E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
THURSDAY, 20 DECEMBER 2018
 
SUBJECT/S: US withdrawal from Syria; Morrison visiting troops; NAB shareholders’ meeting; APRA decision on interest-free loans; Liberals vacating field on climate policy; ALP National Conference; election prospects; Labor’s strong, united team.
 
LAURA JAYES: Jim Chalmers, thank you for your time. How concerned are you about this seemingly unilateral withdrawal from Donald Trump?
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Good morning, Laura. No doubt we'll hear more about the detail of this decision that President Trump has made. I think in the main, bringing the conflict in Syria to an end is a good thing, but no doubt the actual detail of that and the implementation of that commitment will become known to us in the coming days and we'll no doubt be briefed on it.
 
KIERAN GILBERT: And the Prime Minister has paid a visit to our troops just on the eve of Christmas, something that you would welcome obviously? It's a good thing to see our leaders pay their thanks?
 
CHALMERS: Completely. I think it's terrific to see Prime Minister Morrison visit the troops, to express the nation's gratitude for the work that they do; the fact that they put themselves in harm's way for the rest of us. I think that is a very good thing, it's good to see. Our commitment to Australia's role in the region, whether it be in Iraq or Afghanistan, is a bipartisan one. We do want to see on both sides of politics the capacity of those countries built, and we see an Australian role in that. So it is good to see him there. Bill Shorten has visited the troops over there as well. It's a good tradition, and we're all in favour of it.
 
JAYES: Jim Chalmers, I know you will be briefed on this and it's not your portfolio area, but more generally, if you like, if Donald Trump has made this decision without consulting Australia, are you concerned about where this leaves the alliance and the future of our alliance under Donald Trump's presidency?
 
CHALMERS: Well, I don't know that we haven't been consulted, Laura. I guess that's my reluctance to wade into it too deeply. Obviously, there are conversations that happen between governments from time to time about the nature of commitments overseas. I don't know the full extent of those conversations, so I'm a bit reluctant to hop into it. I think that, in the main, bringing that conflict to an end in Syria is a good thing. The way that's done; the nature of the conversations between governments, not just ours and the American's, but other like-minded countries, is something I'm not full-bottle on, and so I'll leave that commentary to the Defence Minister and others.
 
GILBERT: Something that I think you are full-bottle on is certainly the banks and I guess the meeting yesterday at NAB. It's being seen as sort of like a structural shift in terms of the treatment of remuneration packages within certainly the big banks. It was a record number of shareholders voting against that.
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, the shareholders made their voices heard yesterday, which is a good thing. It's certainly their right. I think there is a lot of community concern about remuneration in the financial sector, particularly when you sit that alongside a lot of the kind of rorts and rip-offs that have been exposed by the Royal Commission. So I think it's an important thing, shareholders have that right. They should exercise that right when they see fit. Our responsibility was to fight for the Royal Commission to get to the bottom of a whole range of issues, including this one. It's shameful that Scott Morrison voted against that Royal Commission 26 times. It's good that it's gone ahead anyway, and I think a lot of these sorts of issues have got the attention that they deserve, whether it be remuneration or all the other issues in the banks. That's a good thing, and that's a consequence really of Labor doggedly, for some years now, saying that we needed a Royal Commission to get to the bottom of these issues.
 
GILBERT: In the context of the Banking Royal Commission, do you encourage the signal that we're seeing from APRA in recent days? It was March last year when they started cracking down on interest-only mortgages. Now APRA is saying that has now served its purpose. Do you agree?
 
CHALMERS: We'll probably seek a briefing via Chris Bowen with APRA and the Reserve Bank about these settings, but a couple of points I'd make in the interim - first of all, the view that's been expressed by APRA, but also by the Reserve Bank in their Statement on Monetary Policy, really jags with the commentary that we're getting from the Government in terms of the nature of the economy. We think that they economy has substantial soft spots, particularly in the people-facing part of the economy. We've got weak wages and weak saving and weak consumption. We've also got weak business investment. So I think that understanding, that the regulators have and that we have in the Labor Party have about the challenges in the economy, you don't hear a lot about those challenges from the Government and I think that's concerning. I think the Government should respond in detail to what APRA has said. There are issues, obviously, with interest-only loans, and when you're talking about these kind of settings in the financial system, you've got to get the balance right. But I do think there's a disconnect between the official regulators and the Government. We need to get that cleared up, and we need to as a Labor Party get a fully briefing on what APRA intends to do if they want to change the settings that they put in place earlier on.
 
