E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
612 ABC BRISBANE DRIVE
MONDAY, 3 JUNE 2019
 
SUBJECTS: Appointment as Shadow Treasurer; Labor’s economic policies; income tax cuts; Liberals’ economic mismanagement; lessons from the GFC; energy; Queensland
 
STEVE AUSTIN: Jim Chalmers has been given the role of Shadow Treasury spokesperson. I'm delighted to say he joins me in the studio. Thanks for coming in, Jim Chalmers.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: G'day Steve, thanks for having me back.
 
AUSTIN: Did you want it?
 
CHALMERS: I'd rather be a Minister in a Labor Government, that's what we were shooting for a couple of weeks ago. But in the absence of that, I'm certainly very pleased to be doing this job. This is the job that I asked Anthony Albanese for and I'm grateful that he gave it to me. My passion is for economic policy, but more important than that, I wanted to make sure Queensland had a seat at the table in our Shadow Cabinet. I wanted to make sure that we have a really prominent voice, and that's what I intend to be.
 
AUSTIN: It's said that the role essentially cost Chris Bowen that position. How do you see it?
 
CHALMERS: I don't see it that way. Chris asked to move to a social policy area. I know that he's very happy to be in the health portfolio. That was the job that he asked Anthony for, and I think he'll do a great job at it. He was already the longest-serving Shadow Treasurer we think in the history of the country. He'd done it for six years, so I think he was certainly up for a change. He and I are very close. We will continue to talk about the economy and economic policy as he goes about his important work in health. 
 
AUSTIN: He was a pretty bold Treasury spokesperson for your side of politics, wasn't he?
 
CHALMERS: He certainly took to the last election and indeed the one before it a pretty ambitious agenda, and there's a lot of chat about that since the election, about what we need to do to improve on that going towards the next election in 2022 - three years down the track. 
 
AUSTIN: It seems so far away.
 
CHALMERS: It really does.
 
AUSTIN: (Laughs)
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs) I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't, Steve. I was saying earlier today we were 16 days from the last election, we might be 1000 days from the next one, and that doesn't fill you with joy. But at the same time, it means that we've got the time to work on our policies, to get them right and to make sure that what we take to the next election can be supported in sufficient number by the Australian people.
 
AUSTIN: Which of Chris Bowen's ideas do you still like?
 
CHALMERS: I think the values that underpinned what Chris, and indeed all of us - and we take collective decisions in the Labor Party, we take collective responsibility for them - but I think that the values that underpinned what we took to the last election, which is to try to repair the Budget, and try to find ways to invest properly in hospitals and schools and childcare, and in renewable energy and all of these sorts of things - I still think that they are important. But clearly, we would be mad not to have learned the lesson of the last election. We need to listen to people's views, and that means that we won't take identical policies to the next election that we took to the last one.
 
AUSTIN: Apart from the toxic franking credits policy, it seems to me that there was a significant body of support for your negative gearing policy, unless I'm misreading what listeners tell me. How do you see it?
 
CHALMERS: I think there's something in that, Steve. I think what happens after an election, particularly one which is quite decisive, and for a lot of people a surprise - not necessarily everyone, but a lot of people were surprised by the outcome - we had this kind of urge to oversimplify the outcome. And all of a sudden, nobody supported our policies and all of that sort of thing. The reality is always a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag on all of the issues that have been prominent in the post-election commentary. There were people who supported our tax proposals. They weren't in sufficient number, unfortunately, for us to get over the line. But as we go about the work of deciding which policies we hang on to, which ones we discard, which ones we improve on, I think it is important to remember that there are no unanimous views in politics. It's an important bit of perspective that you've just given.
 
AUSTIN: Both sides of Parliament went to the federal election saying tax cuts, but two electoral cycles down the track. Your leader Anthony Albanese has told The Australian newspaper today that you guys can pass the Government's tax cuts in an hour, but won't commit to passing the whole tax package. Why not? It's due July 2 apparently.
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, understood. We've always said that the first tranche of tax cuts, which are the ones which are for people on low and middle incomes, we've always said right from the beginning, that we support those and we are prepared to pass those through the Parliament, and that's what Anthony was talking about when he talked about getting them quickly through the House of Representatives. The problem is, as you identified, that there are actually three stages to what the Government is proposing. One stage comes in immediately; they're the ones we support. The next one comes in in 2022, and then the last tranche of tax cuts comes in in 2024. And the point that we've made is, as we come to a position on these tax cuts, one of the things that we have to factor in is what is the responsible thing to do given we don't know what the state of the Budget or indeed the state of the economy will be in 2024. The Government has still been unable to tell us how much of that tax cut in billions of dollars will go to people on the highest income tax bracket, so we still need more information.
 
