Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers has launched a media blitz in response to the Morrison government’s 2021 budget, warning that the promises made on Wednesday night are “designed to get them through the election” but lack long-term vision beyond it.
“They racked up a trillion dollars in debt, and I don’t think they’ve got a lot to show for it,” Mr Chalmers told media.
“You’d think that after spending all that money and racking up all that debt we’d have a much stronger economy at the end of it, but their own Budget papers say that even after the four-year Budget period, real wages will have actually gone backwards. I think that’s an admission of failure.”
At the centre of Labor’s grievance is the Morrison government’s failure to execute an effective vaccine roll-out and build specialised quarantine centres, with Mr Chalmers noting that many of the promises contained within the budget are built on optimistic assumptions about the health scenario through the remainder of 2021.
“We’ve said for some time we need clarity on the vaccination rollout. The lack of clarity…is compromising the recovery and costing jobs,” Mr Chalmers said.
“Unfortunately, even in the space of the last 24 hours the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are singing from a completely different song sheet when it comes to this. It’s more confusing after the Budget than it was before.”
Mr Chalmers flagged that Labor would tackle depressed wage growth through a combination of measures aimed at unemployment and underemployment, including through its previously announced childcare policy and by “doing something meaningful in the industrial relations system”.
“Everyone wants to get unemployment down, but we also need to get underemployment down…So we have a big focus on underemployment, not just unemployment, because that’s part of the reason why wages are stagnant. People’s work is insecure and precarious,” Mr Chalmers said.
“That’s part of the story, but also making sure that people can actually grab the opportunities of a recovering economy.”
