Interview with Sarah Ferguson, 7.30, ABC

Subjects: Labor National Conference, One Nation, jobs figures, economy, tax Sarah Ferguson: Now, from the conference floor in Adelaide, Treasurer, welcome. Jim Chalmers: Thanks very much, Sarah. Now, both the Prime Minister and you attacked One Nation today as a single entity with the Coalition.

Isn’t One Nation equally a threat to Labor’s base? Well, the point that we were making is whether it’s the Liberal Party, One Nation or the National Party, they’ve all got a divisive anti‑worker agenda which would make the pressures that people are under right now worse rather than better. I didn’t dwell on that in my speech.

My speech was overwhelmingly about making sure that the economy can work for more Australians by delivering that real and meaningful change in the face of accelerating change in our community and in our economy and in the face of those intensifying global and generational pressures. Now, obviously in a conference like this, we recognise that politics right now around the world, including in Australia, is pretty volatile.

And overwhelmingly our focus is not on preying on the anxieties that people feel right now about all of this change, but actually addressing the root causes of people’s feelings of disconnection or being disregarded. That’s more important to us than any of the political analysis. You say you didn’t dwell, but there was plenty of dwelling on One Nation today.

Many of those voters who have moved to One Nation, especially this year, are doing so after seeing their real wages go backwards. Can you stem voter anger if you can’t lift real wages? I think that is a reflection of the very substantial economic challenges that we face here in Australia.

And indeed, in economies like ours right around the world, we do have our fair share of challenges, both domestic and global. They are intensified by a war on the other side of the world, the end of which can’t come soon enough. So, we recognise those pressures.

Inflation is higher than we want it to be. We have had decent wages growth, we have had real wages growth in 8 of the last 10 quarters, but we know that people are doing it tough. And in the Prime Minister’s speech and in my own speech, we recognised the legitimate pressures that people are under but more than recognise them and acknowledge them, we’re actually acting to do something about it.

Helping with the cost of living, getting the budget in better condition, cutting taxes, dealing with these longstanding issues in the housing market which have locked young people out for too long. So in addition to acknowledging these pressures that people are under, we’re actually acting on them. The point that we made briefly today was our political opponents, they seek to prey on those pressures and those anxieties that people feel at the same time as their anti‑worker agenda would make things worse rather than better.

You say out of the 10 quarters, but you don’t say that wages, real wages have been going backwards since December and will continue to do so for the rest of this year. This is not an entirely external problem. Just coming back to this idea, you can’t expect One Nation just to implode.

What is your specific plan to address the issue with real wages going backwards now? Well, the reason I made that point, Sarah, was to acknowledge that inflation is higher than anybody wants it to be right now, part of that is a consequence of a war in the Middle East, but we’ve had these inflationary pressures in our economy and that’s part of the real wages challenge that we’ve got now.

When we came to office, real wages were falling very sharply, they’ve risen in 8 of the last 10 quarters. You’re quite right to point out that higher inflation right now puts those real wages at risk and so, our plan is to get wages moving again. We’ve actually had wages growth higher than 3 per cent in every quarter we’ve been in office.

I don’t think it was higher than 3 per cent under our predecessors. We’ve supported increases to the minimum wage; we’ve made sure that there are wage rises in the care economy; same job, same pay. We’ve done a whole range of things to boost wages in our economy because, deliberately, we believe that one of the best ways to help with these cost‑of‑living pressures is to make sure that people are paid decent wages.

That’s been our reason for being for more than 100 years, and it’s our reason for being now, to make sure people earn more and keep more of what they earn, that’s why we’re cutting taxes 5 times in 3 different ways. All of this is about recognising the big pressure on incomes here and around the world, not just acknowledging that but doing something about it.

Of course, Australia is an outlier in its inflation numbers. But I want to move to some of the things that Bill Kelty said, obviously a Labor luminary, many, many important moments at many Labor conferences in the past. He said Australia’s malaise is productivity has fallen, investment is too low, our growth is non‑existent, taxes are increasing, expenditure, government expenditure is increasing.