AUSTIN: What does it matter, because you were proposing your own tax cut model anyhow?
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, but our tax cuts that we took to the last election, they've obviously lapsed now because we're not the Government. But what we took to the last election was a way to give bigger and better and fairer tax cuts to people on low incomes. We think they should be the priority, not just from a fairness perspective, but also because we've got this big problem in the economy and we're going to see that this week. The big problem in the economy is really that the economy is slowing, because we've got stagnant wages, consumption is weak, confidence is weak, people are running down their household savings to pay for the essentials of life. People feel like no matter how hard they work, they can't provide for their loved ones. We've got a big problem in the economy. What we said is if you give tax cuts to people who are more likely to spend it in the economy, that will be good for fairness, but it will also be good for the economy itself. That has been our argument, whereas the Government's alternative has been very different down the track and favouring people on higher incomes. So what we've said, and what Anthony's said as recently as I think today, certainly in the last couple of days, is that we will have the proper discussions about the Government's package. We've still got a month before they hit the Parliament, and we are not in a rush to conclude a view. 
 
AUSTIN: My guest is Jim Chalmers. He's the Queensland Labor Party Member who is now the Treasury spokesperson for the Federal ABC. This is ABC Radio Brisbane. It looks like the global economy is starting to slow down. It may or may not bite as a result of US China trade relations, we're not quite clear how that will affect Australia yet, but the IMF has been warning for a while that things are slowing down. Your previous Parliamentary career, you were an economist and you worked for the world's best Treasurer for the time, Wayne Swan, who was awarded that by Money Magazine, and you were his adviser. If you saw this global scenario coming, what would you do?
 
CHALMERS: I think what we're seeing now is a lot different to what we saw in 2008 and 2009. Still very threatening, but what we're more likely to see in the global economy is a period of prolonged weakness and sluggishness, rather than the big bang that we saw in '08 and '09. But I think what I learned in that period, and I learned a lot in that period, that was really a baptism of fire for anyone involved in economic policy making...
 
AUSTIN: You were Wayne Swan's chief economic adviser, weren't you?
 
CHALMERS: I was his Principal Adviser and then I became his Chief-of-Staff around that period. I spent about five years working with Wayne. And I'm very proud of what we were able to do working with all the other institutions of Government to save hundreds of thousands of jobs, and I think the common thing between back then and what I'm about now is that employment is the most important thing. And we threw everything at that in 2008/09. It's important that employment, good jobs, well-paid jobs are front and centre again.
 
AUSTIN: Keep the economy liquid to keep the money flowing through the economy basically?
 
CHALMERS: It's important, yeah, and it comes back to what we were saying before. You want to make sure that, as a Government you need to prioritise people who are more likely to spend money in the economy. People ask me all the time what's happening in the global economy and what's happening in the domestic economy, and I tell them this. The global economy is marked by uncertainty, and the domestic economy in Australia is marked by insecurity. So for a lot of people, the defining features of our economy are job insecurity and some of those other things I ran through before - stagnant wages, slowing growth, and the like. The global economy's marked by uncertainty. We don't quite know how it's going to play out. The two big beasts in the Asian economy - China and the US - are having a disagreement over trade, and that impacts on everybody. It's highly uncertain, highly unpredictable. But the things that we can control here in Australia have been neglected now for six years. And I know that you don't like a big partisan rant, so let me just put it this way. For six years now, the Government's been in charge of the economy. We do have slowing growth and stagnant wages and weak savings and weak confidence and poor investment and poor productivity growth. And what's happened is, because we've had this big, bold agenda, a lot of the focus has been on the Labor Party. And what people are starting to realise I think now in the aftermath of that election, is that the Government has been at best asleep at the wheel on the economy, or at worst they've been part of the problem rather than part of the solution. A lot of the cost of living pressures, which are attacking people's disposable incomes, are because they've left them unattended.
 
AUSTIN: Well, the cost of living pressures are the State Government fees and charges. In the state of Queensland, we've got increasing car rego fees, land owners talk about what they're paying in land rates, retail people tell me what they're paying for payroll tax. The cost of Government at a state level is what's squeezing people's pockets, isn't it?
 
CHALMERS: There's federal responsibility for the fact that childcare fees have gone up 28 per cent in the life of this Government. Energy prices have gone up and up while they've had 14 different energy policies and not given businesses the certainty they need to invest in energy assets.
 
AUSTIN: (Laughs) But everyone's had the same problem with energy policy. It's been a nightmare for all sides of politics, hasn't it?
 
CHALMERS: At least we have a willingness to try to work together with business, indeed with the other side of the House to try to get some certainty for investment. The problem we've got with energy, as you probably know, you've probably had others speak on your program about this, is we've got all these assets which are coming towards the end of their life. And businesses don’t know what climate they're investing into. If they want to invest in renewable energy, or even traditional energy, there hasn't been the certainty that they need.
 
AUSTIN: Here in Queensland, they're investing in renewables big time.
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, but some of the large-scale stuff, people are waiting and seeing. And that's what we've seen over the last little while. Investment's a real problem. I guess the point I'm making is, when it comes to the fact that people don't have the money they need to spend in the economy - we've had retail figures out today which were very weak - one of the reasons for that is because we've had a Government which has cut some of their services. We've seen childcare fees, energy prices, all of those sorts of things go up. For a long time now, the Government, the Liberals, have pointed the finger at Labor, and I think part of my job now as the Shadow Treasurer, is to make these characters accountable for the fact that they've been in charge for six years now. They talk the talk on economic management, but they don't walk the walk. And I think if there's one thing I can do in addition to coming up with positive policies for the future, I want to make people understand that they are far from the party of superior economic management.
 
