Abundance of caution
Abundance may be the government’s new bible, but Treasury is warning that deregulation alone won’t fix Australia’s structural problems.
With the Economic Reform Roundtable fast approaching, one outcome is already locked in: a war on red tape.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been publicly brandishing his copy of Abundance, the book by American authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which has seemingly been read by every Labor MP except Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Its central thesis — that decades of well-intentioned over-regulation by centre-left governments have stifled housing, infrastructure, innovation and the clean energy transition — has struck a chord within Labor. Chalmers has been given the green light to start pruning.
There will be no shortage of low-hanging fruit in the regulatory space when the roundtable convenes from 19–21 August, with productivity, economic resilience and budget sustainability on the agenda.
