Wages growth Labor’s priority, says Jim Chalmers

Labor’s Jim Chalmers will say the government’s failure to lift ‘punishingly low wages growth’ has led to economic insecurity.

Labor Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers. Picture: AAP

Labor Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers will say the government’s failure to lift “punishingly low wages growth” has led to rising economic insecurity among “everyday Australians”.

Dr Chalmers will use a speech at this weekend’s Chifley Research Centre’s Toward 2022 conference, titled “Labor and the future”, to build a vision of a modern Labor Party focused on spreading prosperity to “suburbs and towns”.

The speech comes in the wake of Labor’s surprise election loss in May, and Dr Chalmers will say the party needs to re-engage people in the “politics of progress” and argue that the task “must always begin with the economy”.

He will frame the mid-year economic outlook as a chance for the government to address “major and longstanding economic challenges”, including weak consumption, stagnant wages, falling productivity and high underemployment.

“Wages growth has been so persistently low under the Liberals that last week the Reserve Bank said it was the ‘new normal’,” he will say.

“Most Australians would consider this to be an appalling outcome that the government should be ashamed about. But the Liberals think it is a triumph. For them, it’s mission accomplished.

“This is why suburbs and towns feel cut off from prosperity and opportunity and why populism has flourished.

“It’s why people feel like no matter how hard they work they just can’t get ahead, that the system is busted, or rigged. The economy’s not working for ordinary Australians.”

Following the election loss, Dr Chalmers signalled that Labor would limit its big-spending promises ahead of the next federal poll after the party’s economic agenda was found to have confused voters.

The recent ALP campaign review dismissed the argument that Labor’s franking credits and negative gearing tax measures “cost the party the election” but conceded the “size and complexity” of the $100bn-plus spending spree fuelled anxieties in regional and suburban voters.

Dr Chalmers will also use his speech to accuse the government of being “well served by economic insecurity”, arguing that it “gives them an excuse to revive old scare campaigns, rewrite the past and close their eyes to the challenges of the future”.

He will highlight the dangers of “populism that tries to appeal to ordinary people but is designed to divide, destabilise and further disempower them”.

“This type of populism should not be confused with advocating popular ideas or building popular support for ideas,” he will say.

“The will and wisdom of the people gives our democracy legitimacy, it gives life and context to our policy debates and our legislative decisions.

“And our job, our purpose, as a party of reform and progress is to make change popular.

“We are at our best when we make it our business to convert once-radical propositions into basic rights like a fair day’s pay, universal healthcare, or compulsory superannuation.”