Jim Chalmers lays out roundtable outcomes: AI, regulation, tariff changes
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The news: Treasurer Jim Chalmers will work with his ministerial colleagues to scrap nuisance tariffs, reduce red tape in the National Construction Code, accelerate the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and tackle a backlog of approvals for new homes.
There will also be an acceleration on a broader national AI capability plan with Minister for Innovation Tim Ayres.
“We got some really good inputs into that in the room, including how we work out those national interest principles on data centres with all the resourcing questions that invites,” Chalmers said.
He also said there was “conceptual support” for road user charging, though a final model had not been settled on.
He said there was more consensus than he was anticipating within the three days. This included 10 top reform directions where there has been solid agreement, including:
- Progressing towards a single national market to modernise the federation
- Simplifying trade and reforming tariffs
- Better regulation and how to"cut the clutter"
- Speeding up approvals in national priority areas
- Building homes more quickly
- Making AI a national priority
- Attracting capital and deploying investment
- Building a skilled and adaptable workforce
- A better tax system
- Modernising government services.
He said there are hundreds of ideas submitted from the regulators in letters, which the government would release.
An additional category where the government can "act with some urgency" also emerged.
And there are areas that require much more work that will be worked through in future.
The context: Chalmers has spent the past three days chairing his Economic Reform Roundtable, originally announced back in June. It has covered resilience, productivity, budget sustainability and tax reform.
Participants in the roundtable, which has included business executives, union representatives, the tech industry, economists, policy experts, regulators and public servants, have described many of the discussions to Capital Brief as "positive" and collegiate overall, with Chalmers wanting to find consensus on challenging topics.
What they said: "At the front of all of our minds … not just over the last three days but every day is really the magnitude of the opportunity that we have to turn our recent momentum in the economy into lasting and enduring progress," Chalmers said at the press conference.
"For all of us, higher living standards is the holy grail and a more productive economy is how we deliver it."
"The hard work doesn't end ... we've got a lot of work to do together," he said.
The source: Treasurer press conference
