Shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien has ‘no regrets’ about heated exchange with Jim Chalmers at economic roundtable

Shadow Treasurer Ted O’Brien has lifted the lid on his heated exchange with Jim Chalmers during the economic reform roundtable last week.

Mr O’Brien confirmed the spat on the last day of the high stakes meeting which was held behind closed doors, telling the Treasurer his “spending spree is out of control”.

“Yes, it’s true that Jim Chalmers and I had words between us,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“And really it came down to me saying one key message, stop the spending spree.

“The Government has to stop spending so much money of Australian taxpayers. And Jim Chalmers didn’t like that. And of course, you know that led to an exchange of words, but I have no regrets about it.”

Mr O’Brien said Dr Chalmers had “thrown out the rules that control Budget spending”.

“I went through some of the statistics, some of the concerns I’ve got,” he said.

“I mean, some of the spending has led to debt. So, we’ll hit $1 trillion of debt this year, $1.2 trillion by the next election. We’ve also seen spending more over go up around 24 per cent of GDP to 27 per cent of GDP.

“We have seen about $160b extra spending this year compared to the Coalition’s last Budget.”

Asked what Dr Chalmers’ response was, Mr O’Brien said he told the rest of the room that what he said was “not accurate”, to which he demanded the Treasurer give him “just one number that’s wrong”.

“The Treasurer could not give me one number that was wrong,” he said.

“Which goes to the very point he doesn’t know his numbers, and he just keeps spending. And this is why we need to introduce fiscal rules.”

Mr O’Brien confirmed Ken Henry — Dr Chalmers’ old boss, when he served as the head of treasury under former treasurer Wayne Swan — backed his call for rules around Budget spending.

“Yes, Ken Henry did speak up. I don’t want to go through what others said in the room, but others also backed in the need for fiscal rules,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask when you keep using other people’s money, you need to have some rules, at least rules that tell the Australian people, this is how I’m making sure we have discipline as a Treasurer, and then the Australian people can hold you to account.”

Dr Chalmers said there “are fiscal rules”.

“Secondly, when we came to office, spending as a share of the economy was almost a third and we got it down to closer to a quarter, I think that’s too easily dismissed,” he told ABC Insiders.

“There was a view around the table that we should further evolve those fiscal rules that are in the Budget, obviously I take that kind of feedback seriously and we have a look at those fiscal rules from time to time.

“But there’s an important political point to be made here as well. Of the dishonest and hypocritical things that our political opponents say about the economy and the Budget, two things stand out.

“First of all is their position on tax, they went to the election proposing increased income taxes on 14 million Australians. Secondly is their position on the fiscal rules, they had fiscal rules that weren’t worth the paper they were written on.

“They failed every test that they set for themselves. They said they would get debt down, it’s skyrocketed.”

Dr Chalmers said the Government had delivered the first surpluses in almost two decades and the Opposition only “deliver deficits”.

Last week, ACTU secretary Sally McManus described the exchange between the pair as “a political exchange” that “felt a bit like Question Time”.