Anyway, time to talk to the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and to take us there here's
the Prime Minister explaining who he is siding with.
Morrison: I have sympathy for Australians who have had a gutful of governments telling
them what to do over the last two years.
And I think they have been very clear in keeping their side of the deal.
Reporter: But not everyone has done their part.
because there are anti-vaxxers who are, for whatever reason, ideological, medical, religious,
are not getting vaccinated.
Morrison: Yeah.
Reporter: And they're putting gallows in front of the Victorian state parliament.
Morrison: And that's appalling.
Reporter: So you have sympathy for their frustration, but not sympathy for their actions, is that
what you're saying?
Morrison: I think you're making an assumption that the frustration that Australians feel
is only limited to a small group of people who have engaged in violence and threats and
intimidation and have worked against the vaccination program.
I have no sympathy with that agenda.
Speers: Jim Chalmers, welcome to the program.
Chalmers: Thanks David Speers: We saw big protests across the country
yesterday, do you accept that there are some people concerned about vaccine mandates who
aren’t necessarily extremists?
Chalmers: You can express a view in this country without dragging around gallows and a noose
and calling for premieres to be hanged.
I condemn without reservation without qualification the violent threats being made here even if
the Prime Minister won't.
We live in a society and that means we have obligations to each other to try and tame
this virus, to look out for each other to protect each other to try and keep each other
safe and what the Prime Minister is doing is he's trying to divide us he's trying to
diminish that collective effort and undermine all of the good and all of the progress that
Australians have made together.
And he does that with this dangerous dog whistling doublespeak that we see from him.
He does it by claiming credit for high vaccination rates without taking responsibility for the
measures that are necessary to get those rates up.
And I think what's especially troubling to mainstream Australia is the rest of us see
the kind of violent politics that have emerged in the in the United States in the last couple
of years and we want to reject it and the Prime Minister seems to want to embrace those
kind of violent views and violent threats.
And so I think the country is crying out for leadership, and they're not getting it from
this prime minister.
And if he wants to keep playing this dangerous game with dangerous consequences, then the
country doesn't just have an opportunity to throw him out of the election.
They've got an obligation to do that.
Speers: Specifically, though, on these issue of vaccine mandates in different states.
I mean, they're in Queensland a barista has to be vaccinated a school teacher does not,
do except there is some inconsistency that's frustrating people?
Chalmers: Well, obviously, when you're making difficult decisions about matters as consequential
as vaccine mandates, there are a lot of fine judgments involved.
Well, I support anything that is consistent with health advice, which protects people
from the virus and which gets those vaccination rates up.
And that involves and invites some difficult decisions being made by premiers of both political
persuasions, it's not our job to second guess that it's our job to try and make it work
because we… the secret to Australia's performance throughout this pandemic is what we've gotten
through it together.
And we need to stick together and do the right thing by each other, even if our Prime Minister
wants to divide and diminish those efforts.
Speers: Let me turn to something else the prime minister said this week on cost of living
he suggested that petrol prices, power prices, interest rates would all rise more under a
Labour than a coalition government.
Are you prepared for an election battle over cost of living?
Chalmers: Too right we are David I would absolutely welcome that.
I would be absolutely delighted to have an election about the cost of living and real
wages going backwards.
And the fact that the Prime Minister has been lying to Australians about the economy, and
that has real consequences for working families.
If he wants to have an election on the fact that petrol prices have gone up on average
over the last year something like $900 for an average family with an average car at the
same time as real wages have gone backwards $700 over the last year, then we say bring
it on under the Morrison government petrol prices are skyrocketing.
Real wages are going down and working families are going backwards.
And I think that should be central to an election, about the economy about living standards and
about the Prime Minister's failures on economic management.
Speers: Let's talk about real wages.
You mentioned there, what is your solution to lifting real wages?
I know unions are now saying they want industry wide bargaining or the power to negotiate
across multiple employers.
Would that help lift wages?
Chalmers: Well, you have to come at this problem which has been a problem that's has hung around
even before the pandemic and we've had stagnant wages growth for much of the last eight years
before the pandemic during the pandemic and the government's own budget says that we'll
have four more years of real wages going backwards.
So you need to come at this problem in a couple of different ways.
Speers: To be clear they were still going backwards still in Labour's final year in
office as well.
Chalmers: Under this government, we've had eight years of stagnant wages or at least
four more years to come.
So if you ask any credible economists they say you've got to come at it at multiple levels
at the macro level, the key to wages is to productivity growing again, and to get business
investment at acceptable levels and on both of those fronts if you look at the last eight
years, we've had flatlining, productivity and flatlining business investment.
That's what matters most at the macro level.
