Chalmers promises ‘substantial’ productivity package in budget
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The news: Treasurer Jim Chalmers has told a closed-door Business Council of Australia (BCA) dinner that the upcoming federal budget will include a “substantial” productivity package and promised there would be further competition reforms.
The context: The event was attended by around 100 BCA members and several ministerial colleagues.
Chalmers has been promising to focus on productivity boosting measures in the upcoming federal budget and pre-empted three upcoming announcements within the next two weeks.
Namely, these include the first projects to be supported under the federal government’s Investor Front Door initiative aimed at streamlining regulatory approvals, new deals with states under the National Competition Policy and new work from the Productivity Commission focused on how business dynamism can underpin productivity.
Chalmers told BCA members that the upcoming “productivity package will be substantial and it will be all about making it easier and faster to build, more attractive to invest, and to try and get some of your compliance costs down”.
He noted that the federal government’s expenditure review committee had met on Monday and will meet again on Wednesday.
Chalmers also reiterated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s comments earlier in the day that “cleaner and cheaper energy is a strategic objective as well as an economic one”, particularly in the face of global energy shocks.
With regard to the economic impacts of the Iran war, Chalmers said that Treasury modelling released last week might be on the conservative end and reiterated that work on a worse third scenario is currently being worked on.
However, he also acknowledged that the Australian economy was already facing inflationary pressures before the war.
He concluded his speech with a plea to businesses to work with the government to overcome the economy’s speed limit on growth.
The source: Capital Brief sources
