JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS SUNDAY AGENDA
SUNDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2021
SUBJECTS: Quarantine facilities; Vaccines; Negative gearing and tax policy; Labor’s policy agenda; Industrial relations, secure work, better pay and fairer conditions; Consultation on policies; Economic recovery.
KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: The Shadow Treasurer joins me now live from Brisbane. Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for your time. Do you welcome that development, that it looks like the Howard Springs facility will be expanded?
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Good morning, Kieran. It’s been obvious for some time now, certainly some months, that there's needed to be an expansion of federal facilities like this one. It was a recommendation of the Halton Review, which the Prime Minister has more or less sat on for months now. It's been something that we've been calling for. It hasn't come soon enough to prevent those 40,000 Australians stranded overseas, despite the Prime Minister's promise to get people home by Christmas and it's no substitute for the Prime Minister genuinely taking responsibility for quarantine and genuinely putting his hand up and saying he is responsible for a national plan. This is a reasonable step, but not comprehensive enough and not soon enough for all of those Australians left in the lurch.
GILBERT: When you've got this proposal to expand it more widely, not just in Howard Springs, but Labor supports it broader than that. You've still got the challenge haven’t you, of say workers who are at that facility, the facility might be remote, but many of the workers would be returning to suburbs and towns?
CHALMERS: Obviously, Kieran, this is a challenging area. This is why the Prime Minister has gone to such great lengths to wash his hands of it, for some months now. It is a challenging area, there are complex issues at play, but the government commissioned a review, there have been some issues which have been obviously needing attention for some time, and while the Prime Minister has washed his hands of it people are left stranded overseas. So this step today with Howard Springs has been obviously necessary for some time, and with some of those other venues that you mentioned, but it hasn't come soon enough, and it isn't comprehensive enough, to provide that national leadership and that national plan on quarantine, which is so obviously needed from the Prime Minister.
GILBERT: Does the government have to be cautious though, in terms of where its focus is because once the vaccine is rolled out, any expanded quarantine facilities would become redundant wouldn't they?
CHALMERS: Obviously the government needs to be cautious, it needs to rely on advice, like the report that they commissioned some months ago. There are complex issues at play here and nobody is denying that, but it's been obvious for some time. While 40,000 Australians languish overseas, with all of that anxiety that brings them and their families, the Prime Minister has spent more time trying to absolve himself from responsibility in this tricky area, then actually providing the national leadership to try and solve it. And that's what we desperately need here. It's been obvious for some time that the Prime Minister, if things are difficult, he washes his hands of it, pretends it's somebody else's fault. If things are easy or going well, he's all over it, he’s in front of the cameras. What we need here is national leadership. What we're seeing today is welcome, but no substitute for that national leadership and that national plan, which is desperately needed.
GILBERT: Ahead of the vaccine rollout being completed, is it the reality that what we're seeing in Victoria this morning, as I said, waking up to another day of lockdown, are these short, sharp lockdowns going to be the reality over coming months?
CHALMERS: Well, first of all, our hearts go out to our Victorian brothers and sisters, they've been through so much in the last year or so and I think the whole country is with them as they get through another lockdown. These short, sharp lockdowns have proven successful elsewhere around the country where we've had these sorts of outbreaks, including here in Logan and Brisbane, but elsewhere in Australia as well. They do have the capacity to limit the spread of these outbreaks when they occur. So, they seem to be a responsible step to take.
On the vaccines, it's really important that people recognise that after the Prime Minister said that we're at the front of the queue when it comes to vaccines, something like 160 million people have been vaccinated around the world, while zero Australians have been vaccinated here in Australia. Something like 90 countries have their vaccination programme already underway, yet here in Australia, we’re languishing. And that's what's creating some of the uncertainty in our communities, some of the uncertainty in our economy, because so much of what you need to do as we recover from this pandemic and from the recession, relies on the deployment of that vaccine. Too often, we've seen overpromising from the Prime Minister and underdelivering when it comes to getting this vaccine into people's arms.
GILBERT: The government and the Prime Minister says they've not needed to rush because we're in such a good position, in terms of the lack of community transmission. You're accusing, or you seem to be saying that it's complacency in the face of success that's caused this situation. Is that what you’re saying?
