BRIDGET BRENNAN:
Welcome back on this Thursday morning, you’re watching News Breakfast.
JAMES GLENDAY:
Well, a new report released from Anglicare shows people living on Centrelink payments cannot afford essentials like rent, food and transport. It comes as new unemployment figures are said to be released today – another piece in the data puzzle as the government seeks to walk the line between a slowing economy and curbing high inflation.
BRENNAN:
Treasurer Jim Chalmers joins us now. Let’s have a chat to him. Good morning, Treasurer.
JIM CHALMERS:
Good morning, Bridget.
BRENNAN:
Always great to have you on the program. Well, we just had Anglicare Australia on the program. Kasey Chambers from Anglicare took us through some of the figures that they’re looking at in terms of how Australians on JobSeeker payments, for example, are struggling to make ends meet. One of the figures that jumped out at me, a family of 4 with 2 parents living on payments can’t afford any essentials. They’re $17 short a week. How does that make you feel hearing that?
CHALMERS:
Well, first of all, I salute the work of Anglicare, the really important work they do in communities right around Australia and I think they are highlighting the sorts of pressures that families and people more broadly are under right around the country and this is the primary motivation for the substantial cost‑of‑living relief that we’re providing in the Budget, whether it’s the tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer, energy bill relief for every household, help with rent, help with student debt, cheaper medicines, plus the increases to JobSeeker which were in the Budget before last. All of these are important ways that we can not just understand and acknowledge the pressures that people are under but actually respond to them.
BRENNAN:
A lot of groups that support low income families feel like they’ve been speaking underwater for several years because they’ve been saying, even with Commonwealth Rent Assistance, these families are still short on getting food into the cupboard. Do you regret not looking at JobSeeker again this time at Budget time?
CHALMERS:
I think in every Budget you work out the best, most responsible way to provide that cost‑of‑living relief. In May of last year it was a permanent increase to JobSeeker combined with rent assistance. This Budget, another boost to rent assistance combined with cheaper medicines and energy bill relief and the recasting the tax cuts so that they provide a bigger benefit for people on low and middle incomes. In every single Budget you work out the best, most responsible way to help people. We understand people are under pressure and that’s why there is such substantial cost‑of‑living relief in the Budget delivered in more than one way.
BRENNAN:
Unemployment figures, we’re expecting those today, Treasurer. What sort of predictions are you expecting when we get these figures out?
CHALMERS:
We’ll see these numbers a bit later on today but the jobs market’s been a real source of strength in our economy. There’s already a record number of new jobs created under the life of a new government, 820,000 jobs created under this Albanese Labor government, that is a record for a first term government. Our jobs growth has been faster than any major advanced economy and so that is a real source of strength, but we have seen the labour market weakening in recent times. That’s inevitable when the economy is slowing as a consequence of these higher interest rates which are hammering consumption in our economy. So we’ll see what those numbers say but unemployment has been really quite remarkably low for a long time now – that’s a good thing. That’s one of the things that we have going for us in a pretty uncertain set of, more broadly, a pretty uncertain set of economic conditions.
BRENNAN:
Treasurer, you said you’re hopeful of what you called a soft landing for the economy given all the pressures that we’ve been under. If you’re an Australian family watching this morning, you’d be thinking, ‘when, when?’ Can you give us a timeline of when that’s going to happen for people under a lot of stress and strain right now?
CHALMERS:
Well, a soft landing in our economy is all about providing that cost‑of‑living relief to people doing it tough, fighting inflation and repairing the budget without smashing jobs and without smashing the economy and as Treasurer you get a lot of free advice about the budget. People think we should slash and burn in the Budget, other people think we shouldn’t be providing cost‑of‑living relief, we think we’ve struck a much better, much more responsible and considered balance between getting the budget in better nick, providing this cost‑of‑living help, fighting inflation, but doing it in a way which doesn’t smash an economy which is already soft and doesn’t do even more damage to household budgets which are already under significant financial pressure.
BRENNAN:
Let’s move to those Senate Committee recommendations about the PwC tax leak scandal and involving other recommendations surrounding consultancy groups as well. Is it your view that PwC should release the names of people that were involved in that scandal?
CHALMERS:
We’re working through the recommendations of that committee. I think the committee did some really important work. I salute my colleague, Deb O’Neill and other colleagues from the parliament, from all the parties in the parliament, trying to get to the bottom of what has happened here. The government is already cracking down when it comes to penalties and procurement and oversight. We’ve already legislated some important changes, we’re already winding down the use of contractors and consultants in the public service and building the capacity of the permanent public service instead but there’s more work to do, and that committee will help us do that work. We’re doing a heap of consultation right now because we want to get this right for the future and so we’ll consider that proposal, we’ll consider a whole range of proposals put forward by colleagues on that committee as part of this consultation that we’re doing because we can’t see what happened at PwC, we can’t see that happen again. We’ve got to make the system much better, much tighter. We’ve done a heap of work on that front but we acknowledge that there’s more to do as well.
BRENNAN:
Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, in her view, says PwC shouldn’t be allowed back in the building for nice multi‑million dollar contracts for another 5 years. Is that something you’d look at?
CHALMERS:
Oh, look, I take seriously the comments made by Senator Pocock. I saw her on 7.30 last night making those points. We take into consideration all of the things that are put forward to us but we’re already cracking down on procurement, penalties, as I said, oversight, we’ve got a bit more work to do and the committee will help us do that.
BRENNAN:
Treasurer, I know you’re a parent, you would have been distressed by that news yesterday that so many teenage girls were caught up in that awful AI deep fake shocking incident at the school in Melbourne at Bacchus Marsh. This morning some tech analysts are saying that the big tech giants should be more responsible for incidents like this in ensuring that apps that are available on their platforms aren’t able to be used by perpetrators. Is this something that you’re concerned about?
CHALMERS:
I think it’s absolutely terrifying to be blunt with you, not just as a parent, I think all Australians will see these kinds of developments and see them as worse than confronting, absolutely terrifying. And so we’ve all got to work together, the tech companies, governments at every level, parents and the broader Australian community. We can’t see these kinds of developments doing such damage to the mental health of our kids, the prospects of our kids. And so we’re doing a lot of work, my colleagues are doing a lot of work trialling things like age verification technology to make sure that we can tighten up where that’s possible to do so and we need to work with and we need the help of the big tech companies as we go about that really important work.
BRENNAN:
Jim Chalmers, thanks for your time this morning. Looks like a lovely morning in Sydney for you. Have a great day.
CHALMERS:
Appreciate it, Bridget. All the best.