Credit where it is due, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has embarked on necessary simplification for doing business in this country. Removing a swath of minor tariffs that are a compliance nightmare for businesses will help lift productivity, encourage entrepreneurship and even lower prices for consumers. It is exactly the sort of reform a new government should enact.
To be sure, the changes are micro in nature. But that is no reason to downplay the adjustments being made. Why didn’t the previous Coalition government do the same? If the reforms are obvious and simple they simply should have been achieved long ago. The Liberal Party had nine years of incumbency to enact these recommendations from within the department of treasury. It claims to be the party of business.
Former PM Paul Keating was the hero of tariff reductions in the 1980s and 90s. He has long been encouraging Chalmers to do more in this area. Chalmers may not have listened to the Labor great when it comes to income tax reductions to the top marginal tax rate, but he’s at least listened to him here.
The adjustment to approvals for the resource sector being proposed is also small bickies but important, and again the question can be asked why the Coalition didn’t make such changes long ago. The lethargy fits the narrative that the Morrison government sat on its hands for too long, using the excuse of the pandemic years to do little else by way of an economic agenda.
Labor needs to view today’s announcements as the end of the beginning not the beginning of the end when it comes to economic reforms. Agree or disagree with their broken promise on stage three tax cuts – and I strongly disagreed because of the breach of trust involved with violating the election pledge – those remodelled tax cuts also represented reforms.
A trend may be developing.
If Labor continues in this vein it just might live up to the reforming credentials of the Hawke and Keating government. But there is a very long way to go for these two governments to be meaningfully compared.
The next step needs to be a wholesale economic reform package Labor can campaign on at the next election, so that if it is victorious it has a clear mandate to make its second term one that assists Australia by preparing us for future prosperity.
Putting enhancing productivity front and centre should also mean reducing the insane number of ongoing parliamentary committees which ultimately go nowhere. Most Australians would be unaware that there are in excess of 100 ongoing parliamentary committees sapping the productivity of Australian businesses forced to prepare for and appear before them. The impost of this can’t be underestimated.
Once upon a time parliamentary committees were sparingly used to examine important areas of public policy. Now they are little more than an opportunity for career backbenchers to aggrandise their own self importance, also giving fringe crossbench MPs and Senators a platform to grandstand. Usually concerning topics they know very little about.
The number of senate and house committee reports with recommendations that are ignored by government despite all the time and effort that goes into the hearings is almost as great as the number of committees that are ongoing in the first place. The reports sit on shelves gathering dust. Rather than recognise this and pressure government to enact changes recommended, those on the committees just keep ploughing away in the hope of garnering a media report or three to service their egos.
If Chalmers is serious about lifting productivity and the ease of doing business he’ll find a way to reduce this handbrake on the private sector, not to mention pick the important eyes out of any worthwhile recommendations gathering dust.
But one step at a time. The announcements today are rays of sunshine at a time when business is increasingly questioning this government’s credentials to manage the economy. In the wake of the waste of time that the jobs summit became, and the debilitating workplace changes Tony Burke has presided over as minister.
Chalmers has changed tack from the ramblings of his Monthly essay shortly after becoming Treasurer, instead seeking reforms that have practical merit, and that is a very encouraging shift.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at UWA and Griffith University.
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