E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SPEERS ON SUNDAY
SUNDAY, 5 MAY 2019

SUBJECTS: Labor’s campaign launch; Labor’s stable and united team; Labor’s plan to boost wages; Labor’s Australian Investment Guarantee; Labor’s youth mental health funding; Labor’s hospital waiting time blitz; Liberals’ cuts to hospitals; Labor making multinationals pay their fair share; Labor’s plan for real action on climate change; LNP-Hanson-Palmer preference deals; coal; interest rates; Labor’s policy costings

DAVID SPEERS: I'm joined by Labor's Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers. Very good to see you this morning, thanks for joining us.

JIM CHALMERS, LABOR CAMPAIGN SPOKESPERSON: Welcome to the best state in the Commonwealth, David.

SPEERS: I mention that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard will both be here. This is a bit of a moment, because we haven’t seen the two of them I don't think in the same room since their fallout. You of course were there through all of that as a staff member. How significant is this? They're putting that to one side today.

CHALMERS: I think it's terrific that they'll both be here today, and both of them are doing amazing work on the campaign trail. I pay tribute to both of them. Kevin's been doing a lot of stuff in Sydney and Melbourne particularly in our multicultural communities, and Julia as well. In the Labor team, we are united and stable and steady and experienced and ready to deliver a fair go for our country.

SPEERS: Is there some irony in the fact that Bill Shorten did play a hand in the demise of Kevin Rudd and a hand in the demise of Julia Gillard, now here they are helping make him Prime Minister?

CHALMERS: I just don't see it that way, David.

SPEERS: Of course you don't!

CHALMERS: No, I think it's terrific to have former Prime Ministers here. I don't think Malcolm Turnbull will be at Scott Morrison's launch necessarily next week.

SPEERS: He won't.

CHALMERS: It's good to see that they're both doing a power of work for the good Labor cause.

SPEERS: Let's talk about some of the announcements then today. So the front page, one of the papers, Bill Shorten promising a $1500 wage rise. I understand this is actually some modelling of already announced policies. Is he announcing anything further on wages today?

CHALMERS: We'll have more to say on wages and jobs in Bill's speech this morning. It'll be an important contribution. We've got some big economic challenges right now. We've got productivity flat-lining, we've got wages which are stagnant, growth is slowing, people are running down their own savings to pay for the essentials of life, and this Government has more than doubled net debt during the life of their Government. So we've got some big challenges. Bill will be talking about those in his launch speech. But the Australian Investment Guarantee, which is the policy that the McKell Institute has modelled, is a really important investment to make sure that businesses invest onshore in Australia in Australian jobs. That will be good for the economy, but it'll be good for workers too.

SPEERS: On wages, I get that you want to restore the penalty rates for retail, hospitality and pharmacy workers. You want to do more on the minimum wages, there's no guarantee that will go up. Is there anything more that you can say to ordinary workers out there as to whether wages really will go up under Labor?

CHALMERS: Yes there is and Bill will be saying some more about that in his speech. It would be career-limiting for me to try to steal my boss's thunder.

SPEERS: Alright, I've got to tease.

CHALMERS: Wages are historically stagnant. They are one of the ways that we know the economy's not working for working people under Scott Morrison and the Liberals, and we want to do something about it.

SPEERS: He's also going to be on the health front announcing $200 million for mental health, $500 million for emergency departments. Is this going to be it for the spending commitments from Labor in this campaign?

CHALMERS: We've made health a massive priority. We will make other announcements as we see fit in the remaining couple of weeks of the campaign. But health's been arguably our highest priority in terms of spending. We've made a heap of announcements there.

SPEERS: It's a state responsibility though, isn't it? The emergency departments in particular?

CHALMERS: No, it's a shared responsibility. The Commonwealth has an important role to play in funding them. Unfortunately in the last couple of weeks, I've had some personal experience of emergency departments -

SPEERS: You have.

CHALMERS: - in the hospital just at the end of this street that we're on right now, the children's hospital. What I know and what others around Australia know is that people are doing amazing work in those emergency departments. The nurses and doctors and health workers. They need a Government which supports them. We know from recent data that more than one third of people who present to emergency departments are waiting longer than is clinically recommended. This is the inevitable consequence of Scott Morrison pulling $700 million out of our hospitals when he was Treasurer and he wants to pull another $2.8 billion over the next little while and we want to restore that funding.

SPEERS: Ok, but he argues he's not pulling money out. He is increasing it to record levels.

CHALMERS: His own Budget documents have talked about the savings that they've made in hospitals and in health. When they changed the funding formula, that means they're spending less on health than would otherwise be spent on health. That is self-evident, it's in their own -

SPEERS: Well spending less than the trajectory of growth suggested, but not cutting spending.

CHALMERS: No, if you have a look in their own Budget documents, particularly in that horror Budget in 2014, and Scott Morrison was in the Cabinet then -

SPEERS: It referred to a save -

CHALMERS: Yes.

