SARAH HARRIS:
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is here to tell us all about it. Treasurer, good to see you. The Budget is out of the way. Were there any cigars last night?
JIM CHALMERS:
There were not. There were a couple of Red Bulls consumed at one point, but no cigars.
HARRIS:
Hope they were sugar‑free! Hey listen, we’ve got to start with this energy rebate first. 300 bucks – it won’t be means‑tested. Why are we giving rebates to billionaires?
CHALMERS:
Well, they’re obviously not the primary focus or the primary concern of what we’re doing here. We’re trying to provide cost‑of‑living relief to people who are under pressure throughout middle Australia. The way that this energy rebate is provided is via the energy retailers. They don’t have information about people’s incomes. So, rather than design a completely new system to provide this help, the most efficient way to do it was to do it broadly.
WALEED ALY:
So is that to say that it was just logistically too difficult or something to make this targeted?
CHALMERS:
That’s a big part of it, Waleed. So, as it stands right now, the energy retailers, they have information if you are on a payment or a pension, but they don’t have information about your level of income. And there’s not the arrangements for the Australian Tax Office to share that information with the retailers. That would require a whole bunch of effort and it would take a lot of time.
ALY:
Ok but, as I understand, from everything I’ve read today, the energy rebate will be more or less automatic, so you don’t have to do anything – it’ll just come off your bill in quarterly instalments. This makes me worry, I have to confess, Treasurer, because what we know about government rebates of that kind is that the savings don’t really go in full to the people who need it – what happens is that the energy retailers, or whoever it is, takes that money, they put up their prices, and so actually you just get this inflationary effect without the relief that you’re after. Have you got a way of preventing that from happening?
CHALMERS:
Well, it’s just not right, Waleed. And the reason we know that that’s not right, that view that you’ve just put, is because we’ve provided energy bill relief in the last Budget, and what we saw from the Australian Bureau of Stats is, instead of people’s energy bills going up by an average of 15 per cent in the year to March just gone, they went up 2 per cent, and that shows what we’re trying to achieve here.
ALY:
So just to be clear there – is there anything stopping the energy retailers from doing that?
CHALMERS:
Well, the ACCC, partly, but also the fact that we separate and identify the government rebate on the bill. We’ve obviously looked at what happened when we did this in the last Budget, and it was really encouraging. It gives us a lot of confidence that what we’re able to do by providing this relief this way puts downward pressure on inflation, by putting downward pressure on people’s bills.
HARRIS:
Treasurer, some very unkind commentators have suggested that perhaps rebates for everyone is a way of buying votes. Is that what you’re doing here?
CHALMERS:
No of course not. What we’re doing here is trying to recognise that people are under pressure. The Budget was about recognising and dealing with that in a substantial way, but also in a responsible way.
HARRIS:
A vote would cost more than 300 bucks anyway, wouldn’t it?
NICK CODY:
Not for me.
HARRIS:
You’ve got one, you’ve got Nick.
CODY:
$25 and I’m yours Jim.
ALY:
Jim, you’ve just wasted $275 mate, this is wastage in the Budget. There is, of course, quite a lot of spending in this Budget, and there’s been a lot of talk about the surplus, but there are deficits across the forward estimates. So, this is a big‑spending Budget any way you cut it.
$3.5 billion pumped back into households with electricity rebate. We spoke about $107 billion over the next 4 years with the stage 3 tax cuts, which have been debated endlessly. Some economists have come out today. I can name them if you really want to, but have spoken about how this is responsible from an inflationary point of view, because it really, bottom line, any way you cut it, is pumping money into the system in a way that will cause inflation. Do you at least concede that there is an inflationary aspect to this Budget?
CHALMERS:
No, I don’t. And that’s not the advice of the Commonwealth Treasury, whose advice that we rely on pretty heavily. It’s pretty clear the way we’ve designed our cost‑of‑living policies are putting downward pressure on inflation. They’re not adding inflationary pressures elsewhere in the economy in their estimation, and we’re actually running a pretty tight ship when it comes to the budget. I know that there’s a range of views about that, I accept that. But what we’ve shown over the 2 years that we’ve been in office is we’ve got the debt way down, we’ve got the deficits down, we’ve turned 2 Liberal deficits into 2 Labor surpluses, and that means that we’re getting the budget in much better nick. Not as an end in itself, but so that we can make room to fund some of our priorities, like cost‑of‑living help or investing in the future of our economy.
GEORGIE TUNNY:
Treasurer, you do seem to think there’s going to be a little bit of room, perhaps, for a rate cut before Christmas. But if rates don’t go down, or even worse, if they have to go up again, will you have failed?
CHALMERS:
My job is not to make decisions about interest rates, that’s done independently by the Reserve Bank. But I take responsibility for my part of all of this, which is to put together Budgets, which are part of the solution to this high inflation that we’ve had, rather than part of the problem. And I’m really confident that the Budget that we handed down last night will put downward pressure on inflation. You can see that in the Treasury forecasts. I leave decisions about interest rates to the independent Reserve Bank Governor and her board. That’s appropriate. That’s what treasurers do. I take responsibility for my part of it, for doing my job. And I really feel that the Budget that we handed down last night will help the Reserve Bank Governor get on top of this inflation challenge rather than hinder it.
CODY:
Treasurer, before we let you go, we saw Albo left your speech early. Did you go on a bit long, or was there an after‑party he was trying to get to?
CHALMERS:
I probably went on a bit long if I’m honest. I’m a glass‑half‑full kind of guy. I think it was cool that he was there at the beginning. Rather than focus on whether he was there at the end.
HARRIS:
You’ve had a huge 24 hours. We really appreciate your time, Treasurer, thanks for coming on.
CHALMERS:
I appreciate your time, guys. All the best.