National Reform Summit good, bad and ugly - The Centre for Independent Studies
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National Reform Summit good, bad and ugly

forumOn Wednesday, KPMG hosted Australia’s opinion leaders at the National Reform Summit. Trade unions, business leaders, community and interest groups, even the odd think tank researcher, sat down for the day to try and break the reform gridlock and find some common ground across the political divide.

Having not been invited to awkwardly stand around the Prime Minister at the 2020 summit, this was my first experience with a grand coalition and, from my perch in what we dubbed Freedom Corner, it appeared the results were mixed.

The Good

The most positive element of the summit was the desire of senior figures on both sides for a serious discussion of policy, without shallow partisan bickering. That the media overwhelmingly responded with serious analysis of that policy debate was more heartening still.

One sharp little exchange occurred late in the day over tax, where in response to a chiding by ACTU’s Ged Kearney that former Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson was being too tricky by half, the ex-Treasury boss responded that he it wasn’t being tricky, it was “just economics”.

The Bad

Bad news for Treasurer Joe Hockey on tax reform, which is perhaps why he tried to gazump the summit with a renewed push for a republic. No-one listening to the debate on tax reform could mistake the vast distance between the two sides of the ideological divide on the topic.

It was as if the two groups were talking about completely different topics.

The left wanted only to discuss redistribution, fairness and soaking the rich for more revenue. The right wanted to talk about efficiency and competitiveness, particularly in relation to company tax.

The Ugly

A couple of disappointing notes: industrial relations barely rated a mention, with the union representatives making clear that they didn’t even want to discuss ‘low road’ reform that might involve lower pay and conditions.

And while a lot of comparisons were made to the OECD (mostly by the tax and spend brigade) almost no-one even mentioned Asia. So much for the Asian century.

On the other side, the absence of climate change from the summit statement raised some eyebrows.

However, the big unknown is how the politicians will respond. Will they take up the challenge of reform? Do they even still know how?

Simon Cowan is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, he co-authored the CIS submission to the National Reform Summit.