Denouncing Coalition as a 'smoking ruin', Jim Chalmers takes revenge in a press conference for the ages

Australia Broadcast Center

24-05-2025

Treasurer Jim Chalmers held a press conference last week that will enter Australian political folklore.
It was reminiscent of some of Paul Keating's press conferences and interviews from the 1980s when the then-treasurer made certain statements ("banana republic," "brings home the bacon") that matched the historic moment and became part of the national lexicon.
And for Chalmers, it announced major twin victories: one economic, one political.
It occurred on Tuesday afternoon.
He had arranged for the press conference to start 10 minutes after the Reserve Bank announced its interest rate decision.
That's because he was confident, like everyone else, that the RBA would be cutting rates for the second time this year, and he had a statement ready to go.
And he was correct. The RBA announced a rate cut, worth 0.25 percentage points, to 3.85 per cent.
The RBA also published new official forecasts showing that it expects inflation to be much lower this year than it was anticipating a few months ago.
From Chalmers' perspective, the rate cut and lower inflation forecasts provided more evidence of something significant.
Australia's intolerably high inflation had been dragged down from its peak and pulled back into the RBA's 2 to 3 per cent target band within two years.
And it had been achieved without a recession or material increase in unemployment.
That has never been accomplished in Australia before (as the economist Saul Eslake pointed out a few months ago).
Can you think of any would-be treasurer who wouldn't be happy to have presided over such a feat?
So, Chalmers called a press conference for the "Blue Room" in Parliament House.
The room is set-up for press gallery journalists, with rows of chairs and space for TV cameras, and a lectern for politicians, framed with heavy blue curtains and various flags.
Dozens of press conferences are held in that room every year, but this one was different.
The Albanese government was still basking in the glow of its historic election victory from three weeks ago.
We all know the story by now.
Labor thrashed the Coalition so emphatically that it's condemned the Liberal and National parties to irrelevancy in Canberra for years.
During the election campaign, Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor had been goading Chalmers for being "out of his depth" as treasurer.
He said Chalmers had promised to lower the cost of living, and lower mortgage interest rates, but he'd done the "exact opposite".
But now, three weeks later, in the wake of their historic election defeat, shell-shocked Coalition MPs have publicly blamed Mr Taylor for his role in the Coalition's embarrassing loss, saying he was out of his depth as shadow treasurer.
If you were Chalmers, it would be difficult not to feel schadenfreude.
So, that was some of the political context leading into the Reserve Bank's interest rate meeting on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday morning, the post-election anger inside the Coalition exploded.
David Littleproud, leader of the Nationals, called a press conference for 11.45am to announce he was severing the Nationals' coalition agreement with the Liberal Party.
Why should his party be held back by the Liberal Party? After all, the Nationals had retained nearly all their seats in the election. It was the Liberal Party that suffered big losses, embarrassingly, losing another swathe of seats for the second election in a row.
"The Nationals' party room does not take this decision lightly," Littleproud said.
So, when Chalmers began his press conference at 2.40pm, he faced another major political development.
Not only had the Reserve Bank just cut interest rates again, but it was also forecasting inflation to be lower than anticipated for the rest of the year.
The Labor Party had comfortably defeated the Coalition in the federal election, with Taylor failing to land any damaging blows on Chalmers.
And the political fallout from the size of the Coalition's electoral wipe-out was so severe it had led to the dissolution of the famed partnership.
As Chalmers stood at the lectern in the Blue Room, he saw all of it:
"This is a nuclear meltdown, and the Coalition now is nothing more than a smoking ruin," he said.
"I think that is really clear. Also clear is the contrast between a government getting on with the job, managing the economy responsibly, here to talk with you today about the second interest rate cut in three months, and a Coalition – or a former Coalition – completely and entirely focused on themselves.
"They tried to divide the Australian community in the election campaign, and they ended up dividing themselves. And the consequence of that is that the Liberal Party is now barely bigger than the crossbench in the parliament."
That scenario would have been a politician's dream. It was the type of situation you'd be lucky to experience once in your life.
Whatever you think of Chalmers, it was a milestone in his political career.
And regardless of what happens to the Nationals and Liberals from here — if they kiss and make up or move on alone — it capped an election campaign that revealed much about modern Australia, and where the country is heading.