E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
THURSDAY, 30 AUGUST 2018
SUBJECT/S: Jersey Day; Scott Morrison only for the top end of town; Liberals’ energy chaos; Liberals all talk on northern Australia
KIERAN GILBERT: Let's go live now to another senior Labor figure, and not from a want of trying to get some government ministers on, but not surprising I guess after the events of the last week, not many saying yes; in fact, none saying yes today. Jim Chalmers joins me from Brisbane. The Shadow Finance Minister, Mr Chalmers, thanks for your time. These images of Scott Morrison today in the Sutherland Shire throwing the footy around, the jersey on for Jersey Day tomorrow, for the organ donation, but it's something - playing touch footy - that you wouldn't have seen Malcolm Turnbull do?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Jersey Day is an important day, Kieran, so you won't hear me diminish that. It's a very, very important cause. And so that's one thing. But more broadly, I think Australians will see through this attempt to try to recast himself as some sort of friend of the battler. Most Australians know Scott Morrison is a guy who always sides with the big banks and foreign multinationals against the ordinary person. They know he's been at the scene of the crime when it comes to big cuts to health and education as Treasurer. They know that he's been an enthusiastic backer, if not the architect, of all of the things they hated most about the Turnbull Government. So I think people will see through this act. Leaving Jersey Day aside, which is an important cause, I think generally people will see right through him.
GILBERT: OK, we'll see, time will tell. But certainly a very different approach from Prime Minister Morrison to what we have seen. First time I've seen someone holding a footy at a news conference.
CHALMERS: Not in a substantial sense, Kieran.
GILBERT: The energy policy is interesting in the sense that it's been split from Environment. Angus Taylor to be making the case today all about price and keeping the lights on. Separate to that, indications from Mr Morrison that they will remain within the Paris framework and that any environment and climate considerations are done by Melissa Price, the new Environment Minister. But certainly, trying to make a more potent argument when it comes to energy prices. That could be well received?
CHALMERS: It's been a debacle from beginning to end, Kieran. Anyone who's watched energy policy over the last couple of years would have absolutely no faith that rearranging the chairs will make a noticeable difference. If anything, it will make it worse. The difference now is, we used to have a Prime Minister and an Energy Minister who were captured by the dinosaurs and the knuckle-draggers and now we've got a Prime Minister and an Energy Minister who are themselves stuck in the past when it comes to energy policy. They fail to understand that the economics of renewable energy have changed so dramatically in the last little while. We have an opportunity, as a country, by getting renewable energy into the mix, to get prices down and pollution down at the same time. It's deeply disappointing that Angus Taylor has been appointed the Energy Minister because he either doesn't want to understand or can't grasp the idea that the economics are such that we can have lower pollution and lower prices. That's what the Australian people want. These characters are always playing internal politics over energy, they are always putting ideology before lower prices and less pollution and, for as long as that continues, there'll be a debacle in energy policy and Australians will pay more than they need to.
GILBERT: He says he's not anti-renewables, he's not a climate sceptic as some have suggested, but what he's about is driving prices down and he points to the interference in the market of the Renewable Energy Target and so on which he believes has distorted prices and other interventions are necessary to balance the field?
CHALMERS: There are countless comments on the public record that he's made, being anti-climate change, saying it's not based on science, being anti-renewables, all sorts of crazy stuff about wind energy, for example, that would make Tony Abbott blush. So he's got a record, he's on the public record on all of that sort of stuff. If you read in today's papers, in the Financial Review for example, there is independent external analysis which shows that the hope of the side when it comes to getting power prices down is actually renewable energy. The experts, the business community, right across the board; everybody seems to understand that except for Morrison and Taylor. For as long as they have their head in the sand on the importance of renewable energy and getting prices down, most importantly, but also getting pollution down at the same time, then they have no capacity to get out of this debacle they have created for themselves.
GILBERT: One thing that we've heard over decades now is Australia being the potential food bowl of Asia, already exporting a great deal to our neighbours. I know this Free Trade Agreement with Indonesia being formalised over the next 24 hours is going to be very important in terms of beef exports and so on. Today, we are hearing reports out of the CSIRO, this study which suggests that potentially six dams across northern Australia to really speed up and make the most of that potential. What are your thoughts on that? Is it something we need to do more of?
CHALMERS: We definitely need to develop the North, Kieran, and I think the opportunities are right there for us. It's probably more important than ever that we get a really terrific exporting agriculture industry. We're already doing a lot of that, but obviously a country like ours has the potential, and the experience and expertise to do more. On the specifics of today's report, the people of northern Australia - and I spend a bit time up there, Jason Clare spends a lot of time up there, Bill Shorten and others - the overwhelming sense you get when you knock around those parts of northern Australia is people are sick of the talk. They are sick of the reports; they have been hearing this kind of stuff since Tony Abbott in 2013 when he let Gina Rinehart write his northern Australia policy. They are sick of the hypotheticals, they're sick of spinning their wheels, and all of the talk. And that's why Labor, having listened to the people of northern Australia, we have, for example, a regional jobs plan and we have actual investments to make upon coming to office, in the Rookwood Weir, in water security around Townsville; all of these sorts of important things which aren't just talk. They're not just hypothetical policies and reports; they're actual concrete actions and that's what people in the North are really crying out for. That's the only way that we are going to realise our potential as a big food exporting country into Asia; by taking action, not just by recycling from time to time various hypotheticals about dams and the like.
GILBERT: I appreciate your time, Jim Chalmers, Shadow Finance Minister, thanks for that.
ENDS