SPEERS: - But to be clear, it's a save on the path that Labor had set, but it's not actually taking money away from hospitals.

CHALMERS: There is $700 million less being spent in our hospitals because of the Liberal Government, and they plan to spend $2.8 billion less going forward. The point that I'm making is, Labor's made a big priority of restoring that priority of restoring that funding. We do that by making sure that multinationals pay their fair share of tax.

SPEERS: Well let me ask you about that, because Bill Shorten on Friday night at the People's Forum flagged he'd have an announcement on multinationals. What more can Labor do about multinationals paying tax?

CHALMERS: We will have more to say about multinational tax today. I think Australians are filthy that multinationals can make a lot of money here, but not necessarily pay much or indeed any tax here in Australia, and that has consequences for our hospitals and schools. So we've made that a big priority. It's how we're paying for our key investments that we want to make in health, in education, in childcare, right across the board.

SPEERS: Does this go to how much debt they can leverage in Australia? This is the thin capitalisation rule about whether they can only hold as much debt in Australia as they do on a global average?

CHALMERS: We've already made announcements about thin capitalisation and how companies have been manipulating their debt to get out of their tax obligations in Australia.

SPEERS: But this will be beyond that though.

CHALMERS: It will be in addition to that.

SPEERS: Right.

CHALMERS: It will be a new measure. I think Australians know that when Scott Morrison talks about multinational tax evasion, his heart's not really in it. He's generally for the top end of town at the expense of everybody else.

SPEERS: Well in fairness he's raised some $7 billion since 2016 by the changes that they've imposed.

CHALMERS: (Laughs) I'm so delighted that you asked me about that. Those are Labor's laws, which are delivering that $7 billion dividend, which the Coalition voted against.

SPEERS: But they were changed in 2016, and Labor voted against that.

CHALMERS: (Laughs) No, that's total rubbish, David. Our laws have delivered billions of dollars in extra tax revenue. The Government, the Liberal Party, voted against that in office. These are the dividends of Labor's changes. The changes that Morrison put on the table, we wanted them to be more substantial, and we fought to make them more substantial. That's the difference between us and them. And let me tell you something else -

SPEERS: But to be fair though, I appreciate what you tried to do in terms of the threshold with that, but when the bill went to a vote, you voted against it.

CHALMERS: We wanted them to be more ambitious.

SPEERS: I know, but you voted against what the Government did.

CHALMERS: (Laughs) It's a total furphy, David. We wanted them to be more serious and more ambitious. We know what the Government says. I think when Australians go to the ballot box, they'll have a choice. Under Morrison, multinationals will pay less, so that families and workers will pay more. Under Labor, workers and families and pensioners will pay less for their healthcare because multinationals will pay more.

SPEERS: On your climate plans, and I appreciate Bill Shorten's probably not today going to announce a figure the Government's been chasing him for weeks about the cost to the economy of the 45 per cent emissions reduction target. Paul Kelly's written a terrific piece about this in yesterday's Australian - I'll be talking to him in a moment - that goes to what this election is going to do to this whole debate around climate. If Labor were to win, it will be a victory for the argument, I suppose, that the need for action on climate outweighs the need for details on cost. Do you agree?

CHALMERS: I read Paul Kelly's article. The thing that I do agree with him on in his article is we are absolutely delighted that climate change has been such a key feature of this election campaign. The difference I think is, we shouldn't get in this old false choice between doing what's right for climate change and doing what's right for the economy. One of the reasons why I'm such an enthusiastic supporter of real action on climate change is because it's good for the economy. It's good to get more renewable energy jobs. It's good to get energy prices down, which is what renewable energy will do. It's good for the environment as well, but it's good for the economy. So we engage enthusiastically in this argument because I think in the broader community, people understand that if they want real action on climate change - and they do - then they will vote Labor.

SPEERS: But does it mean that we take that action regardless of the cost to the economy - to wages, to jobs?

CHALMERS: We take that action knowing that it's good for the economy.

SPEERS: But how do you know that?

CHALMERS: Because energy prices come down, because renewable energy is cheaper.

SPEERS: You've not modelled this.

CHALMERS: We're relying on the Government's modelling, which says -

SPEERS: What Government modelling?

CHALMERS: The McKibbon modelling from 2015, which says that there's no noticeable difference - there's a negligible difference - between the Government's 26 per cent target with no international permits, and our 45 per cent target with international permits.

SPEERS: With 50 per cent international permits.

CHALMERS: We've got international permits in there because that's what the business community wanted, because they understand in ways that Scott Morrison does't that that's actually a cheaper way of going about it.

SPEERS: The McKibbon modelling includes 50 per cent international permits - that's what your basing this on?

CHALMERS: We're basing it on the Government's modelling, and if the Government has been saying that's inadequate that’s a problem for them, because their policy's based on it as well. We've had this modelling argument descend into farce; rubbish modelling fed by dodgy assumptions pushed by conmen like Scott Morrison. They know that their heart's not in climate change. They should just say so.

