Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Labor's much vaunted productivity summit concluded last week, and, I must say, I'm none the wiser about what it actually achieved. I listened very closely when Senator Mulholland asked Senator Gallagher, the Minister for Finance, who was a participant in all three days of the roundtable, what was achieved, in what's known as a dorothy dixer. Here was her opportunity to tell us all how much consensus had been reached, how the gravity of the moment had been seized and how opportunities had been grasped.

But, instead, we got a series of bromides. These are just some of the things Senator Gallagher had to say. She said:

The roundtable was a good and positive thing …

She said people wanted to lean in and be part of the discussion. She said there was a high level of buy-in. Now, that all sounds very worthy, but a high level of buy-in to what? What was achieved? What was discussed? We had 29 hours of discussions. Apparently we had 327 different contributions from participants. We had three days of talks with many of the government's most senior ministers. We have a 14-page transcript of a concluding press conference that the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, held, but we are none the wiser as to what has been achieved. In fact, what has been achieved and what the government has paraded as an achievement is underwhelming, to say the very least.

Let me hone in on one particular element of this summit—fiscal sustainability. This was meant to be the entire focus of day 3 of this summit. The warning signs on this issue had been flashing brightly for some time. We had the incoming government brief from the Treasury department, the Treasurer's own government department, warning that there would need to be either significant spending reductions or large increases in taxes to restore the budget to a sustainable position. We had the former governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, urge the government last week to restore the fiscal guardrails, saying that the government had no budget discipline. We had, apparently, former secretary of the Treasury Ken Henry in the room last week, speaking about the importance of the Charter of Budget Honesty from 1996, a Howard and Costello innovation, and lauding the fiscal rules that were adopted by the Treasurer's own former boss, Wayne Swan.

But, apparently, the Treasurer and the government were having none of that. According to the Financial Review:

There was widespread agreement—

Amongst participants—

at the roundtable that expenditure growth was on—

or is on—

an unsustainable trajectory.

But a spokesperson for the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said that claims that fiscal rules should be re-instituted are not worth the paper they are written on. What have we got in their place? We've got no fiscal rules. We've got no fiscal guardrails. We've got no budget discipline. We've got no expenditure discipline. When you've got a treasurer that makes Wayne Swan look like a fiscal hawk, you know that this government has absolutely no discipline whatsoever. Wayne Swan introduces fiscal guardrails; Jim Chalmers's spokesperson says they're not worth the paper they're written on. Wayne Swan, a fiscal hawk—I never thought I'd see the day, but so it has come to pass.

So what have we seen achieved—some discipline imposed here on government spending? No—a big doughnut. Have we seen any significant cutbacks on regulation? No—a big doughnut. Instead we've seen a tax on electric vehicles floated; adoption of a coalition policy, a freezing of the building and construction code; and mooted changes to the super performance test so that superannuation funds now need to invest their members' money in government policy projects, not where it would deliver the best returns for their members or look after the interests of their members.

Australia's economy is stagnant, our living standards are deteriorating, our business conditions are terrible, and our productivity is going backwards—this was the burning-platform scenario that we were presented with as the foreground to this so-called productivity and economic reform roundtable. We had some of the best minds in the country there. We had business leaders, economists, think tankers and others, who were willing to share their ideas and willing to make some suggestions, but the government was unwilling to take any of them. So instead, after three days, after 29 hours of discussions, after 327 different contributions and after about a dozen press conferences by Jim Chalmers, we're left with a tax on electric vehicles, a coalition policy and changes to the super performance test. This does not rise to the gravity of the challenge that the Australian economy faces right now.