It’s a banana republic moment. We need to see more from Jim Chalmers

A treasurer’s words can pierce a political debate like a volley of bullets.

The passing of Sydney radio star John Laws is a chance to remember the way Paul Keating used a radio interview to effectively bounce Australians out of their mid-1980s complacency.

Speaking from a Melbourne commercial kitchen in May 1986 as staff banged saucers and cups around him, Keating rang in to Laws’ Sydney radio show to make a point about Australia’s widening trade deficit.

It’s an issue long forgotten but Keating and his government feared the deficit, which had come in at $1.4 billion in April, was a harbinger for broader economic turmoil.

Keating segued from the trade deficit to the very future of Australia.

“If this government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for. We will end up being a third rate economy ... a banana republic,” he told Laws.

The term banana republic sent a lightning bolt through the commentariat, financial markets and the public. Here was the federal treasurer saying the country faced an existential crisis.

The Australian dollar sank like a stone (and would sink much further). There were fears the economy was already in recession (it wasn’t), the budget was in strife (necessitating a series of spending cuts that would deliver a surplus the following year) and the jobs market was deteriorating (unemployment would climb back over 8 per cent).

So unwelcomed were the comments by prime minister Bob Hawke, who was overseas at the time, that he and his treasurer got into a long-distance phone argument over the issue. Hawke would eventually announce he would make a statement on the economy.

Nevertheless, Keating’s banana republic warning became a rallying cry behind a series of reforms that would transform the Australian economy. Without it, many of those changes – and the public’s understanding of the economic issues facing the country – would never have eventuated.

There’s never really been such a touchstone moment by a treasurer since.

Peter Costello was a tremendous communicator, particularly in a budget setting, although not as abrasive as Keating.

No one can forget his line when revealing the baby bonus that couples should “have one for your husband and one for your wife and one for the country”.

Costello’s quip was memorable, but it also delivered an easily understood message that pulled together a group of disparate issues.

The ability of both Keating and Costello to articulate their views, the government’s policy plans and to explain difficult economic concepts is one of the reasons both are remembered – especially by their political supporters – positively.

Both Wayne Swan and Joe Hockey are remembered for communication missteps. In Swan’s case, it is his 2012 budget speech that opened with the declaration that “the four years of surpluses I announce tonight” that most readily comes to mind.

Throw in Julia Gillard’s own struggles with communication (it’s hard to go past “the real Julia” claim of the 2010 election) and you have a situation where the government’s two most important communicators struggled rather than soared.

Hockey’s troubles started early with his first budget, which contained the immortal line that “we are a nation of lifters, not leaners”. Of course, most of the pain of fixing the budget was to be felt by the “leaners”, like the poor, sick and young.

Add in a grainy photograph of Hockey and then finance minister Mathias Cormann smoking cigars and the budget’s multitude of broken political promises and you end up with a short-lived treasurership.

Which brings us to current Treasurer Jim Chalmers and his communication skills (as well as his Coalition shadow, Ted O’Brien).

Chalmers is widely considered the government’s best communicator, whether in interviews, parliament or the printed word. This is a man who spent a summer holiday early in his first term cobbling together 6000 words about the future of capitalism.

Even if you disagree with his viewpoints, he does communicate clearly and in a way that is understandable for the general public.

But most of this communication is done to defend or argue a particular policy position. It’s not a call to arms.

This is where Keating stands apart. Those comments to John Laws resonated because they spoke to the urgency for policy change.

It was a conversation that started about something as arcane as the current account deficit. But the message was so much more.

It wasn’t oratory. We’ve had great orators – Kim Beazley, Malcolm Turnbull – but soaring oratory doesn’t necessarily translate into great political communication.

Chalmers has spoken eloquently, for instance, about the necessity to lift Australia’s moribund productivity growth rate.

Like the current account deficit, a concept like productivity is difficult to explain at the best of times. So difficult is the word to grasp, many workers, business people and politicians don’t even understand what it really means.

But the job of the treasurer is to articulate what it means, why it’s important and the urgent need for Australia to lift its game. That’s Chalmers’ challenge.

There needs to be an imperative, a vital need, for Australia to reform.

Similarly, Ted O’Brien must find a way to argue the absolute necessity for the change he believes in.

We’ve moved a long way on from 1986, when a treasurer could do a radio interview and warn that the country was on its way to becoming a “banana republic” if it did not address its trade deficit.

Such a comment today would provoke social media hot-takes, hours of television dissecting the words from every possible angle, TikToks featuring the Wiggles’ Banananana, plus calls from the usual offenders for the treasurer’s resignation.

But it would still work as a call to policy arms. That’s something the Albanese government, and the Ley opposition, need right now.

Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

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