Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What progress is being made on the economy, and what steps is the government taking to build on the broad consensus reached at the Economic Reform Roundtable?

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

Thank you to the member for Boothby, who has got one more question than the shadow Treasurer today in question time and focused on a really important issue and a timely one. On Wednesday, we will get the national accounts for the June quarter. We already know that, since this government came to office, we got inflation down, we got the debt down, real wages are growing, unemployment is low and interest rates are falling. But there is no shortage of challenges in our economy, and we expect to see some of that in the June national accounts, which reflect that period of extreme volatility and uncertainty following the announcement of the tariffs in the United States.

Our economy over the last three years has continued to grow, and that makes us one of a small number of countries in the OECD for which that is the case. In fact, 32 out of 38 OECD nations have had a negative quarter of growth over the last three years, but Australia's economy has continued to tick over. We know, in acknowledging that our economy has continued to tick over, that, in most of the countries with which we compare ourselves, that has not been the case. But we would like growth in our economy to be stronger. There has been an absence of strong growth in our economy, and that's because our economy is not productive enough. That's what a big focus of the Economic Reform Roundtable was in Canberra in the last couple of weeks.

When it comes to productivity, our focus is on productivity because that is the best way to turn the progress that we've already made in our economy into sustained increases in living standards and real wages over time. We've got a big productivity agenda focused on skills and technology and energy and competition policy. We've added to it since the reform roundtable as well. We're blitzing the approvals backlog to approve 26,000 homes. We're pausing and streamlining the National Construction Code. We've fast-tracked the legislation to get the EPBC laws right as well. We're also abolishing another 500 nuisance tariffs, on top of the 457 we already abolished. These nuisance tariffs can often do more harm than good in our economy. That's why we've slashed more tariffs in two years than any Australian government in two decades.

This is about cutting red tape, easing the compliance burden on businesses, boosting productivity and getting costs down in our economy. It means we will have removed around 1,000 tariffs over two years, streamlined approximately $23 billion worth of trade and saved Australian businesses $157 million in compliance costs each year. We've made a lot of progress in our economy together. We know that there is no shortage of challenges. There is more work to do, but already we are implementing some of the broad consensus achieved at the economic reform roundtable. (Time expired)