Coronavirus: Call for Scott Morrison to free wheels of commerce

Scott Morrison has been urged to use the COVID crisis to launch a ‘bold new reform agenda’ to reverse two decades of overregulation.

Former secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold.

Two of the nation’s most respected former public servants, Peter Shergold and Martin Parkinson, have urged Scott Morrison to use the COVID crisis to launch a sweeping new reform agenda and reverse two decades of over-regulatio­n, which has “gummed up the wheels of commerce”.

Dr Shergold, secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under John Howard and Kevin Rudd, said history would judge policymakers on whether they took the opportunity provided by the pandemic and associated­ economic crisis to “deliver a bold new reform agenda”.

The test would be whether elect­ed leaders were prepared to “risk political capital in addressing deep-seated, long-term economic, social and diplomatic issues,” Dr Shergold said.

“Will we look back at this as a point in which governments and society are able to pivot, in which government can be bold and citizens can be persuaded to follow?”

Dr Parkinson, a former secret­ary of PM&C and Treasury under five prime ministers, said the “massive” reform programs of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s had provided the backbone for Australia’s 28 years of economic growth leading up to the current crisis.

But he said 16 years with no meaningful reform since Mr Howard­’s final election victory in 2004 had slowed productivity growth to just a quarter of its long-term potential. “That (election) is the point when everybody hangs up their tools, in a reform sense,” Dr Parkinson said.

The two former senior public servants, who spoke at an event on Thursday organised by the Committee for Sydney, said the disruption caused by the pandemic presented a historic opportunity to implement reform that could boost the nation’s productivity over the long term.

Dr Parkinson said deregulation was an obvious and practical measure­. He said that by allowing an explosion in red tape over the past 15-20 years, “we have gummed up the wheels of commerce”. “There’s a lot of regulatory reform which could be done and most people would not even notice it happened, but business would respond,” he said.

Dr Parkinson cited the example of the extra bureaucratic effort that had been put into screening goods imported into the country.

“You need to have high-quality standards, but every time you put additional tests for national security reasons you raise the transaction costs as well. We need to back off a bit on the national narrative and start to think about the economic security narrative.”

With international borders closed, Dr Shergold said this would be the first year in 75 in which the country did not take in a significant number of migrants.

“In this period of COVID there is likely to be very little immig­ration, and we should use this as an opportunity to clear the decks and set the criteria for temporary migrant­s for what is required of them to become permanent residents,” he said.

“For the last 15 years, and really unbeknown to most, there has been a significant move from permanent to temporary migration.”

Creating a path to permanency for skilled temporary migrants would be “a small but very significant reform that the government could drive, and, with leadership, is a narrative that would be easy to sell politically’’.

Dr Parkinson agreed.

“Here’s an opportunity to double­ down on skilled migrants from around the world,” he said.