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Transcripts
June 18, 2025
Wednesday 18 June 2025
Press Conference
Topics: Response to Jim Chalmers National Press Club speech
EO&E…………………………………………………………………………………………..
JAMES PATERSON: Today at the National Press Club, the Treasurer Jim Chalmers promised three things. He promised higher living standards, a more productive economy and a stronger budget. But in Labor's first term, under his watch as Treasurer, Labor delivered a collapse in living standards by 6.3%, a fall in productivity back a decade to 2016 levels, and a weaker budget that now envisages a decade of deficits and $1.2 trillion of debt.
Jim Chalmers is like the arsonist pretending to be a firefighter, turning up to put out the fires that he and the Albanese government themselves set in their first term. The speech today was implicitly a welcome admission of how much damage was done to the Australian economy in this government's first term and how much work is now required to get our economy growing again.
The Opposition recognises the government's mandate and we will work constructively with them to fix this mess. We welcome the productivity roundtable announced by the Treasurer and we hope that good ideas come out of that process to strengthen our economy. But we need more than a meeting, we need a plan.
We've already said that we are up for a conversation about tax reform. There is no question that we could collect tax more efficiently and in a less distortionary way than we do in this country. But that is not an excuse to raise taxes on Australians. I am concerned that the Treasurer was building the ground today for higher taxes on Australians. Higher taxes are the last thing our economy needs right now in a productivity, business investment and living standards crisis. Independent reports, already released just this week, show that our international competitiveness is in free fall under this government and higher taxes would make that even worse.
ENDS