Murray Watt:
Thanks very much for coming along today.
It’s terrific to join my Queensland colleague and good friend, Jim Chalmers, and of course, we’ve got some excellent news for Queensland today with the promotion of our colleague Anika Wells to the Cabinet. That’s a terrific development for Queensland.
We’re always glad to have more Queenslanders around the Cabinet table, standing up for Queensland, and we know that Anika has a very strong record in doing so already. So we welcome her to the cabinet ranks, and we continue to look forward to working with her.
We’re also joined today by a number of workers here at Brisbane Airport. These are the people who get the Brisbane Airport running, keep our airlines running, keep the traveling public moving, and they’re the people that we owe a great debt of thanks towards each and every day. Jim and I travel through this airport very often, and we see the terrific work that they do.
That’s why it’s so pleasing today that we saw new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics demonstrating that we continue to see very strong jobs growth in Australia. The figures that we’ve seen today show that in the month of December 2024, 56,300 new jobs were created in Australia, the bulk of them full‑time jobs.
And what that caps off is a very strong year of jobs growth in Australia for 2024. 444,400 new jobs created under the Albanese government in the year 2024 which is the second‑highest number of new jobs created in any calendar year in Australia’s history.
If you look over the period of the term that we’ve been in office, about 2 and a half years now, there have been more than 1.1 million new jobs created under the Albanese government, which is the most new jobs created in any single parliamentary term in Australian history. If you dig into that data a little bit more, there’s even greater stories and more interesting stories as well, a very big growth in the number of jobs being created for women, again, overwhelmingly full‑time jobs.
We’ve seen jobs created all around the country, good jobs growth among young people, and a much higher participation rate than what we’ve seen before in Australia as well.
So in short, what we’re seeing under the Albanese government is jobs up, wages up, all while we are bringing down inflation month on month.
We recognise that we still have work to do, particularly on the inflation front. But as Jim will be able to tell you in greater detail, what we’ve seen in inflation is now headline inflation at the bottom of the RBA target band, and, of course, big reductions also in underlying inflation.
So we’ve been able to do both, create jobs, lift wages, while also bringing inflation down. And that’s a good thing for the workers behind us today and workers all around Australia.
It stands in very stark contrast to what we see from Peter Dutton and the Coalition, who always kept wages low when they were in office, who have opposed every single change we’ve made to workplace laws while we’ve been in government and have delivered those wage rises in jobs growth, and are already on the record saying that if they win the next election, they will cut wages by unwinding a number of the changes we’ve made to workplace laws.
The simple fact is that Peter Dutton and the Coalition are a massive risk to the workers standing behind us today, and to the wage and pay packets of every Australian worker.
I’ll hand over to Jim now and then we’re happy to take questions.
Jim Chalmers:
Thanks very much, Murray.
Can I just add to Murray’s kind words about our colleague Anika Wells. It’s terrific to see Anika join the Albanese cabinet.
You can never have too many Queenslanders, and it’s going to be terrific to welcome her to the ranks of the cabinet, along with Murray and me.
Queenslanders don’t have a lot of Federal Labor MPs and senators, but we do have a big voice in the Albanese government, from the Prime Minister right down, but especially now that we’ll have 4 ministers – 3 of them in the cabinet, plus the speaker – of course, and then one of the best local members anywhere in Australia in Shayne Neumann.
It’s a very handy team, and we’re very pleased that Anika will be joining us. Anika has been an absolutely extraordinary minister. She really deserves this elevation into the cabinet. It means more Queenslanders in the cabinet. It means more women in the cabinet as well. Both of those things are very good developments.
We’re very pleased for Anika, and we’re very grateful to the Prime Minister for giving Anika this promotion that she really deserves after a really quite extraordinary record of achievement in her first couple of years as a minister.
We’re here, of course, to talk about the jobs number and what it means for the economy.
More broadly – inflation is down, wages are up, unemployment is very low and 1.1 million jobs have been created under the Albanese Labor government.
These are remarkable numbers in an economy where growth has been particularly soft.
