JIM CHALMERS MP

SHADOW TREASURER

MEMBER FOR RANKIN

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

TEN NEWS BUDGET SPECIAL

TUESDAY, 7 MAY 2021

SUBJECTS: Budget, wages

PETER VAN ONSELEN, HOST: Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers we’re on the clock, let’s get right into it. You guys, you’re no good at spending money. These guys – they know how to spend cash.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Well there’s certainly a lot of money sloshing around in this budget. Our concern is it’s just for political fixes to get them through an election. It’s a budget of marketing, mismanagement and missed opportunities. 100 billion dollars in new spending, a trillion dollars in debt, but still real wages going backwards.

VAN ONSELEN: That’s the most surprising figure to me. Real wages not going up even though the unemployment rate is as low as it is. That’s not something that you normally see together.

CHALMERS: It’s an admission of failure. You know after all this spending, and after all this rhetoric and marketing and fancy spin, Australians aren’t getting a slice of the action because real wages are going backwards.

VAN ONSELEN: Alright, it’s easy to criticise, it’s harder to come up with alternatives. What would you guys do differently?

CHALMERS: We’ll we’d spend money more effectively. You know, we’ve said that there are key differences between us and the Liberals when it comes to managing the Budget. We’d place a higher priority on wages, secure well-paid jobs, obviously cleaner and cheaper energy, social housing, some other areas of key differences. A lot of commentators want to say that the Government is trying to minimise the differences with us in the budget, that’s just politics. What we want to see is good economic outcomes. You look in the budget, real wages are going backwards, growth going back to below average.

VAN ONSELEN: People are calling this a Labor Budget, do you take offence at that?

CHALMERS: Well I think the Government wants it to be seen that way, as a sort of a pale imitation to get them through the election –

VAN ONSELEN: Because there’s so much debt, people are calling it a Labor budget, that’s offensive to you surely.

CHALMERS: Well debt now is many multiples of what this Government inherited from Labor and when they printed those Back in Black mugs, and that wasn’t that long ago-

VAN ONSELEN: This is a collector’s item now they smashed them all I think when they didn’t get there.

CHALMERS: And that just shreds their credibility, you know that mug it shreds their credibility, much of what they’ve said for the last 10 years has been exposed as a sham.

VAN ONSELEN: Now, we’ve got a little bit less than 30 seconds left, what policy would you junk that they’ve got in this budget?

CHALMERS: Well we’ll go through the budget, but there’s 21 different slash funds-

VAN ONSELEN: I don’t reckon you guys are going to vote against any of this.

CHALMERS: Well we’ll have a good look at the 21 slash funds that are in the budget and there’s nine and a half billion dollars in spending that they haven’t said what it is yet-

VAN ONSELEN: That sounds like an election

CHALMERS: That sounds like an election to me. So there’s a whole bunch of political fixes cobbled together in the budget. It’s more about getting through the election than getting people into secure well-paid jobs.

VAN ONSELEN: We are out of time Jim Chalmers, appreciate your company.

CHALMERS: Thanks

ENDS