KARL STEFANOVIC:
Well, all eyes are on the Reserve Bank after the United States cut rates for the first time in 4 years, sparking hopes Australia will follow. Let’s bring in Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. Treasurer, good morning to you, nice to see you. I get the feeling you won’t be holding your breath. Are you ready for round 2 with the Reserve Bank?
JIM CHALMERS:
Good morning, Karl. I think what we saw in the US overnight was pretty much expected. People were expecting a rate cut there. It’s really important to remember that rates went up by more in the US than they did in Australia and even after this interest rate cut overnight in the US, interest rates are still higher in the US than they are here.
When the Reserve Bank meets next week they will consider a whole range of things including that, but they’ll be primarily focused on inflation, as the government is. Inflation had a 6 in front of it when we came to office, it’s halved since its peak in that year that we were elected, but we need to see it come down a bit more, and we’ll get some new inflation figures in the middle of next week which will tell us a bit more about how we’re going.
STEFANOVIC:
Still a pretty dramatic turn in the US coming down by that much, and there are now fears of a recession in the US. The Reserve Bank here will be watching our unemployment figures out today. They seem to lack confidence in the effects of your spending still.
CHALMERS:
No, I don’t agree with that, Karl. It is true in the US that their jobs market’s been softening, and there are issues, there are concerns around a slowdown in the US. We’ve also got a slowdown in China and I’ll be there at the end of next week. The global economy is a pretty uncertain place, that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing these rate cuts in places like the US.
When it comes to the Australian situation, we’ve got inflation coming off pretty substantially, the Reserve Bank will weigh that up. The jobs market here in Australia has been pretty resilient. We’ve seen the unemployment rate come up a bit in the last year or so, we’ve seen job ads come off a bit, but we’ve seen around a million jobs created in our economy. We’ll get an update on that at 11.30 today, but in the context of a slowing economy and a softening labour market, creating a million jobs under this Albanese Labor government is a pretty remarkable feat, it’s a tribute to our people, their economy, employers and workers. No government has ever seen in one parliamentary term a million jobs created before, and so that would be a pretty remarkable thing and it’s all about our efforts to make sure that more people are working, earning more and keeping more of what they earn. We’re making progress on all 3 of those fronts and that’s a good thing.
STEFANOVIC:
It may mean rates don’t come down though. Look, let’s move on. A new report out has recommended making childcare free for lower income families. Is that a blow to your universal childcare policy, or is it an election pitch?
CHALMERS:
I think it’s a really important piece of work that we saw from the Productivity Commission, and they talked about how do we get closer to a universal system. They talk about making sure that everyone can access at least 3 days of early childhood education and they proposed some ways forward to go about that.
STEFANOVIC:
So are you [INAUDIBLE] ? –
CHALMERS:
We’ll look at it, yes, we’re working through it. Jason Clare, my colleague, and the rest of us are working through the recommendations but what we’ve been able to do so far as a government is we’ve invested billions of dollars in making early childhood education cheaper, we’re increasing pay for early childhood educators who need and deserve a pay rise and they’ll get one from us, and now we need to focus on the access and getting closer to universality. The PC’s given us some ideas on that front. We’ll go through it. We think early childhood education is a game changer for families and for the economy, we’re investing billions of dollars already, and we’ll look at the PC report to see what further steps we should be taking.
STEFANOVIC:
Sounds like the election pitch. Look, heightened tensions in the Middle East this morning after those sophisticated attacks on Hezbollah. Has the Australian Government got a problem with Hezbollah being taken out?
CHALMERS:
Well, first of all, I mean we’ve made it clear Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, it’s prescribed under the Australian regime. What we’re seeing in Lebanon is some quite remarkable scenes, and for us more broadly, from an Australian point of view, we are gravely concerned about the human consequences of an escalation of a much broader and wider regional conflict in the Middle East. We’re worried about the human consequences of that primarily, but the economic fallout as well, and it’s another reminder I think to Australians, do not travel to Lebanon. We’ve been saying that for some time now. Make sure you don’t go near Lebanon, it is a dangerous place for Australians to visit right now and we’re seeing that in some of this footage.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Finally, massive NRL news, Treasurer. PNG may become the 19th NRL team. It’s great news for PNG. They love their rugby league, but I’m pretty sure China doesn’t share that love.
CHALMERS:
The good people of PNG are absolutely mad about rugby league, and why wouldn’t they be, and we want to help them to be part of the NRL. That would be good for our region, good for the Pacific, good for PNG, good for footy as well.
We’ve seen in the Queensland comp here just how much people love watching the PNG team, and if we can make them part of the national competition as we are attempting to do, I think that would be a really good outcome.
STEFANOVIC:
What about a Chinese team?
CHALMERS:
Not on the horizon as far as I am aware, Karl. I think the PNG team is the next cab off the rank as far as I’m aware, and we’re doing our bit to make sure that that can happen.
STEFANOVIC:
All right. I get what you’re putting down. Treasurer, thank you.