Unemployment at 4.0 per cent, record participation, 1.1 million jobs created, as Murray said, hundreds of thousands of jobs created in the market sector. Most of the jobs since we were elected have been full‑time jobs. These are stunning numbers when it comes to an economy where growth has not been thick on the ground, and with all of the challenges which are coming at us from around the world, we’ve been able to maintain these stunning gains that have been made in the labour market under this Albanese Labor government.
We’ve shown we can deliver lower inflation and lower unemployment, not lower inflation or low unemployment.
If you look around the world, a lot of other countries have paid for progress on inflation with either recessions or negative quarters of growth or much higher unemployment.
What we’ve been able to do in Australia is to deliver inflation coming down, wages going up, and very low unemployment. And that’s what a soft landing looks like in our economy. This is the soft landing that we are seeking, that we are delivering.
This is a deliberate outcome of our suite of policies to see inflation to come down in a substantial and a sustained way, to see wages growing sustainably as well, at the same time as we create 1.1 million jobs and deliver unemployment at 4 per cent now.
Murray gave you a set of numbers before, I just wanted to add 2 more to that.
Average unemployment under the Albanese Labor government is lower than any other government of the last 50 years.
It’s the lowest unemployment rate on average over the course of our government compared with any other government in the last 50 years, and also the lowest in a parliamentary term compared to any other single parliamentary term in that 50 years.
It’s also the first time in 50 years that Australia has had unemployment at 4 per cent or better at the same time as we’ve had inflation lower than 3 per cent.
So these are remarkable numbers when it comes to the progress that we have made together in the economy.
We’ve shown that we can make substantial and sustained progress on inflation while creating jobs, not sacrificing jobs, and not every country has been able to deliver that. So low unemployment is a very good thing in our economy. It hasn’t come at the expense of getting inflation down. We’ve been able to do both of those things at the same time to get inflation down and wages up and low unemployment at the same time.
As Murray also said a moment ago, the biggest risk to household budgets and to the economy more broadly is Peter Dutton and the Coalition. We know they’re a risk because we know their record. We know Peter Dutton came after Medicare when he was the Health Minister. We know Coalition governments pushed down wages. We know that the coalition didn’t support our cost‑of‑living help, and we know that they would push up electricity bills with this nuclear insanity that they are pushing.
The biggest risk to household budgets, to the labour market, to the economy more broadly, is Peter Dutton and the Coalition. We know that because we know that record.
Now I just wanted to touch on 2 things very briefly that I’ve been asked to cover off on. Then, obviously, Murray is happy to take all of your difficult questions.
The first one is when it comes to the Bruce Highway, the Bruce Highway is all about connecting communities and families and local economies here in Queensland, and making that really important stretch of highway safer so that we can get the fatality rate down on that important stretch of road.
I want to make it really clear that money for the Bruce Highway, new money for the Bruce Highway, will flow this year, from 2025 to 2032.
The vast bulk of the billions of dollars we’re investing in backing the Bruce was in the mid‑year Budget update, but we had some more deliberations to do, and so we will update those numbers in the budget when the Budget rolls around.
But we want to be really clear that the money begins to flow this year. We know how pressing that need is. We know that those billions of dollars are necessary to make the Bruce safer but also connect people and families and communities and local economies here in Queensland, and so the money will begin in 2025.
The last thing briefly is to touch on the very important developments in the Middle East overnight.
We welcome the ceasefire and we welcome the release of hostages.
Too many innocent lives have been lost. Too many families have been destroyed by this senseless bloodshed over the course of the last 15 months or so.
We want to make sure that the parties to this agreement stick to the agreement – that the terms of the agreement are adhered to – because what we really want to see here is to make sure that peace in the Middle East is lasting and not fleeting. That’s why the developments overnight are so welcome, so encouraging and so important.
Happy to take your questions.
Journalist:
Treasurer, do you accept the view of the RBA and Treasury that unemployment needs to be higher to maintain low inflation?
Chalmers:
What Australia has shown is we can get inflation down in a really substantial and sustained way at the same time as we maintain the gains that we’ve made in the labour market. Not every country has been able to achieve what Australia has been able to achieve. I pay tribute to the workers of this country, the employers of this country, for what we’ve been able to achieve together.
