Jim Chalmers doubles down on Peter Dutton attack
Jim Chalmers hasbacked ASIO chief Mike Burgess’s policy of not ruling out granting visas to people fleeing Gaza to come to Australia just because they had expressed rhetorical support for Hamas.
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Jim Chalmers has thrown his support behind ASIO chief Mike Burgess’s policy of not ruling out granting visas to people fleeing Gaza to come to Australia just because they had expressed rhetorical support for Hamas.
The Treasurer said Labor should not “fall for Peter Dutton’s trap” and declared he had faith in the processes of the nation’s spy agency.
“I have complete confidence in our security authorities and agencies, in particular, the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess,” Dr Chalmers said.
“I’m not going to detail or second-guess the way they do their important work and again, I think it’s important we don’t fall for Peter Dutton’s trap.
“He wants to undermine confidence in our national security because he has no policies or credibility on the economy. And he’s trying to distract from what I think is the main game, which is cost-of-living pressure and the fight against inflation.”
Dr Chalmers denied he was freelancing outside of his Treasury portfolio by attacking Mr Dutton, saying the focus of the speech he gave on Monday night was instead almost entirely focused on the economy.
Speaking in Brisbane on Wednesday, the Treasurer doubled down on his criticism of the Opposition Leader’s character after he branded him as the “most divisive leader of a major party in Australia’s modern history”.
“I don’t resile one bit from the remarks that I made about Peter Dutton on Monday night,” Dr Chalmers said.
“Peter Dutton is a divisive figure, and I believe he is too divisive to be the prime minister of a great country like ours.
“Divisiveness is his defining and disqualifying characteristic.”
The Treasurer argued that the point of his attack against Mr Dutton was instead to highlight the Coalition’s failure to unveil its economic plans ahead of the next election, and was instead seeking to distract voters by embracing political divisiveness.
“His focus is on dividing people and that’s because that’s all he knows and all that he does,” Dr Chalmers said.
“He’s trying to distract from what I think is the main game, which is cost-of-living pressures and the fight against inflation.”
While the Coalition has released some details of its plans to construct nuclear-powered generators across seven sites and proposed divestiture powers to break-up major supermarkets and hardware chains, it is yet to release a fully costed economic policy.
Dr Chalmers’s politically charged attack came after a particularly bruising fortnight for Labor where Mr Dutton hammered the government over claims it had failed to impose adequate security checks on arrivals from Gaza.
Responding to Dr Chalmers’s speech on Tuesday, Mr Dutton said the highly political delivery was a sign Dr Chalmers was aiming to replace Anthony Albanese as prime minister.
“It seems – when you have a look at the Labor Party at the moment – you’ve got Tony Burke saying ‘Look at me’, you’ve got Bill Shorten saying ‘Look at me’, you’ve now got Jim Chalmers saying ‘Look at me’, which is exactly what we saw in the Rudd-Gillard years,” he said.
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