JIM CHALMERS
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
THURSDAY, 28 APRIL 2022


SUBJECTS: Triple whammy hitting Australians – interest rate rises in the near future, skyrocketing costs of living and falling real wages; Inflation figure adding the pain being felt by Australian families; Labor’s Economic Plan; Scott Morrison always wants to take credit but never wants to take responsibility.

NATALIE BARR, HOST: Joining us now is the man who wants to become Australia's next Treasurer, Labor's Jim Chalmers. Morning to you.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Morning, Nat.

BARR: It's hurting out there. If you win office what will you do to fix this?

CHALMERS: It sure is hurting out there. This is the worst combination of skyrocketing costs of living, falling real wages, and now we're about to get an interest rate rise as well. This is the triple whammy that Australians are facing all over Australia. What we've said is there are meaningful things you can do to get wages moving again, we need to make it easier through the child care system for people to work more and earn more, we need to train people for higher wage opportunities, which are there as the economy recovers. We need to make sure that our industrial relations system keeps up, we need to make sure that our minimum wage case recognises that costs of living are skyrocketing as well. There's a range of things that we would do differently but what this inflation number that we got yesterday has done, is it's absolutely torpedoed Scott Morrison's claims on economic management. It's not good economic management if Australian working families can't get ahead, and they can't get ahead under this Government.

BARR: Okay, let's look at how much of this is his fault. Because if you look at the UK, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, the US - all at high inflation, 7% thereabouts. Australia, obviously, yesterday's figure lower than that. Food has gone up sometimes because of high transport costs, COVID-related disruptions, weather issues. Is this really the Coalition's problem here?

CHALMERS: You would hear it too I'm sure around Australia - and I hear it as I move around Australia - the problem with the Prime Minister is if things are going well he takes the credit, if things are difficult he never takes responsibility. We just saw that in that interview then as well. If something's going well in the economy he takes the credit, he doesn't take responsibility for this. Obviously, some of the issues here are global issues, and we have acknowledged that. But there are domestic issues too. Wages have been stagnant in this country for the best part of a decade. That's been a deliberate design feature of the Government's economic policy - in their own words - and we're now seeing the consequences of that. The Government's been asleep at the wheel on inflation. They've deliberately attacked and targeted people's wages and working conditions and job security. Now we're about to get an interest rate rise to add to the pain.

BARR: So, on that, how do you make sure Aussies get paid more because the PM said Anthony Albanese has no magic pen that will make your wages go up, that's a con. Is he right?

CHALMERS: No, of course he's wrong. He never takes responsibility. See, he knows that wages are stagnant, he knows that real wages are falling, and so he pretends that government has absolutely nothing to do with it. But as I said, we can train people for higher wage opportunities. In the childcare system, we can make it easier for people to work more and earn more if they want to. We can support these minimum wage cases, and cases in areas like aged care, where people aren't being paid enough. The Fair Work Commission has a role to play there. And we can do things like turn insecure, casual jobs - via the Fair Work Commission - into more secure, longer-term sustainable jobs. So there are things that government should do, and the difference between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese is when we see this big challenge in the economy - falling real wages, skyrocketing costs of living, interest rates about to go up - we can take responsibility for the things that government can do. Scott Morrison always just wants to wash his hands of the difficult challenges that Australians face.

BARR: Okay. Jim Chalmers, thank you for your time this morning.

ENDS