A lot of countries around the world, as they try and get on top of this inflation challenge that we all share, they haven’t been able to preserve the kind of levels of low unemployment that we have. Unemployment is higher in Canada, New Zealand, the US, the UK, the rest of Europe, we see higher unemployment in those places. They’ve paid for progress on inflation with much higher unemployment, we’ve been able to avoid that, we’ve been able to do better than that. You can see that in the data, not just today’s data, but the numbers we’ve been receiving for some time have been really welcome and really encouraging.
In the monthly data we’ve now had 4 months in a row where inflation has been in the RBA’s target band, 3 months in a row where it’s been in the bottom half of that. We’ve got quarterly inflation within the target band, underlying inflation has been coming down as well. And we’ve been able to do that at the same time as we’ve got unemployment at 4 per cent, record participation, 1.1 million jobs.
That’s the soft landing that we’re looking for in the economy, and that’s the soft landing that we’re delivering.
Journalist:
Do you think the NAIRU should be estimated to be around 4 per cent rather than 4.5 per cent [inaudible].
Chalmers:
There are a range of contested views about what full employment looks like in our economy, we recognise that. There have been a lot of contributions recently from private economists and academic economists – Jeff Borland, ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank, and their view is that full employment is much lower than we have been thinking about it traditionally. The Treasury uses 4 and a quarter per cent in their forecast. The Reserve Bank uses a higher number. So it’s a contested concept, what full employment looks like in our economy.
But if you look at the data and you look at what has been delivered in our economy, we see that we’ve had unemployment in the high threes and in the low fours for some time now, at the same time as inflation has come from its peak, almost 8 per cent, down to within the Reserve Bank’s target band.
What that tells us is that we can make this very substantial, very sustained progress on inflation at the same time as we maintain very low unemployment. That’s what we’re looking for.
The trifecta that we are delivering is inflation down and wages up and unemployment low, and that’s why today’s numbers are so encouraging.
Journalist:
It’s Peter Dutton’s view, he says under a Coalition government there already would have been a rate cut. What do you make of that?
Chalmers:
It’s ridiculous because when Peter Dutton and the Coalition were in office, inflation had a 6 in front of it and was rising, interest rates had already started rising, real wages, incomes, living standards were all falling substantially.
We know that people are still under pressure, but we’ve made some really welcome and encouraging progress since we took office. Inflation has more than halved, real wages, per capita incomes, living standards are all growing again.
We’ve kept the economy ticking over when a lot of other countries have either gone into recession or had a negative quarter of growth.
We’ve given every taxpayer a tax cut, electricity bill relief for every household, 2 surpluses, we’ve got the debt down.
When Peter Dutton makes commentary about the economy, people shouldn’t forget the mess that they left us to clean up, and much more importantly than that they shouldn’t forget Australians will be much worse off under Peter Dutton.
We know that because we know about his GP tax when he was Health Minister. We know that lower wages are a deliberate design feature of their economic policy, Mathias Cormann has said that in the past. We know they didn’t support our cost‑of‑living help. We know that nuclear is the most expensive form of new energy, so would push electricity bills up. We know that they didn’t support the industrial relations changes which are helping to deliver the wage outcomes and labour market outcomes that we want to see.
Peter Dutton doesn’t have any credibility whatsoever when it comes to the economy. We know his record, and we know that he would make people worse off.
Journalist:
How big of a policy platform is this going to be in the forthcoming election? Jobs, unemployment, and do you think it’ll resonate with voters at the ballot box?
Chalmers:
Labor’s achievements on wages, on inflation and on jobs will be absolutely central to our pitch to the Australian people. And the contrast with Peter Dutton, who would make people worse off.
Getting inflation down and getting wages up, keeping unemployment low and creating new jobs right around our economy is really Labor’s reason for being, and so it will be absolutely central.
One of the reasons why the Prime Minister put Murray in the portfolio he is in is because it shows how important this is, not just for the election, but more important than that, to the economy and people’s living standards. The best way you can help people deal with cost‑of‑living pressure is to make sure that they can earn enough to provide for their loved ones.
We are all about making sure that more people are working, earning more and keeping more of what they earn. The other guys want people working longer for less and retiring with less super as well. And so that will be a really important part of the choice that we’ll be asking the Australian people to make when the election rolls around later this year.
