Policy can seem like opening a blind box: you’ll get something, but probably not what you want. Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable was no different. Every option is on the table, yes, but what we’ll get is as unknown as what is driving the Labubu craze.
First, the positives. Holding the roundtable is at least an indication that the government is looking to expand the mandate it took to the election. Despite Anthony Albanese’s repeated statements (always carefully worded in the present tense) that “the only tax policy that we’re implementing is the one that we took to the election”, every Labor MP privately admits there is not only the need to do more on tax but also the space. A whopping majority tends to focus even the most recalcitrant minds on the art of the possible.
The issue with the roundtable is that the same groups advising on how to disarm the intergenerational economic bombs that have started to explode are the same groups that helped set them.
The Productivity Commission, Treasury, the Business Council — the same outfits that have spent the past 25 or more years advocating for more privatisation and tax cuts, claiming they are panaceas for productivity growth — are now sounding the alarms that productivity has continued to fall.
