Election 2022: Economy safer with Labor, says Jim Chalmers

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers has laid claim to Labor being the superior economic manager, saying the nation needs new leadership.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers says the Coalition’s claims to be superior economic managers is unfounded. Picture: Zak Simmonds

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers has laid claim to Labor being the superior economic manager, saying the nation needs new leadership after a “wasted decade of missed opportunities”.

Only weeks short of an election and with the Coalition lagging in the polls, Dr Chalmers will use a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday to outline Labor’s five-point economic plan it will take to the Australian people.

“After nine long years, three treasurers and three prime ministers, the verdict is in,” he will say.

Growth, productivity, wages, business investment and unemployment were all better on average under Labor than the past near-decade under the Coalition, he says.

“The most damaging thing Australia could do right now – the biggest economic and social harm we could inflict – would be to ­accept flatlining wages, soaring prices, tepid investment and weak growth as our best-case scenario, our new normal,” Dr Chalmers will say.

Scott Morrison on Monday again attacked the opposition, saying Labor was “a blank page when it comes to economic policy”.

“Our government has shown that we have been able to produce a stronger economy in the midst of the worst economic challenge and health crisis we have seen (in) 100 years on health, and 70 years when it comes to the economy,” the Prime Minister said.

Dr Chalmers will tell the press club that his party’s five-point plan will be to focus on ensuring a clean-energy transition that delivers cheap and reliable power, provide hundreds of thousands of free TAFE places, ensure cheaper and more accessible childcare, upgrade the national broadband network as part of a digital economy infrastructure drive, and pursue a made-in-Australia policy via co-investments with the manufacturing and care sectors.

Dr Chalmers’ speech in Parliament House will make scant mention of taxes, other than saying Labor will “work with other countries to make sure multinationals pay their fair share of tax in Australia where they make their profits”.  “This five-point plan will lift the productive capacity of the economy and lift the speed limits on growth, without adding unnecessarily to ­in­flationary pressures; it will help create the more secure work and stronger wages growth we need.”

Dr Chalmers will deride government demands that Labor ­explains how it planned to fund its $2.5bn aged-care plan, saying there was no such discipline on the Coalition side.

“The government just spent $39bn in a budget without offsetting it,” he will say.

“They talk about temporary spending, but they’ve opened up a structural deficit that will see a deficit of 0.7 per cent of GDP in 2032-33.

“They committed to $70bn in spending between the December update and the March budget alone. When you take two of our largest budget commitments so far in childcare and aged care, together they make up only one fifth of the government’s new spending decisions that they unveiled in their latest budget.”

Dr Chalmers will repeat that his party in government wants to be judged by the quality, rather than the quantity, of its spending.

“If it’s not the time to flick a switch to austerity, it is the time to flick a switch to quality,” he says.

With economists anticipating interest rates to begin rising from the middle of this year, Australia’s would-be treasurer will say “we are acutely aware of rate-hike risks and what this means. We know rising mortgages are bound to impact the recovery and the comfort of households in ­deploying the $250bn worth of savings on their balance sheets.”