E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
TRIPLE M CAIRNS 99.5
THURSDAY, 23 AUGUST 2018
 
SUBJECT/S: Liberals’ division and dysfunction; Dutton not caring about regional Queensland
 
MARK LITTLER: There's still talk and rumblings that something might happen again today, so we thought we'd get a bit of inside goss from someone who is in Canberra - Jim Chalmers, he's the Shadow Minister for Finance. G'day, Jim.
 
JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: G'day Mark, how're you doing?
 
LITTLER: Yeah, not too bad. Geez, exciting times in Canberra at the moment. I know you guys are on the other side, but do you get much involved with the spill and what's going on?
 
CHALMERS: Exciting's one word for it, Mark. I think it's a bit of a circus down here, unfortunately, and there are a lot of more important things the place could be focused on. Instead, we've got this sort of leadership debacle. We don't have a say in it, but the temptation for us really is to be like spectators at the circus, so we've got to resist that temptation and keep working hard for people instead. 
 
LITTLER: It's happened to your party as well in the past, but...
 
CHALMERS: Some time ago, Mark. We've had five years of remarkable stability and we're the adults in the room down here at the moment.
 
LITTLER: (Laughs) I wonder what makes someone think, OK, I want to be the leader. Do you reckon it's people behind them pushing them, or just do they have this, I don't know, ego, or they just want to lead?
 
CHALMERS: I don't know what the case is with Peter Dutton. You wouldn't consider him a natural leadership contender. You wouldn't consider him, really, a leader's shoelace in lots of ways. But he has got people around him who are pushing him, and the party is more or less split right down the middle from what we can tell from our vantage point. So the Government looks a bit more like an episode of Survivor or the Bachelor or something like that rather than a functioning Government. I heard Maddi talking before about her reality TV experience, and it's a good analogy for what's going on here. It's a bit like Survivor and, for as long as that goes on, ordinary people in Cairns and around the country aren't really getting a look in.
 
MADDI WRIGHT: Yeah. Jim, now being on the other side, is this a moment - and I know it's a pain for everybody in Australia at the moment going through all of this - but is this kind of a moment where you guys sit back and go "yes", because we can really leverage from this because basically they're internally just stuffing themselves up?
 
CHALMERS: We've got to sort of resist that temptation. It is obviously good for the Labor Party that the Government's disintegrating, but it's bad for the country. We've got to remember that's the most important thing. The other thing is, we really want to win the next federal election because people like our ideas and they like our policies, not just because the other mob's in chaos. So we've got to resist that temptation to sort of sit back and cheer it on. We've got a lot of work to do, a lot of policy work, and we've been doing that.
 
LITTLER: Sure.
 
WRIGHT: And at the end of the day, you've got a bit more insider goss than us. Who do you think will be PM at the end of today?
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs) I think there probably will be a new Prime Minister by the end of the day.
 
WRIGHT: Ooh!
 
CHALMERS: But, it's hard to make these kind of predictions from where we sit. When you move around Parliament House at the moment, there's a lot of whispered conversations, a lot of people going in and out of each others' offices. So you can feel there's a lot of tension really in the building at the moment. And something's got to give at some point. It could happen as soon as today.
 
LITTLER: Do you think it's only Dutton? Do you think there could be Morrison or Julie Bishop?
 
CHALMERS: It wouldn't shock me if somebody else jumped in, someone like Scott Morrison, which wouldn't be a step up by any means. Yeah, it wouldn't shock me if something like that happened. The real thing I think from our point of view - I'm a Queenslander, and obviously you guys are in the Far North there - the real thing to understand about Dutton, who's the most likely alternative, is everyone says he might do good in Queensland - he's only spent on average a couple of days per year in regional Queensland. So I think this whole thing that he might help people up your way is a bit of a myth.
 
WRIGHT: We learnt that he was a millionaire today.
 
CHALMERS: Well, the main reason he goes to regional Queensland is because he owns a shopping centre in Townsville, and that's not exactly going up and knocking around with the good people of Cairns, is it?
 
LITTLER: No, no, it's certainly not. Jim, we've got to get going. Thanks for your time. We'll catch up with you again soon. Just quickly too, I was going to ask you because you are the Shadow Minister for Finance - does it surprise you that Maddi and myself don't have a budget at all?
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs)
 
LITTLER: It's probably not a good thing, is it?
 
CHALMERS: (Laughs) No, you probably need a budget. You've got to save up for some Phil Collins tickets by the sounds of it.
 
WRIGHT: Yeah, we do!
 
CHALMERS: So you'd better get into it.
 
ENDS