SPEERS: Julia Gillard will be here today. Did she get it right when it came to tackling this problem?

CHALMERS: Clearly after 10 years, where we haven't made an enduring difference, obviously we need to have another crack at it.

SPEERS: Was her approach the right one?

CHALMERS: I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of old policies -

SPEERS: You were there, you were there.

CHALMERS: I think it's important, whether it was under Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard, that we do something about this. The Greens voted against the original emissions trading scheme 10 years ago. That was a big part of the problem.

SPEERS: But not the Gillard model. They were right behind it. You were right behind it. In hindsight, was it the right way to go?

CHALMERS: I'm just not interested in getting into it; into the history of it, David. It's been 10 years, there's been 17 different energy policies under the current Government, which has been a big problem. Business hasn't been able to invest with certainty. We want to make sure that they can do that, so we can get energy prices down, we can get pollution down, do the right thing by the environment and the economy at the same time.

SPEERS: You mentioned the Greens. Here in Queensland, Labor's past dealings with the Greens. It's current preference deal with the Greens are being used against you by all parties - One Nation, Clive Palmer, the LNP as well. The Greens do have some pretty hard-line policies on shutting down coal mining, coal-fired power. Does that hurt Labor's campaign here in Queensland?

CHALMERS: I don't think it does. I think people understand that we do have our own priorities and our own policies. I think if people are worried about preference deals, they're worried about the Coalition of chaos on the other side, they're worried about a three-ring circus of Morrison and Palmer and Hanson -

SPEERS: But how come it's a three-ringed circus for them, but not for you with Richard Di Natale? If you're in a preference arrangement - same thing - with the Greens?

CHALMERS: Because we've made it very clear that we've got our own policies and our own priorities. On the other side, it's hard to tell where the LNP finishes and Palmer and One Nation begin.

SPEERS: So why are you doing a preference deal with the Greens?

CHALMERS: Well, it's better than doing a preference deal with Palmer and Hanson, which we're not doing. That's what the Liberals are doing. Inevitably, people have to fill out every square in federal elections and people want to know what our recommendation is for preferences. And we won't do a deal with One Nation like the LNP has in Queensland. We won’t do a deal with Palmer, as Morrison has. We've got other priorities.

SPEERS: On the coal issue though, you obviously disagree with the Greens, who want to shut it down within 10 years. How long should coal remain in the economy for?

CHALMERS: We've said it will remain a part of the economy during the transition to cleaner sources of energy.

SPEERS: How long will that take, do you think?

CHALMERS: I'm not going to put a year on it. But it's an important part of the transition. It's an important part of the Queensland economy. And that's the reality.

SPEERS: A couple of things to finish - the Reserve Bank board meets on Tuesday. Do you think they should cut interest rates?

CHALMERS: I'm not going to give them advice on what they should do, but I think the market is certainly expecting that they might. And I think what that will do is that will expose really the biggest lie of this campaign. The biggest lie of this campaign is that Morrison and the LNP have done a good job managing the economy - productivity flatlining, wages are stagnant, growth is slowing, family savings being run down, debt has more than doubled under the Liberals. And if we do get an interest rate cut on Tuesday, as some are expecting, that will torpedo the Government's economic credentials. The economy's not working for working people. If they were doing a good job of it, the Reserve Bank wouldn't be contemplating cutting rates.

SPEERS: So to be clear, a cut in interest rates is a poor reflection on the Government's economic management?

CHALMERS: Yes, it's a reflection that the economy's not working for working people. We do have slowing growth. We've got stagnant wages. The economy is not performing as it should. It's underperforming under the Liberals. They go around the country pretending that they are superior economic managers. That is entirely a hoax, because of all of this data that we're getting which is saying the economy's not working.

SPEERS: And final one, you will release Labor's costings towards the end of this week. That's about a week earlier than Oppositions tend to release their costings. They must be pretty good numbers, therefore?

CHALMERS: I think they are, and much earlier than what the Liberals have done historically, and earlier than what we've done historically. We will take a very responsible set of books to the election. We are very proud of the work that we've done. They go to the choices that we've made, which is to favour ordinary working people, our hospitals and schools -

SPEERS: To increase taxes.

CHALMERS: Well, to make multinationals pay their fair share of tax. We're not going to give a $77 billion tax cut to the highest income bracket, which is what Scott Morrison wants to do - not that he will admit that to you during the Sky News debate on Friday night. We've got different priorities. And this is what the election is about. People - if they want real change; if they recognise that more of the same will not be good enough; if they want investments in hospitals and schools, not more cuts; if they want unity and stability, not more chaos; if they want real action on climate change; if they want real action on wages, not more tax loopholes for the top end of town - then they will support Labor.

SPEERS: Shadow Finance Minister, Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

CHALMERS: Thank you, David.

ENDS