Chalmers’ ‘obsession’ with clean energy-fuelled fourth economy

Jim Chalmers has declared that the energy transformation and carving out a fourth economy are his ‘obsession’ and ‘reason for being’.

Jim Chalmers with Queensland former Labor treasurer Cameron Dick in Logan on Monday. Picture: Tertius Pickard / NewsWire

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Jim Chalmers has declared the ­energy transformation and carving out a fourth economy are his “obsession” and “reason for being”, underpinning modern Labor’s intergenerational legacy vision to create an economy powered by clean energy.

Ahead of delivering his fourth budget on March 25, the Treasurer has outlined the urgency of Labor’s clean energy revolution because “this is a defining decade for Australia … the decisions we take in the 2020s will determine how we travel for the coming decades”.

Asked on a John Curtin Research Centre podcast about the economic reforms of his hero Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, Dr Chalmers said while he embraced the Hawke-Keating legacy, the Albanese government’s job was “not to double back and retrace their steps, as ­important as they were”.

“Our job is to walk further in the same direction and build on that legacy, rather than replicate or photocopy it. If you think about the big changes that Paul led as treasurer and then as prime minister, the equivalent for us now is ­really the energy transformation,” Dr Chalmers told the Curtin’s Cast podcast.

“This is my obsession. This is my reason for being … to recognise that our responsibilities as political leaders is to understand all of the churn and change and uncertainty in the world, and to work out how we position our people to be beneficiaries of that change.

“We are due for a new economy and it will be powered by cleaner and cheaper energy. It will make the most of the technological revolution, it will recognise our responsibilities in the care economy. It will have a big emphasis on human capital and on competition policy.”

Dr Chalmers, who revealed on the podcast that he launched his local election campaign in Logan on March 1 ahead of Anthony Albanese cancelling plans for an April 12 election, said “there’s no bigger admirer of Paul Keating in the ­parliament or arguably in Australia than me”. “Paul says all the time when he was a kid he saw (Winston) Churchill and he said if that’s the game that Churchill is in, that’s the game that I want to be in. And I felt the same way about Paul,” he said.

“Seeing this guy from the suburbs with that turn of phrase and big change-making instincts … I thought if that’s the game Paul’s in, that’s the game I want to be in.”

Dr Chalmers’ “obsession” around clean energy anchoring a fourth economy is shared by others around the Prime Minister’s cabinet table.

The Rankin MP, who turned 47 on March 2 and is considered a ­future Labor leader, focuses on contrasts between his upbringing in working-class Logan and Mr Keating’s rise in western Sydney’s Bankstown. With Peter Dutton hoping to win votes in working-class, outer-suburban and regional electorates on the back of cost-of-living pressures, the speed of Labor’s net-zero transition and pushback against renewables, including offshore wind zones, Dr Chalmers said the Albanese government was focused on “bringing people with us”.

Dr Chalmers said “our generational task is to build this new economy in a way that ordinary people in suburbs like the one I grew up in (feel they) are part of the story of churn and change in a positive way. That they are beneficiaries, and not victims, of all of that change. We’ve seen at different times in our history how, when the economy changes, people are at risk of being left behind. So much of what we try to do is to meet that generational task that we’ve been called to.”

After Mr Albanese’s decision to scrap an April 12 election and hold the budget, the Prime Minister, Dr Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher have formed a tight cabal to ensure the budget is ready in 14 days. The Australian this week revealed Dr Chalmers, Senator Gallagher and Mr Albanese will be able to use powers under the “hunting licence process” to expedite final budget decisions outside of the usual ERC process.