Interview with Andrew Clennell, Afternoon Agenda, Sky News
Subjects: ALP National Conference, One Nation, jobs figures, housing, tax Andrew Clennell: Jim Chalmers, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. So, much of that speech by the PM was about One Nation. Do you acknowledge they are more of a threat than the Liberal Party at the moment?
Jim Chalmers: Well, first of all, the speech was about delivering real change, making the economy work for everyone in the face of accelerating change and intensifying global and generational pressures. The point that we make about all of the parties that are in this contest, whether it’s the Coalition, One Nation, Liberals and the National Party, all of them would make our economic challenges worse, not better.
All of them would exacerbate, not address the legitimate anxieties that people feel about our economy and about the future. And so the Prime Minister touched on that and he’s made it clear, and I made it clear in my speech that really, Labor is the only mainstream party taking these economic challenges seriously. But if I told you at the last, I interviewed you briefly at the last conference in ‘23 in Brisbane, if I told you then, you know, there’d be large sections of the speech about Pauline Hanson and One Nation, you would have thought I was crazy.
I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s quite something that’s developed. Yeah, politics is volatile. It’s volatile in Australia and around the world.
We are seeing people looking at other political alternatives. But one of the reasons why this Labor Party was formed, one of the reasons why it has endured, is that we deal with people’s legitimate concerns and anxieties in the economy and in our society in a methodical way and in a mainstream way. You can’t say that about the other party.
And while it is true that the polls have been especially volatile, it is equally true that the alternatives to Labor are chasing their tail on, and when it comes to some of these big challenges around wages and paid parental leave and all the rest of it, as the Prime Minister said, they would make our challenges worse, not better. Why do you think people are turning to One Nation?
Well, I think there is a legitimate concern about where people fit in this accelerating change and these intensifying pressures and one of the reasons why the government is so squarely focused on the cost of living, for example, is because we don’t lightly dismiss or diminish the concerns that people express to us or the pressures that they are under. Some of these pressures have been intensifying, a combination of global generational issues playing out in our economy and our society.
And so once you acknowledge that, you’ve got 2 choices. Our political opponents, they try and exacerbate that, they try and capitalise on it. Politically, we’ve taken a different path, which is to not dismiss or diminish those real concerns, but to try and address them with help with the cost of living, with tax cuts and with our economic agenda.
Do you think the immigration numbers and the Bondi terror attacks really sort of fast‑tracked it, though, that support? Obviously, that has fed, I think, a sense of disconnection in our society that has been building for some time. Once again, whether it’s our economy or our society, there are very real risks at play here.
In our economy, there are very real risks coming at us, for example, from a war on the other side of the world. In our society, there is the risk of division and divisiveness. And once again, our opponents, they just want to pick at that and prey on that, whereas we want to try and bring people together.
One of the ways that we do that is to recognise the pressures that people are under and to try and address them. Was the threat posed by One Nation politically part of the consideration when it came to your tax changes in the budget? I wouldn’t say we saw it through those partisan terms, certainly recognising that the status quo in our economy for a lot of people is not working and I think ground zero for that is the housing market.
For too long now, too many generations have been locked out of housing and once you recognise that, once again you’ve got choices to make, whether you leave things exactly as they are, knowing that they’re not working for people, or whether you take political risks to try and reform and change that broken status quo. And when you do that, it’s contested, it’s contentious.
People have views about that. That’s a healthy thing in a democracy like ours but our changes are really important because they do address some of the concerns that people have, generational concerns and concerns about the future. I mean, do you attribute property prices falling in some areas by as much as 10 per cent at all to those tax changes because you’ve probably got less investors looking to buy?
Well, a couple of things about that. First of all, house prices have gone backwards a number of times in the last decade or so, and in this instance we saw house prices and auction clearance rates softening already before the budget as a consequence of interest rate changes and some other pressures. The best way to look at the housing market is the same way that the Australian people do, which is to take a longer‑term view.
