E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS
MONDAY, 3 JUNE 2019
 
SUBJECTS: Queensland; Adani; Labor’s economic policies; interest rates.
 
ANNELISE NIELSEN: One of the key areas Labor will have to look at is its tax reform platform, and one of the men in charge of that is the newly-appointed Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, who joins me now live. Jim, thanks for joining us. Before we get on to tax, it might be good to ask about what you think went wrong for Labor in Queensland? As one of the few Labor MPs left in the state, what do you think they need to do to turn it around there?
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: Obviously we need to listen and learn to the message that Queensland sent us on election night. It gives me no joy to say that we underperformed here. We performed quite badly here in the best state in the Commonwealth and we need to listen and learn from that. We'll be meeting here tomorrow as a Shadow Ministry under Anthony Albanese's leadership. I think that is an important symbol that we are determined to listen and learn from Queenslanders to make sure that as we go about revising and proposing our economic policies for the next election that Queensland is front and centre in them.
 
NIELSEN: Labor was accused of having it both ways on Adani, trying to be pro-climate change in the south and pro-jobs in the north. Do you think it would have helped Labor if you'd just come out as pro-Adani in the first place?
 
CHALMERS: I think the Adani mine was a key issue in central Queensland and north Queensland, and obviously we need to learn from that. But I think in Brisbane, a bit like around the rest of Australia, there are a broad range of views about the mine; certainly a mixed bag of views when it comes to community sentiment. Our position all along has been that if it cleared the relevant environmental and commercial hurdles then it would go ahead, and that is effectively our position now. The thing about the Adani mine, which is important to remember, is we now have no role or no say in whether or not it goes ahead, and I'd be surprised if it was a key issue in the 2022 election like it was in 2019. By then, we'll know whether it's gone ahead or not, whether it's cleared the various federal and state hurdles, whether it's cleared the environmental and commercial hurdles that I mentioned a moment ago. So I think it's important that we don't get hung up on it. We've had a view about it. It's been consistent for some time. Some people like that view. Some people didn't like that view. But importantly I think going forward, we do need to recognise in Queensland, whether it's mining, whether it's tourism, whether it's the services sector, all of the different constituent parts of the Queensland economy are very important to our objective in the Labor Party, which is to get that broad-based economic growth.
 
NIELSEN: So I'm looking ahead to 2022 - will you be taking your franking credit reform ahead, or are you going to drop it?
 
CHALMERS: What we've said is that it's only 16 days since the election, and we've probably got 1000 days, give or take, until the next election, so it's not for us to announce all of our policies now that we might take to an election in three years' time. We've obviously listened and learned from the election result. Clearly, no political party takes an identical set of policies to an election three years later as the one that they did three years before. So we'll take the time to go through each of our policies, not just the contentious ones that you've mentioned, but all of our policies. That begins tomorrow really, with an important Shadow Ministry meeting here in Brisbane. But it will continue for some time. We do have time to get our policy mix right. We do have time to consult with the community, and also to have the relevant discussions in our own show to make sure that we take the best possible set of policies to the next election, which is still three years down the track.
 
NIELSEN: Was it a mistake to not put forward the proposition to at least grandfather franking credits. Do you think you could have saved yourself some pain at the polling booths if you'd just said that you were going to put off changes to franking credits five or 10 years down the track?
 
CHALMERS: I'm not that keen to get into the very specific what ifs of the election campaign. I don't think the election result turned on that one issue. I think it was a combination of issues, but no doubt that played a part. We don't intend to re-prosecute the 2019 election. We intend to learn from it instead to make sure that we factor that in to our policy agenda and policy suite as we move forward towards the 2022 election. Self-evidently, there wasn't sufficient support in the Australian community for the combination of policies that we took to the election. And so we need to consider that as we get back to work. 
 
NIELSEN: So is there any chance you'll drop the push to eliminate franking credits, or will you completely change that?
 
CHALMERS: Again Annelise, it's the same answer to a very slightly different question. We'll take the time to go through all of our policies. People will be in no doubt as we get close to the 2022 election what we intend to propose. It's not for us 16 days after the last election to rule things in or out. I think self-evidently, we weren't able to convince people that the combination of policies was worthy of their support, or we couldn't convince them in sufficient number. We'd be mad to ignore that, and as we go about working through the policies that we have, we'll work out which ones we keep, which ones we throw out, and which ones we try to improve.
 
NIELSEN: Just finally, we're expecting interest rates will be cut tomorrow. We've heard many in the Labor Party, including yourself, say that is symptomatic of poor economic growth, that's pointing to things like poor wage growth. But couldn't this just be symptomatic of global trends that are seeing less money coming into Australia through exports?
 
CHALMERS: I think if the Government was doing such a good job managing the economy, the Reserve Bank wouldn't be considering cutting rates tomorrow. There's certainly a very strong market expectation that that will happen. I don't make predictions one way or the other, or pretend to advise the Reserve Bank as they go about their important work. But I think if rates are cut tomorrow, that will be an indication of an economy which is quite weak. This Government has been in charge for six years now. They spend all their time talking about the Labor Party and blaming everybody else. It's long past time for them to take responsibility for the fact that we have had slowing growth and stagnant wages and weak consumption for some time now, and that is the fault of this Government, which has been determined to be part of the problem when it comes to economic weakness and not part of the solution.
 
NIELSEN: Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers, thank you for your time.
 
CHALMERS: Thank you Annelise.
 
ENDS