But at the very specific level, we've got a policy out there about making work more
secure.
The main thing that has been undermining real wages in this country is the cancer of insecure
work.
And that's been flowing through to wages outcomes…
Speers: That might be an issue but really the question was about industry wide bargaining.
Sally McManus says bargaining is how working people win pay rises.
Do you think the ACTU Secretary knows what she's talking about here?
Speers: Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, the question was about how we get wages growing
again, productivity, business investment and dealing with insecure work, we've got policies
on each of those fronts.
When it comes to the comments made by the ACTU I think for the last few years, people
on all sides of the employee relationship, the employment relationship, have expressed
their concerns about enterprise bargaining and have proposed ways to make it better and
we take suggestions made by the unions and made by the employer groups are seriously.
Speers: What does it mean?
Sorry to interrupt?
I'm just trying to get an answer.
Your policy is silent on this at the moment the unions are saying this is a fixed wages.
What do you think?
Chalmers: We've announced our policy on industrial relations… our policy on industrial relations
is all about dealing with the cancer of insecure work, which has been undermining real wages.
For this government's time in office.
That's our priority.
Things like dealing with labour hire same job, same pay debt, making sure that Fair
Work Australia is empowered to give people a pathway from casual insecure.
Jobs to permanent, stable jobs.
That is our priority.
Speers: I understand that I'm just asking you about industry wide bargaining, is it
a yes or no?
Or maybe?
Chalmers: David, I've just explained to you what our policies on industrial relations.
We've already announced that some time ago.
Speers: Well, let me ask you then about generally, the other issue when it comes to the cost
of living and that's taxes, would any taxes be higher on the Labor?
Chalmers: Oh, look, we've said that there is an opportunity when it comes to multinational
taxes to make the system fairer, so that multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax in
Australia.
There's been some very welcome and very important developments.
On the international front via the OECD and President Biden and Secretary Yellen in the
United States.
So we've said that there is an opportunity there to do something meaningful on multinational
taxes as part of dealing with the trillion dollars in debt that we would inherit from
the Morison government with not enough to show for it.
Speers: Okay but beyond multinational taxes.
Is that it?
Would you increase taxes for ordinary Australians at all?
Chalmers: Our priority is multinational taxes.
We haven't finalized our full suite of policies as you'd appreciate.
There is still at least two budget updates between now and the election.
We've got the mid-year update in December.
The government says they'll do another budget, then we'll also have the pre-election update
after that.
And so it makes sense to maintain some flexibility on our final set of policies.
We've said repeatedly that we won't take an identical agenda on tax or anything that we
took to the last election to the next election.
But we will finalise our policies, all of our policies, including on tax with an emphasis
on multinational taxes between now and the election.
Speers: Okay.
You've already said you won't do franking credits, negative gearing, capital gains tax
changes that you took to the last election…
What about discretionary trusts?
You've apparently still been arguing internally to go ahead with a change there?
Chalmers: Like what we've said is we will finalize our policies between now and the
election.
You know we're not going to go through every item that was part of the 2019 agenda…
Speers: But you've knocked off a lot of them… that one is still on the table?
Chalmers: We’ll finalise our policies between now and the election.
David, as I said.
Speers: Okay, you mentioned debt, gross debt is already higher than $850 billion.
It's on track to pass $1 trillion.
What would you do about this debt mountain should you inherit it?
Chalmers: Well, this trillion dollars in debt comes courtesy of a budget which is absolutely
riddled with rorts and waste and mismanagement.
This government is the most wasteful government since Federation.
And so what we need to do is prioritize growth in the first instance, so that any new spending
that we propose is about growing the economy.
The second thing we need to do is to deal with that legacy of rorts and waste and mismanagement
left to us by the government if the government changes hands.
And thirdly, there is an opportunity for tax reform in areas like multinational taxes,
but our priority in the near term is to make sure that we get wages growing again, we get
that secure work, and we don't turn what has been a decade of missed opportunities and
wasted opportunities in the economy into another decade of that and that means doing things
like growing the economy by getting cleaner and cheaper energy by training our people
for opportunities as they emerge, turning our ideas into jobs.
All of these things are absolutely crucial to growing the economy.
We'll get bang for buck in the budget.
It will be a responsible budget, not another three years of the rorts and waste and mismanagement
we've seen from the most wasteful government since federation.
Speers: Ok, but it sounds like some tax change on multinationals.
Not really any spending cuts, beyond the areas that you've described as rorts, you'll still
be largely relying on growing the economy to fix that debt problem?
Chalmers: Look I don't think we should lightly dismiss the opportunities to wind back some
of the rorts and mismanagement in the budget.