GILBERT: From one sector that's copped flak to another, and that's the energy sector, certainly it's been the subject of a lot of political tension between the Federal Government and its state counterparts. Yesterday, in particular with Don Harwin, the New South Wales minister, saying there needs to be the energy security board looking at this, as if the Government hadn't done that already, but they've done it a number of times and rejected it. But that being said, is there a path forward here for the states, led by New South Wales, to put in place policies which would integrate climate and energy policy without the need for federal legislation?
 
CHALMERS: Well it's absolutely crucial that we consider climate policy and energy policy together. I think that was a good point, but an obvious point made by Scott Morrison's Liberal counterparts in the states, as well as the Labor states too. That meeting yesterday, where Angus Taylor was really all out on his own in quite an embarrassing confrontation between Liberals at the state level and at the federal level, really represents the broader challenge that we have here. And that is the Federal Liberal Government has vacated the field on climate policy. They don't understand, like the rest of the market does, that you can invest in renewables and get prices down. They see this kind of artificial disconnect between the two things because they let their climate policy be dictated by the extremists in the hard right of their federal party. So what we would like to do, and we've said this via Mark Butler and Bill Shorten and others, is that we are prepared to have a conversation about the National Energy Guarantee that the states were in negotiations with the feds on. We would sit down with the states of either political persuasion and see what progress could be made. But we're not going to wait for the Federal Government to get their act together. They have clearly vacated the field. So we've got a range of measures to invest in renewables, to get more security in the system, and to get those prices down.
 
JAYES: Jim Chalmers, you're fresh out of the ALP Conference to wrap up the year. What was the vibe from that Conference? I mean, is this election to lose? If Bill Shorten didn't win, it'd be the biggest capitulation since Mark Latham wouldn't it?
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs) Easy! I think that the Conference was remarkable for its spirit of unity and purpose and stability, which have been the hallmarks really of the last five years or so of federal Labor under Bill Shorten's leadership. And what I saw there was a real focus on ordinary working people, people who work and struggle in this country, and a real desire to govern in their interests. So we come out of that Conference as we went into it - steady, stable, united, focused and, I think ready to govern. We take no outcome for granted next year in the election. We are humbly and methodically going about putting together a policy agenda for middle Australia, and that's what we saw at the Conference. I think the commentary about next year's election - the reason we don't get too carried away about it is they don't give the trophy to the horse that's leading at the final turn, and in politics there's no minor premiership for the team that's accumulated the most points during the season. What really matters is you get it all together by election day. We're very conscious of that, and that's why we're not complacent about the outcome.
 
GILBERT: It shows you how much most of your party wants to win. Maybe not John Setka, but others like Mr Swan for example, your former boss, willing to be in the same room when Kevin Rudd was awarded life membership.
 
CHALMERS: I was really proud of Swanny, Kieran. I thought that was a real symbol that we understand that we've had our barneys in the past, but they belong in the past. And that we can't mess around here. We're asking for something pretty simple, but pretty serious; we're asking the Australian people for the opportunity to govern in their interests, and we say to them that we want to make the fair go in this country a feature of the future of this country, and not just something school kids read about in history books. I think Wayne understands that, Kevin, Bill, the whole team. So I was proud of what happened at the Conference on its final day. I was especially proud of the way Bill facilitated that. I think nobody is pretending there hasn't been barneys in the distant past, but the last five years have been a period of remarkable stability and unity. We have got our act together. We have done the right thing, which is to focus on the people above all else. Our opponents can't say the same thing.
 
JAYES: Not at this point! Jim Chalmers, thanks so much for your time, appreciate it.
 
ENDS