Tax review summit must be put on election agenda

Treasurer Jim Chalmers needs to inaugurate a new tax reform debate with all aspects of tax on the table for review. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Jim Chalmers must act on the grim outlook in the latest Intergenerational Report.

This vision of Australia’s relative decline amid prosperity should trigger decisive government action. Nowhere is this more vital than tax – yet Labor’s response is to stand by its current position.

This is a failure of nerve and courage. The Treasurer needs to inaugurate a new tax reform debate with all aspects of tax on the table for review. He should open the lens wide, given the alarming fiscal messages from the IGR.

The Albanese government should seek at the next election a mandate to formalise the tax debate through a convention, summit or discussion process.

It can learn from its blunder over the Indigenous voice.

You don’t commit to a policy before having the national debate.

Labor shouldn’t sign up to specific tax policies before the election. That defeats the entire purpose.

It can hardly lose an election because it is pledged to a summit or convention process. What will the Coalition do? Attack the idea or refuse to come? It will have to participate.

Nobody asks the Albanese government to commit electoral suicide by taking a contentious new tax proposal to the election but people deserve a government that acts in the national interest where that need has been shown.

That’s exactly what the IGR has done.

It reveals that nothing will stop the rise of big government and major spending programs driven by an ageing population and demography.

The lesson? The tax system must be efficient, equitable and fit-for-purpose. It isn’t.

The whole world knows.

We have lamented this situation for years. Chalmers wants to be an ambitious Treasurer. This is the opportunity he needs to seize.