Journalist:
We’ve heard 350 more jobs are going out of mine in Whyalla in South Australia, and the viability of the steelworks in that town depends on the mine. Does the federal government need to intervene to secure the future of the operation?
Watt:
I have seen those reports about those impending job losses in Whyalla, and of course, our hearts go out to all of those workers who are in danger of losing their jobs. It’s never a good day in Australia when someone loses their job, and that’s why we’ve worked so hard to create more jobs at the same time as bringing inflation down and lifting wages.
We will inevitably be working with the South Australian Government and the local community around these job losses – it’s a relatively large number for a community of that size. But what we’re also doing in towns like Whyalla is investing in their future. This is exactly what Labor’s Future Made in Australia agenda is all about; lifting manufacturing and rebuilding manufacturing and jobs in towns like Whyalla.
I was just in Gladstone yesterday in central Queensland. It’s another town that’s built on heavy industry, just like Whyalla is, and the future for those towns is going to be much stronger under a Labor government that believes in manufacturing, that wants to do more onshore manufacturing and is prepared to invest in it.
And again, that’s a really stark contrast with Peter Dutton and the Coalition, who have said they will oppose our Future Made in Australia agenda – the sort of tax concessions that Jim and colleagues have worked so hard to deliver.
So unfortunately, we’re likely to see a lot more of these kind of job losses in communities like Whyalla if we see Peter Dutton walking away from manufacturing just like he did previously when they shut down our car industry.
Journalist:
Minister, what do you make of comments from Coalition MPs allowing workers to voluntarily reduce their super guarantees?
Watt:
I thought this was another astonishing statement by Coalition MPs that shows, firstly, how much they want to attack superannuation, but also shows how keen they are to cut wages.
We’ve seen in the last couple of days, Coalition MPs like Matt Canavan and others say that in order to get a pay rise, workers should have to give up their superannuation. What sort of an outrageous statement is that to the kind of workers behind us who are saying they should have to beg for a pay rise, they should have to raid their own retirement to get a pay rise, when actually all the Coalition needs to do is to support the changes that we’re making that are delivering pay rises to employees?!
I guess this is an insight into the kind of future that workers in Australia would have under a Dutton government, that every attempt would be made to cut their wages, unwind the changes we’ve made to workplace laws that are delivering wage rises and raid people’s retirement at the same time. It just shows that the Coalition only wants to take us backwards and wants to take workers backwards with them.
Journalist:
I’ve got a more local question for Queensland, law and order is still a significant issue here – we saw a stabbing in Ipswich the other day. The people of Queensland voted out the Labor government last year, and law and order was a significant issue. Do you see similar circumstances for federal Labor ahead of the federal election?
Watt:
There’s no doubt that issues around law and order played a very big role in the Queensland election result. That’s a matter of record, and I think all of us at all levels of government have got a responsibility to do what we can to reduce crime and to keep Queenslanders safe. Queenslanders have a right to feel safe in their own homes, in their shopping centres, in public places.
Now, of course, David Crisafulli as the new Premier here has introduced laws that he has said will bring down youth crime. We will obviously watch with interest to see the outcome of those laws and to see whether it delivers on the promises that he has made, but clearly our government will work cooperatively with the state government to bring crime down.
Journalist:
Is the federal government intending to intervene in the New South Wales rail dispute?
Watt:
We’ve obviously been following the New South Wales rail dispute with a high degree of interest.
First of all, what I want to say is that I completely acknowledge the frustration of Sydney commuters with this ongoing dispute and the disruption to the traveling public. I know that if I was in Sydney, I’d be feeling pretty pissed off with the kind of disruption that we’re seeing, and I think that Sydney commuters want to see this dispute resolved.
Now I, and I know the Prime Minister as well, are urging both parties – the New South Wales government and the unions concerned – to sort this out as quickly as possible. We’re urging the parties involved to urgently resolve this dispute so that people can get back to their normal lives. The Fair Work Commission at a federal level is available to assist with the parties to resolve this dispute, and I’ve seen this morning that the premier of New South Wales is making an application to the Fair Work Commission, so we will watch that application with interest.