We expect house prices to continue to grow, but a bit more slowly. We expect first homebuyers to get a better chance, a fairer crack when it comes to a housing market that they’ve been locked out of for too long. But do you think the tax changes have had.
Would you admit they’ve had something of an effect in there? We have heard, for example, when it comes to auctions, that first home buyers are more likely now to get a fair crack at auctions. We’ve heard that anecdotally.
We won’t know until after we get a series of data over time. Housing is a long‑term investment. People don’t make investments in housing from week to week or fortnight to fortnight.
The figures do bounce around a little bit. They have been softening since before the budget for a whole range of reasons that we’ve seen before. Is this something you’re willing to wear because you believe this is the right thing?
More affordability for young people, first homeowners? Are you willing to wear the political cost of a decline in house prices? I’m absolutely certain that this is the right thing to do.
I’m more certain now than I’ve ever been that these changes are essential if we want to give future generations a fair crack in housing. We need to make these sensible changes in the tax system. I said in my speech on the floor of conference, we understand that people will have different views about.
It will always be contested when you’re embarking on difficult economic reform and particularly tax reform but all of that commentary is a small price to pay for doing the right thing, and that’s making the economy work for more people in our society, particularly in housing, where people, especially young people, have been locked out for too long. You upset the Prime Minister overturned some of those capital gains tax changes?
Did that cause some tension between you and him? Of course not. And he didn’t.
We said when we announced the policies that we would announce the implementation details for that. I worked centrally in the details that we announced and the next steps that we announced. And so implicit in your question, I think, is a situation that didn’t exist.
We worked together extremely closely and I took the time on the floor of conference to recognise the really quite extraordinary leadership role that Anthony has played in tax reform and economic reform more broadly. As Treasurer of this country, I appreciate that very much. And just briefly, the Fair Work Court, how will it operate?
Because currently you can appeal Fair Work Commission cases to the Federal Court. How is this different? Will it make life harder for employers?
This is about making it faster and easier to get resolutions in the industrial relations system. For too long, workers and businesses have been tied up often for years trying to get an outcome. This is about speeding it up by creating a dedicated court.
We will work through all the issues in the usual consultative way to make sure that we get this up and running in the best version of itself but it’s really about recognising that the courts as they stand tie too many people after too long and the industrial relations system, we want to speed that up. What’s your reaction to the unemployment figures out today?
We seem stuck at that 4.4 would you be surprised given that if there’s a rate rise? This is another stunning reminder of the resilience of our labour market and our economy more broadly and people will always want to talk our economy down and when they do, they fail to recognise this economy has created 1.3 million jobs in the last 4 years, most of them full time.
This Albanese Labor government has maintained the lowest average unemployment of any government in the last 50 years, it does speak to the resilience of our economy. It’s a very good thing to see these 76,000 jobs created in our economy in one month alone. The considerations of the Independent Reserve Bank are a matter for them.
We have seen a lot of pressures in our economy in that context, seeing a very strong and resilient labour market is very welcome news. What’s your view on this gas tax push? Because and is it true it’s unlikely to actually make the conference floor?
Well, that remains to be seen. The words that I’ve seen talk about the appropriate arrangements which recognise we have to balance our international obligations as a reliable supplier. There are strong views about gas taxes not just in this room but around the country.
I’ve already taken steps on the PRRT. We’re working very hard to get the gas reservation scheme in place and we’re working very hard to secure our fuel supplies and this is part of those considerations as well and that’s why we’ve made it clear, the Prime Minister and I have both made it clear, including today, that that is not on the government’s agenda, we’re focused on – Might it be at the next election though?
Not for the foreseeable future, the issues that we’ve been dealing with are the gas reservation, the existing reforms to the PRRT, being a reliable supplier so we can secure more fuel in the other direction as well and so the reason why that is not on the government’s agenda is because we’ve got other more pressing, more important things to focus on. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, thanks so much for your time.