Jim Chalmers has declared it is “absurd” to think the Albanese government in 2023 will be a photocopy of the Hawke and Keating governments in the wake of a sustained backlash against his new essay championing values-based capitalism.
The treasurer says the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his summer think piece, published by the Monthly last month, is out of step with sentiment in the investor community and also reveals a disconnect between some opinion leaders in Australia and cutting-edge economic policy analysis overseas.
Chalmers used a speech to a Labor-aligned thinktank on Sunday to outline his policy agenda for the opening of the new parliamentary year, confirming he would release a tax expenditure statement later in the month, a review of the Reserve Bank of Australia in March, and an intergenerational report and a wellbeing framework later in the year.
With parliament to sit on Monday in the first session after the summer recess, Chalmers said he was pursuing “important steps” on sustainable finance, a “new focus” for the Productivity Commission, work on regulating crypto and payments, while pursuing a housing accord with the housing minister, Julie Collins.
He said high inflation would be the government’s main economic focus, and his priorities in the May budget would be providing cost-of-living relief, growing the economy in a more inclusive and more sustainable way, and repairing the budget to enable more generous social policy spending, including on Medicare and aged care.
Chalmers also addressed the sustained controversy around the summer essay. The treasurer signalled in the 6,000-word piece he wanted to expand the opportunity for “impact investing” while pressing ahead with regulatory reforms, including a “new taxonomy” to help investors “align their choices” with the government’s more ambitious emissions reduction targets.
On Sunday, Chalmers characterised the backlash on the opinion pages of national newspapers as, largely, “hyperventilating from the usual suspects – some with such intensity it seemed they might spontaneously combust” – although he joked the attention was likely better than “being ignored”.
During a question and answer session on Sunday at the Chifley Research Centre conference, the treasurer said “there’s a contrast between some of that coverage and what you pick up in investor circles”.
“People get into habits. I think people get into a habit of what their views are, and some habits were formed some time ago. That is not the case in the investor community and the international community, so I think there is a bit of a disconnect there.”
Some of the criticism portrayed Chalmers’s support for values-based capitalism as a departure from Labor’s policy approach in the 1980s and 1990s. But the treasurer said the Albanese government would not be a facsimile of past Labor governments because the current government had to rise to meet contemporary challenges rather than mimic the shibboleths of the past.
“My view about the changes of the last 40 years is there is much to commend, particularly in the Australian context, particularly when it comes to the Hawke-Keating legacy,” Chalmers said on Sunday.
“But our job now is to make our own way in the 2020s, in this defining decade.” He said the “same things that worked for Paul in 1983 are not going to be the same things I reach for in 2023”.
Chalmers said people expecting he would be a carbon copy of Keating as treasurer was “as absurd as someone saying to Paul when he fronted up to the Treasury for the first time 40 years ago and saying what we need to do is a photocopy of Ben Chifley’s policies as treasurer 40 years earlier.
“You can believe in markets, you can believe in the important role of the private sector as I do … but what we need to do is a much better job of working out how do we better design and define and inform our markets so that we get the right kind of economic outcomes but also, ideally, outcomes that align with our values and our society.”