At the apex of that productivity crisis is a crisis of productivity in construction. Can you solve the crisis in Australia if you don’t solve the worker shortage and lower the cost of construction? There’s a lot of issues in those questions, Sarah.

I begin by saying I respect Bill and I respect you, but when you’re referencing the economic conditions in Australia, both yourself and Bill, you’ve got to make the full comparison with the rest of the world. We’ve also got extremely low unemployment, we’ve got very good unemployment figures today – another 76,000 jobs created, 1.3 million on our watch, 5 out of every 6 of them in the private sector, most of them full‑time.

And so, we do have a lot going for us as well, even at the same time as we’ve got a lot coming at us in our economy. Now, the productivity challenge has not just been acknowledged by me in the last couple of days, but indeed over our time in office. This is a challenge the Australian economy has had for decades now, and if there was an easy way to turn it around quickly, somebody would have done that already.

You need to act on a range of fronts simultaneously, that’s what we’re doing. There hasn’t been a budget more focused on productivity in the last quarter of a century or more than the Budget that Katy Gallagher and I handed down in May. Now, when it comes to construction, obviously, when we are looking to build more houses, to get housing supply into a much better place.

Obviously we need to train more workers, that’s why it’s so important we’ve got the incentives for apprentices, we’ve got the free TAFE, we’re making sure that we are boosting wages where we can. We do need to attract more people into that really important industry, and that’s what we are attempting to do. Let’s move on to the issue of taxing resources.

This new language, as Jacob Greber just referred to in Labor’s National Platform on resource taxing. You’ve been pushing this for a while. Do you feel vindicated to have that language sitting there?

I think that language in the platform reflected the balance that we have been seeking to strike. I reformed the PRRT to make sure that Australians got a bigger return sooner for offshore gas. I acknowledge that there are people around the country – including people in our movement – who would like us to go further but we did take some important steps in that regard to get a fairer return when it comes to the taxation of our natural resources.

But we’ve also made it clear, and the platform recognises this too, that we’re very conscious of our reputation as a reliable supplier. We need to make sure that we are conscious of those international partnerships, particularly at a time when fuel security is at a premium, and also at a time when we’re working very hard to put a gas reservation in place and that’s a huge change, a very, very important change, to reserve more Australian gas for Australians and for Australian industry.

And so, the reason why a gas tax has not been on our agenda is because we’ve got other priorities. Whether it’s the reservation, the PRRT changes I’ve already made, or making sure that we are a reliable international supplier, that’s the government’s focus. At the same time, the health of the budget in the future depends on these very ambitious NDIS changes.

You must be glad to have the potential of introducing more tax on gas exports sort of in your back pocket if those NDIS changes don’t come to fruition and secure the budget as you have predicted they will. Look, I don’t see it the way that you’ve described it. You’re right to acknowledge, Sarah, that there has been substantial budget repair, including when it comes to the future of the NDIS, making sure that it is sustainable and can deliver for people who rely on it.

That is a big part of our reform of the budget. It is one of the reasons why the budget is in much better condition than what we inherited from our predecessors. We’ve got debt down a couple of hundred billion dollars now from that trajectory we were on 4 years ago, we’ve delivered a couple of surpluses and smaller deficits, the NDIS is an important part of that, but not the only part of that.

We know that there’s more work to do and we will continue to look for savings, we’ll continue to look for ways to reprioritise spending into the areas that are most important to us, areas like cutting taxes, strengthening Medicare and this long record that we have now, after 4 years of delivering that real and meaningful and positive change. And just a yes or no on this, you obviously went to Labor conferences when you were a young fellow in the party.

Which was more fun, that version or this version? This version. Because we’re doing stuff, we’re in government, and it’s the privilege of a lifetime to be Treasurer in an Albanese Labor government.

To come to a conference like this, have people who are looking for ways to make the economy work for more Australians. The reason I got involved in this movement, the reason I joined this party as a teenager, was because I wanted the opportunity to make a meaningful difference. And that’s what this is all about, that’s what our platform is all about as well and so being here as a Labor Treasurer is a really special thing.

Jim Chalmers, thank you very much indeed for your time. Thanks, Sarah.