Jim Chalmers channels Sam Konstas, without the ability to deliver

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

When it comes to political op-eds, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is hardly alone in writing interminable and self-serving waffle. But as we learned two years ago when he dictated his 6000-word whimsy on his plans to remake capitalism, there must be something about this time of year that inspires him to pen truly excruciating prose.

“On an especially muggy early morning this month, my seven-year-old daughter and I were walking the big hills near our Logan home in Queensland,” wrote Chalmers in the Courier-Mail on December 28.

“She asked me what my favourite year was. I said I couldn’t decide … I asked her what her favourite year was and without hesitation she said ‘next year’. I’ve been thinking a lot about that optimism.”

We get it. If he is to be believed, his is one of the nation’s most brilliant minds, but Dr Chalmers is also a daggy dad who empathises with the many Australians doing it tough. Mind you, their plight is not his doing, notwithstanding he has been Treasurer for the last three years. If anything, he has done a fantastic job in supporting us. He wants us to know that 2025, which just happens to be an election year, will be even better.

Unfortunately for Chalmers, his rosy outlook lasted only eight hours into the new year. Suffice to say former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello, in recently assessing Chalmers’ stewardship of the budget, do not have the optimism of a seven-year-old.

No surprise Howard & Costello’s predictable partisan rant in @australian today fails to mention the $200b improvement in the Budget since @AustralianLabor came to office, or that we’ve found $92b in savings, or that we’ve got the debt down by $177b from what the last Liberal govt…

— Jim Chalmers MP (@JEChalmers) December 31, 2024

Taking to X, a peeved Chalmers labelled their appraisal a “predictable partisan rant”. You might say the Treasurer, who loves to dish it out and plays the parochial Queenslander when politically convenient, has a Glass House Mountains jaw.

So much for his serene philosophising. During the last few days, Chalmers has continued with his social media tizz, this time railing against “right wing (sic) commentators” conspiring to suppress news of the wonderful things Labor has done for the economy. Note to the Treasurer: binary spats are the hallmark of the student politician.

Ten facts Peter Dutton and right wing commentators don’t want you to know about progress in the Australian economy under @AustralianLabor.

A thread. 🧵

1/11 #auspol#auseconpic.twitter.com/xxZCn1Qegr

— Jim Chalmers MP (@JEChalmers) January 5, 2025

But if he wants to play that game, fine. Let’s have a look at the reactionaries who constantly drown out selected readings from Chalmers’ Good News Bible.

To begin with, there is the right-wing Real Estate Institute of Australia, which in September found in its quarterly analysis that housing affordability was at a 30-year-low. Adding to this right-wing clamour is Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman John Lonsdale, who noted in November that mortgage stress was “double the proportion we saw in 2016, and it’s trending up”.

And it was the right-wing Australian Securities and Investments Commission which advised that 2832 construction companies went under in the 2023/24 financial year, an increase of 28 per cent. ASIC also recorded that 6925 construction firms, 4012 hospitality businesses, 1706 retailers and 1329 manufacturers have gone bust since June 2022. On top of that, last calendar year saw a record number of insolvencies, with 12,405 businesses folding.

Then there is the International Monetary Fund, which of course is a bastion of ultra-conservatism. It estimated in October by the end of 2025 Australia will have a 3.6 per cent headline inflation rate, the second highest of the 42 advanced economies. But of course that has nothing to do with federal government spending, which is forecast to hit a record-high 28 per cent of GDP by the end of 2025.

Without doubt the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is compromised by Tory ideology. How else can you rationalise its conclusion last July that real wages in Australia were 4.8 per cent below pre-pandemic levels? It was, the organisation said, “one of the largest drops in real wages among OECD countries”.

But as Chalmers told us only a few days ago “2025 will be better”. Unfortunately the right-wing Canberra public servants who make up the Australian Bureau of Statistics are determined to portray the Treasurer as not only incompetent but also a big fibber. Last month the agency reported that GDP growth fell from 1 per cent in June to 0.8 per cent in September. The pandemic aside, this is the lowest GDP growth rate since the recession of the early 1990s.

As Chalmers tells us repeatedly, one million jobs have been created since Labor assumed government. That is hardly surprising considering the $42bn National Disability Insurance Scheme bankrolls a third of those positions. And of the 209,000 new jobs created in the first half of 2024, a whopping 50 per cent were public sector jobs.

Australian cricketer Sam Konstas. Picture: Getty Images

Rest easy though, for Chalmers has the ledgers in order, right? As the Fin Review reported yesterday, the government failed in the latest Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook forecast to cater for scheduled rises in public sector wages. No biggie, just a $7.4bn disparity. Incidentally, we can forget about government delivering a budgetary surplus for at least the next ten years.

But let’s not forget the many things Labor is doing to make this a momentous year, particularly for political cronies and grifters. Chalmers has directed the $230bn Future Fund to consider so-called “national priorities”, including “supporting the energy transition as part of the net zero transformation of the Australian economy”, in its investment decisions. Pink batts, meet renewables.

The body’s inaugural chairman, David Murray, believes Chalmers’ direction breaches the Future Fund Act. The incumbent, former ACTU secretary and Labor minister Greg Combet, assures us it is tickety-boo, as does Chalmers. So confident are they it is lawful they have refused to release the relevant legal advice which they insist clears the way. To infer this decision is anything but legit is, of course, to partake in right-wing extremism.

In short forget these inconvenient facts and think optimism, optimism, optimism. As Chalmers said in his op-ed, “I thought about it again watching Sam Konstas bat in the first session on Boxing Day, with the freedom and fearlessness of a teenager.”

Normally one would not associate Konstas with Chalmers, but they do have one thing in common.

Both are boys sent to do a man’s job. The difference is Konstas has what it takes.