We're talking about tens of billions of dollars, that the government's wasted on car park roads
and settling the robo-debt case and all the money that they've sprayed around for political
purposes.
We shouldn't dismiss the opportunities there to have a far more responsible budget when
it comes to spending at the same time as we do something about multinationals.
But yes, the priority with all of our spending and the reason we hold every proposed policy
up to the light, and we judge it by what it means for growth, what it means for secure
work, because we would inherit a trillion dollars of liberal debt with not enough to
show for it and we need to be and will be much more responsible with the budget than
the Liberals have been over the last eight years.
Speers: One of those policies you've held up to the light was the government stage three
tax cuts.
You were previously quite critical of it, you're going to proceed with them.
But what about the rate of job seeker?
For the unemployed with any room to do something more on that?
Chalmers: We haven't come to a concluded view on that David, we do recognize that disadvantage
is a massive problem in our economy and in our society.
And as the economy recovers from this pandemic, we don't want to leave people behind.
But we also need to recognise that poverty and disadvantage is partly about income support
payments.
They are important, but it's not solely about that.
You know it's about housing.
It's about entrenched disadvantage.
It's about place based initiatives in communities like the one…
Speers: But it's also about the JobSeeker, right, ACOSS is very clear on this.
They've done some polling in marginal seats, and it shows you know, a lot of people actually
support an increase.
Would you go to the election promising an increase?
Chalmers: Oh, we haven't concluded a view on that David, as I said a moment ago and
we welcome ACOSS’s input into this conversation.
It's incredibly important.
And a lot of economists have made some of the same points.
What we need to do is weigh up all of the things that we would like to do make sure
that we can responsibly commit to areas and we've said that one of the most important
things you can do for the disadvantaged and the vulnerable in Australia is to do something
meaningful on social housing.
That was one of our first priorities that recognises that there are a range of issues
when it comes to people being left behind.
We've made housing a priority.
We'll come to a concluded view on some of these other policy proposals between now and
the election or the first budget of a Labor government.
Speers: And when it comes to wages, just coming back to wages, do you see a link between skilled
migration and Australian wages?
Chalmers: Oh look, the number of workers matters, obviously, in the economy, but there are much
broader issues at play when you think about those eight years of wage stagnation if it
was just an issue around migration, we wouldn't have had stagnant wages before the pandemic
during the pandemic and expected after the pandemic.
The two big issues in the labour market, which are driving stagnant wages are the fact that
we've got 2 million unemployed or underemployed at the same time as we've got skill shortages.
And we've got that cancer of insecure work.
Those are the issues that are driving…
Speers: But specifically on migration, do you think living accelerating the intake of
skilled migrants would depress wages here or not?
Chalmers: It depends on the composition David, the number does matter.
I'm not pretending that the number of migrants doesn't matter.
But the composition matters, the balance between skilled and unskilled the balance between
permanent and temporary, the balance, making sure that we deal with issues around exploitation,
all of that is very important, and I don't lightly dismiss it, but it's not the biggest
issue in the labour market job insecurity is and the mismatch between a couple of million
Australians who can't find enough hours or a job and the fact that we've got skill shortages
around the country, those are the big issues driving the weakness in the labour market
and the weakness in wages.
Those are issues that have been left more or less unaddressed for the last eight years
of this Morrison government and that's why working families are paying are falling behind
and can’t meet the skyrocketing cost of petrol and the other costs of living.
Speers: Final one, has Labour settled on a 2030 climate target yet?
Chalmers: No, we've said we will come to a concluded view on that in the coming weeks.
Speers: So it's still being debated?
Chalmers: We are having a discussion about the best target and the best suite of policies
at the next election.
It will be a choice.
The government's got a pamphlet we will have a plan.
We'll announce our plan in the coming weeks…
Speers: Are you still waiting on inputs or is it just an argument really amongst yourselves
at the moment as well?
Chalmers: And I wouldn't describe it that way David, we're having really constructive
conversations, led by Anthony Albanese and Chris bone with the shadow cabinet.
I'll make my contribution there but I'll say this David, we will strike the right level
of ambition when it comes to our climate policies because good climate policy is good economic
policy, if we get cleaner and cheaper energy into the system, there'll be more jobs, more
investment and more opportunities for more people including in the regions and as a Queenslander
I think it is tremendously important that we recognize there is an appetite right around
Australia.
For us to do something meaningful about cleaner and cheaper energy.
The regions stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries according to the Business Council
modelling and so we can do something meaningful here.
We can be practical about it.
We can be problem solvers and do something ambitious in a way that doesn't abandon communities
or abandon some of our traditional economic strengths.
Speers: Jim Chalmers thanks for joining us.
Chalmers: Thanks, David.