CHALMERS: Well, first of all, the credit for limiting the spread of the virus here and doing better than other countries belongs to the Australian people, who have, on the main, stuck together and done the right thing by each other to limit the spread. So that's where the credit for that is due. When it comes to the deployment of the vaccine, whether it's complacency, whether it's overpromising or underdelivering, whether it's this serial problem we have with this government of making the big announcements and not following through - we are well behind the rest of the world when it comes to the deployment of the vaccine. And that means that all of the uncertainty which exists in our communities and in local economies, because the future rests so substantially on our ability to get the vaccine away, then people are left behind here. We're left behind the rest of the world. The government likes to brag that we're doing better than elsewhere, and in some regards that is true, but when it comes to the vaccine, we’re 160 million behind and 90 countries behind. Other countries are doing it. Our government is promising to do it, but just can't deliver.
GILBERT: Now, to some other news. Reports today in the Herald that you're going to dump, that Mr Albanese and yourself and the leadership group, will dump the Shorten-era plans for negative gearing and capital gains. Is that right?
CHALMERS: We've said for some time Kieran, as we put together an agenda for the next election, that we’ll take our time to work through policies that we took to the last election. No political party takes an identical agenda, an identical set of policies, to one election that they took to the last one. Wherever we land will be responsible…
GILBERT: It sounds like you’re dumping it?
CHALMERS: …I didn't say that, Kieran, necessarily, I said that those discussions are ongoing. We've made it clear what our priorities are here. A responsible budget, that is fit for the times, which suits the economic and fiscal conditions that we would inherit. And we've also said when it comes to the agenda we took to last election, we’ll be more focused this time around but we won't be any less ambitious. Already we're talking about making childcare cheaper and more accessible for working families. We're talking about cheaper and cleaner energy transmission. We're talking about more apprenticeships on government projects. We're talking - this week - about making work more secure, with better pay and fair conditions, recognising that the economy and the workplace are changing. So we've got a big agenda. Where some of those tax policies fit in that will be made very clear to people between now and the election.
GILBERT: On industrial relations, the greater entitlements for insecure workers, casual workers and so on, Labor didn't put a dollar figure on that. Should you have done the costings, because that vacuum allowed the government to say, well, this is going to cost businesses tens of billions of dollars?
CHALMERS: We made a range of announcements in industrial relations, which are all about more secure work, with better pay and fairer conditions, and recognising those changes in the economy, and the changes at work, that the industrial relations regime needs to keep up with, all of that change. And we made a range of announcements, across heaps of areas - labour hire, rolling over of contracts, government as a model employer - a whole range of issues that we talked about. We also said that we’d consult with business and with unions to see if some of the portable entitlements, which exist in other industries like mining and construction and elsewhere, whether that could be extended to areas where work is less secure.
The government then, in their rush to distract from their own plans to cut pay and make work less secure in our economy, they came out with this fictional figure. So I don't accept the figure. I don't accept it is based on anything like what we announced. I don't accept that they can conclude the consultation, which we want to begin now. And I think what they're trying to do is distract from their own problems in industrial relations, because people are on to them, and they know that the government wants to cut their pay and make their work less secure.
GILBERT: So your guarantee is that you won't start, you won't slap a new tax on business effectively, you will consult with both the States and business before any policy. if you were to win?
CHALMERS: We will consult with business, and with unions, and with the State governments, to see if some of these portable entitlements can be extended to other industries. That's what we are committed to. And more broadly, Kieran, we want to work closely with business on the recovery from this recession. We want to work with business on the defining challenges in the economy, which are stagnant wages, and underemployment, and job insecurity, and how that all flows into declining living standards and weak business conditions. These are our priorities. And we want to work with people on all of this, because the type of jobs we create in this recovery will be central to the type of economy that we have into the future. And it's not a recovery if it's built on the back of less secure work, or weaker wages growth. It’s not a recovery if it's built on the back of another generation of working poor in this country. The type of jobs we create, working together, will be key to the kind of recovery that we see in this country, and that's what we're focused on.
GILBERT: Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, thanks, talk to you soon.
CHALMERS: Thanks so much, Kieran.
