Bridget Brennan:
Hello Treasurer and welcome back to News Breakfast.
Jim Chalmers:
Thanks very much, Bridget.
Brennan:
Tell us about your biggest challenge as you enter a second term as Treasurer.
Chalmers:
I’m very grateful to the Prime Minister for asking me to serve again as Australia’s Treasurer and my immediate focus is all of this global economic uncertainty but also over the medium term and longer term trying to make our economy more productive as well.
We’ve got a lot of work to do. Australians have made a lot of progress together in our economy over the course of the last 3 years but there’s lots more work to do because people are under pressure, the global environment is uncertain, our economy’s not productive enough. And so that will be the focus not just of me but this wonderful new economic team that the Prime Minister has appointed, and indeed the whole Cabinet and the whole government.
Brennan:
We’ll just let you get your earpiece set. Look, you’ve got a number of reports coming to you this year in terms of recommendations on how to boost productivity. What are some things you can do immediately to start getting to work on productivity?
Chalmers:
We’ve already got a big productivity agenda. Our agenda around skills and training and human capital is all about making our economy more productive and making sure there are more opportunities for more people. We’ve got an agenda when it comes to abolishing non‑compete clauses, a national regime for occupational licensing, the energy transformation, infrastructure investment.
We’ve got a big agenda already for productivity, but there’s a real enthusiasm to do more and some of that work of the Productivity Commission will help us consider the next steps as well. There’s no switch that you can flick to instantly make an economy like ours – a complex economy – more productive overnight. It will take time, but we’ve already started, and we’ve got more work to do as well. And there’s a real difference here I think between the way that we’ve thought about productivity.
Traditionally, the way our political opponents think about productivity in quite a narrow way, making people work longer and harder for less, versus the Labor way of making our economy more productive, which is investing in people, their ability to adapt and adopt technology, getting the energy transformation right, the care economy, our competition policy to make our economy more dynamic – all of this is part of our productivity agenda and I’m really looking forward to advancing that agenda through the course of this Parliamentary term.
Brennan:
You would have been watching closely overnight as the US and China hit pause at least temporarily on high tariffs against either nation. What opportunity is there for Australia in this news, is this a positive development at least in the short‑term?
Chalmers:
Oh, it’s a very positive development, a very welcome development, but we shouldn’t pretend that all of the issues in these trade tensions around the world have been resolved with this decision. There’s still a lot of uncertainty, a lot of volatility, a lot of unpredictability in the global economy but this is a welcome development.
Now when it comes to Australia’s exposure to these trade tensions around the world, really the biggest concern for us is a trade war between the US and China, and what that means then for our own economy. So like the rest of the world, we welcome this announcement. But it’s tempered a little bit by the understanding, the realisation that there’s still a lot of uncertainty which is playing out in our own domestic economies around the world.
Brennan:
Today we’ll see that full reshuffled Cabinet sworn in. Was it a bit unedifying to see the factional war play out in the first week after you got that massive mandate? What sort of a taste do you think it left in voters’ mouths and minds when they saw 2 quite senior Cabinet ministers pushed aside by the factions?
Chalmers:
I do think it was unfortunate, and I think it was messy, I think that’s self‑evident. This is what happens when you’ve got more good people than you can fit into a Cabinet or a ministry or the broader ranks.
I feel for those 2 guys in particular, and nobody really wants to see people left out in that fashion but this is what happens when we’ve got so many good people that we’ve got to fit into this Cabinet. We’ve got to strike the right balance between experience and new energy, new faces. We’ve more or less struck an effective balance there. So at a human level I feel for Ed and Mark and in the government, I think it reflects the strength that we have in personnel.
Brennan:
Just on Mr Dreyfus particularly before we let you go, obviously we’ve heard what Ed Husic has had to say, we haven’t yet heard from Mr Dreyfus. Do you think he was treated with dignity?
Chalmers:
I’m reluctant to go much further than I have already, Bridget. I appreciate the opportunity to say that both of those guys are good people, and like a lot of people in our team, they made a good contribution last term. No doubt this was a difficult decision for the party room to take. Beyond that, I don’t want to engage in a running commentary about that. I feel for those 2 guys today – and it will be a hard day for them today to see ministers sworn in.
My focus today is on the really quite extraordinarily strong team that the Prime Minister has put together being sworn in at Government House and I’m especially grateful to him for the team that he’s appointed to the Treasury portfolio with all of this intellectual horsepower and talent and energy – Daniel Mulino, Andrew Leigh, Clare O’Neil, Anne Aly – these are really quite extraordinary people appointed and being sworn in today to the Treasury portfolio and I’m looking forward to working with them – that’s my focus.
Brennan:
All right, thanks for your time, Treasurer, and best wishes for today.
Chalmers:
Thank you.