in that very good report.
 
CONNELL: Immigration has been in the headlines Jim Chalmers and your leader Bill Shorten said the big issue here are temporary migrants with work rights. Do you agree with that statement?
 
CHALMERS: We've had extraordinary growth in temporary workers in this country. I suspect Bill was talking more about some of the workers in the system, not necessarily students, but we've had big growth in the student part of the workforce as well. Our education sector is a crucial part of our economy. We want to get foreign students studying in Australia, and I think Bill was pointing out that there's been a lot of growth in that. We want to make sure that the conditions are met. We want to make sure that these students are not being exploited. I don't think its necessarily a controversial point to point out that there has been growth in temporary workers in Australia, and we want to make sure that the laws and the rules are properly enforced.
 
CONNELL: And fair enough, but what is the point here? Because Bill Shorten did mention 1.6 million. So that includes those students and he said when you've got this many people with work rights and they come up against someone else, you see lower wages, not as higher wage growth as we might have. So is Labor looking at all at reducing work rights for students?
 
CHALMERS: No, we've said for some time now, including I think in the papers today you saw a contribution from Shayne Neumann our immigration spokesman, pointing out that we really value the students who come here to study. It's a big part of our economy. It's a big part of what we can sell to the world. What Bill was pointing out is when you have that kind of growth in that part of the workforce, you need to make sure that the conditions are properly enforced, and you need to make sure that workers aren't exploited and that's what we're on about.
 
CONNELL: So it's just about enforcing things? It's not about, for example, the other 10 per cent of this 1.6 million not the students? Is there a cohort there that Labor might be looking at?
 
CHALMERS: I think Bill was just making the point that there's been a lot of growth in this part of the workforce. I can only make the point that I've made a couple of times already: when you've got that kind of growth you want to make sure it's the right kind of growth, it's properly regulated and that people aren't exploited. We've got other issues, of course, in the migration system when it comes to temporary workers - 457s. We need to make sure that we can tighten those up so they are only filling areas of genuine need, that we're actually checking the local labour market first in some of those regional areas in particular, to make sure that we're employing Australians where we can. But I don't think that runs up against our commitment to international students.
 
CONNELL: Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers thanks for your time today.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you Tom.
 
ENDS