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August 19, 2025
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is eyeing a broader reform mandate as Labor leans into an ambitious economic agenda, using this week's high-powered roundtable to clear a path on tax and deregulation and to finally cough up the "hairballs" clogging the economy.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer will launch the three-day Cabinet room talks on Tuesday morning amid high expectations for concrete action on cutting red tape and slashing approvals.
The 23 people attending the roundtable will spend most of Thursday contemplating tax reform, after also examining ways to boost productivity and make the economy more resilient.
Dr Chalmers will tell them at the opening the roundtable is "about writing the next chapter of economic reform" and that he and the Government want their "concrete ideas".
"We want you to grapple with the same sorts of issues and trade-offs and opportunity costs we grapple with almost every week, as a group," he will say, according to notes of his remarks.
"This is an ambitious group, an ambitious government, an ambitious agenda."
The Treasurer wants the Government to move quickly where it can without necessarily taking big changes to an election.
Some things might be able to be done "relatively quickly", he said on Monday.
However, shadow finance minister James Paterson said Labor had no mandate to raise taxes. "A hand-picked roundtable in Canberra won't give them the mandate that they failed to earn from the Australian people at the election," he said.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher admitted the Government's existing agenda would be "rolling through alongside of this".
"If there are genuine areas where we think there's opportunity to strengthen the economy, to drive productivity, to get the Budget and continue to get the Budget in better shape, then we will take those opportunities," she said.
A Newspoll published in The Australian on Monday revealed that given a choice of increasing taxes or cutting spending to make Budget repair, 57 per cent of people thought tax hikes were the worst option.
Dr Chalmers said the only tax agenda the Government had now was the "top-up" income tax cuts it legislated before the election, and some form of road-user charge that has been in the works with the States for almost two years.
Anthony Albanese indicated some changes could be made without being put to an election.
"There's a range of things that could be done immediately. There are some things that will feed into Budget processes through our normal way that we operate. And there are other things that might be longerterm," he told Sky News.
"The job of reform is never done . . .We have a clear policy agenda, but we've also said that's not the limit of our ambition."
Participants including Cath Bowtell from IFM Investors and ACOSS head Cassandra Goldie warned Australia could not afford to waste the opportunity presented by the roundtable.
Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood said explaining how the cumulative effect of changes could help people in their day-to-day lives was vital to making the case for reform.
"Anyone that's trying to build a house, renovate that house, Phil's trying to put in a pool, has grappled with these challenges around the spread . . . of regulations," she said.
"Any young person who's trying to buy a house has seen the impacts of these policies over time. So we need to work in these areas where people are actually feeling the pain, in a real sense, in the economy."
The Opposition has warned it will set a red line on any intention to increase taxes, despite the Budget's structural problems from growth in health, defence and NDIS funding.
Senator Paterson feared the roundtable was "going to be a complete flop and not deal with any of the serious economic problems in our country".
Business groups have joined forces to urge a 25 per cent reduction in red tape along with better planning and approvals processes and more incentives for investment and innovation.
Ms Wood likened the regulatory pile-up after constant calls for governments to "do something" whenever an issue emerged to "hairballs (that) have found their way into almost every corner of our economy".
The theme was picked up by Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar.
"The time has come to cough up some of those hairballs. And I think if we can do that over the next three days, then we will all feel a lot better," he said.
The Productivity Commission has also suggested governments set a target to slash red tape. Dr Chalmers set three tests for scrapping regulations: when it was unnecessary, duplicated or didn't serve a useful purpose.