Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the outstanding new member for Banks for his question. I congratulate him on his victory and on his first speech as well.

This week we got a really important reminder in the inflation numbers of the progress that Australians have made together over the course of the last three years or so. What is especially heartening is that, at the same time as we have worked to get inflation down to around a third of what we inherited, it has meant that we've got real wages growing again and living standards growing again. We've kept unemployment low, we've delivered a couple of surpluses and we got the Liberal debt down. That is all important and meaningful progress.

No major advanced economy has achieved what Australia has—inflation in the low twos, unemployment in the low fours, three years of continuous economic growth—but we do know that there is more work to do, because the global environment is uncertain, because growth is not what we want it to be in our economy. We've got persistent structural issues in our economy and we know that people are still under pressure. That's why the primary focus of this government in the first parliamentary fortnight of the new government has been to deliver the cost-of-living relief that we promised at the election—to roll that out. It's also why we've got a big economic agenda already when it comes to skills and energy, housing and competition policy, and in other areas.

It's also in these particularly persistent structural issues in our economy, which is why we will be convening the Economic Reform Roundtable next month here in Canberra. This is all about building consensus around next steps and how we deal with these big economic challenges. We've been very grateful for the engagement that we've already seen from right around the country. I thank and pay tribute to the ministers here for the work that they're doing in engaging with stakeholders in their own portfolios. There has been a lot of engagement already. It will be a busy three days, and in the next day or so I will be releasing the agenda for those three days of the Economic Reform Roundtable.

I want to make it clear that we do not expect there to be a unanimous view from everyone who comes to the roundtable—of course not! It would be pointless if that were the case. And we don't expect to solve every single problem in our economy in three days—some of these problems have been building for three decades.

But we do expect the roundtable to help set some general directions and to pitch up specific ideas. There will be more work for the government to do after the roundtable and in advance of the next budget.

We have made good progress together in our economy as Australians. We do have a big agenda we're rolling out. This government figures the best way to work out the next steps is to do that together, and that's what the reform roundtable is all about.

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