Budget 2022: Jim Chalmers aims to get us out of the woods

It’s his time, just for Jim, when the Treasurer pulls on the running shoes. And if ever there was a time he needed to clear his head, it’s now.

Jim Chalmers takes a break from budget preparation near his Springwood home on Brisbane’s southern fronge on Saturday. Picture: Glenn Hunt

It’s his time, just for Jim, when Australia’s 44-year-old Treasurer pulls on the running shoes and disappears into the leafy quiet of Daisy Hill Conservation Park 25km southeast of Brisbane.

And if ever there was a time he needed to clear his head, it’s now, a day out from the biggest moment of his political life when he steps up to the Despatch Box in federal parliament to deliver his first budget.

The outlook is as bleak as the unseasonably grey Brisbane weather: inflation is surging, interest rates are biting, floods are wreaking havoc across four states. The world’s a mess with war in ­Europe and the US economy teetering on recession. A lettuce outlasted Liz Truss as British prime minister.

No pressure at all then, Dr ­Chalmers.

Steeling himself for Tuesday’s onslaught, he told The Australian: “My objective here is to talk up to people and not talk down to them. To not confuse simplifying what’s going on in the economy with, you know, dumbing it down.

“We face a really complex combination of challenges and I’m not someone who just pretends that away. I want to be upfront with people and level with people about those challenges, and also about the fact that no one budget or even term of the parliament can deal with them.”

Australians have seen plenty of the fresh-faced father of three from hardscrabble Logan on Brisbane’s southern fringe as he rose through the Labor ranks to the second-most coveted role in politics behind the prime ministership.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers takes a breather at Parliament House in Canberra on Sunday. Picture: AAP

But not like this. Chalmers was the honey-tongued campaign spokesman during the ALP’s ill-fated election tilt in 2019, and later the man with the spiky quip as shadow treasurer. On budget night, the nation will look to him for answers, not platitudes.

The colleagues and opposing MPs – always watching, weighing the odds in that real-life game of snakes and ladders they play in Canberra – will take careful note of his performance and how the commentariat marks it.

Is this his coming of age as Treasurer? “I don’t know about that,” Chalmers said, choosing his words carefully. “Others will judge that and … I don’t kind of see it in those, you know, individual terms.

“I hope that what people see when I’m at the Despatch Box on Tuesday night is somebody who understands our challenges, who is prepared to level with people about them, who has a plan to begin dealing with them.”

Still, few novice treasurers have stepped into the spotlight with the hands-on experience he has in putting together the immensely complex undertaking of a federal budget.

He cut his teeth as a senior ministerial adviser to treasurer Wayne Swan from 2007, and worked on five budgets over those tumultuous Rudd-Gillard years before securing his safe seat of Rankin at the 2013 election won by the Coalition under Tony Abbott. Tuesday’s lockup in Parliament House will be his 16th.

His political hero, Paul Keating, the subject of Chalmers’ doctoral thesis, was a relatively callow 39-year-old when he handed down the Hawke government’s opening budget in 1983. Young Jim was five.

The cheerfully cluttered home he shares with journalist wife Laura and the kids, aged three to seven, is around the corner from where he grew up and a brisk warm-up walk to the Daisy Hill reserve.

He calls it his safe place. He runs and runs through the gum trees, thinking things through, getting the “mind right” for what’s to come.

“Ever since I was a little kid, whenever there’s been something on my mind, I’ve spent time among the eucalypts on that big, beautiful ridge around Daisy Hill,” he said.

“I find it’s the most calming, ­reflective place where I can spend time.

“I’ve always found value in there.

“I’ve always wrestled with big things in that Daisy Hill forest and I’ve never had a bad run or walk in there. It is absolutely central to getting my mind right for a big week.”

Get set to see a lot more of Chalmers over the coming weeks. Delivering the budget was “the starter’s gun, not the finish line” for educating and selling the electorate on the government’s fiscal strategy.

Pithy as ever, he said: “This budget will begin the long, hard road of budget repair but it won’t reach the final destination. ­Repairing the budget is a marathon – it’s not a sprint.

“The path ahead is long, it’s winding, it’s uphill and it will take endurance.”