AUSTIN: My guest is Jim Chalmers. He's an economist by education. These days he's the Member for Logan on the southside in Brisbane. He's also the Shadow Treasury spokesperson. This is ABC Radio Brisbane. I want to leave economics and I want to ask you about you personally, Jim Chalmers. There was speculation as being a member of the Right faction of the Labor Party that certain people were pushing you to contest the leadership of the party. Why didn't you, seriously?
 
CHALMERS: I thought about it. I thought about it for a long time, actually, and I'm really pleased with the decision I took. Because I think it's proven to be the right decision. I wanted to unite behind Anthony, and I think the whole show has done that, much quicker than you would expect.
 
AUSTIN: And he's inside the goat's cheese curtain of inner-city Sydney. He's from the Left, it's same old, same old.
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs) Well, he has spent more time than most people knocking around Queensland and particularly regional Queensland as our infrastructure spokesman, and also for local government, as the Minister too. But I'm pleased with the decision that I took. I did think about it, I'm not going to pretend that I didn't. It was a decision that came to me much earlier than I thought it might. I've got three little kids at home, including one who's five months old, and I don't change enough of his nappies as it is. And I wasn't ready to be on the road seven days a week. But also, I wasn't sure that I could win. And if you're not sure that you can win, then you have to think about whether you want to put the party through that, or you want to do a good job for the team. And as I said, with every passing day, I feel better about the decision that I took. I've got a great job to do. I think I could make a good contribution, and I think Anthony's made a great start.
 
AUSTIN: Why doesn't the Federal Labor Party get Queensland? If you were to hop over the Brisbane River here, you'd be the northern-most member of the Labor Party here in Queensland.
 
CHALMERS: Well at the moment that's my friend Anika Wells over there in Lilley.
 
AUSTIN: In Lilley, you've got one there, sorry, in Lilley.
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, it got close, but we held on to it, and that is true. That is a problem, that is a big problem for us.
 
AUSTIN: Why don't you think Federal Labor gets Queensland? That headspace, that way of thinking, is going to be played out on Wednesday night at Lang Park. Why don't you think Federal Labor gets that headspace?
 
CHALMERS: I'm not sure that we don't but I am sure that that's the perception. And when only one of every four people in the best state in the Commonwealth are prepared to give Labor their primary vote, then obviously that makes us reconsider, or consider, what we're doing up here. I think part of my appointment is to make sure that we do have a prominent voice around the Shadow Cabinet table. But more than that, the Shadow Cabinet is meeting here tomorrow, in Brisbane; the first meeting of the new Shadow Ministry under Anthony Albanese. He's meeting across the river there, and that's not the most important thing, but it's an important symbol that we intend to make Queensland a more prominent part of our deliberations. We intend to spend more time in the regions, but not just the regions, the outer suburbs as well. We do have an issue here. And we were already under-represented here before the election, and we lost a couple of good colleagues.
 
AUSTIN: It's astounding that you went backwards here. It's astounding the Labor Party went backwards in Queensland.
 
CHALMERS: Disappointing, yeah. And we lost Cathy O'Toole and Susan Lamb, two amazing colleagues, and we're not going to pretend that we don't have an issue here that we need to address. I'm confident, not just Anthony and not just myself, but really the whole team knows what we need to do here. We need to get out and about. We need to listen and learn, and we need to make sure that there's a prominent voice for Queensland in our policy that we take to the next election.
 
AUSTIN: The feedback I get, and I've got a lot of regional listeners believe it or not, who listen online to this program, is that in north Queensland they didn't vote for Adani, they voted for jobs. And if there was any serious prospect of jobs they would have voted that way. But it seems to me that both sides of politics have dropped the ball when it comes to transitioning. Remember when the Hawke Government was in power, Keating was Treasurer, the textile, clothing and footwear industry, you guys worked up a plan to transition out of that and it was reasonably successful. But it didn't happen with the car industry, and it hasn't happened with the coal industry, and I'm wondering whether anyone's going to see there's a pattern there maybe?
 
CHALMERS: We've been conscious of that but clearly, there's a perception out there that we're not adequately dealing with it. 
 
AUSTIN: Not just on your side, on both sides.
 
CHALMERS: Yeah, yeah. As far as I'm concerned, Labor is the party of jobs, and if we aren't able to communicate that effectively, then that's on us. It's not on the community. We need to convince people that our highest priority is that they've got good, well-paid secure jobs so that they can provide for their loved ones. That, at the end of the day, is what we're all about. If we need to do a better job communicating that, then so be it. We're up for that challenge.
 
AUSTIN: I'll let you go. Speak to you again. Thanks for coming in.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you, Steve.
 
ENDS