Critics within his own party say Jim Chalmers has been too timid in the government's first term. Chalmers wants to lead and own the narrative about Australia's future, similar to Paul Keating.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.In less than a decade, Jim Chalmers has travelled from the opposition backbench to the treasury portfolio.
His critics within the Labor Party describe him as timid and question whether he is being kept on the leash by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who favours incremental change. They ask where is the big bang reform that Keating delivered – think floating the dollar, opening up the banking sector to foreign competition, tearing down tariff walls, overhauling the tax system and more.
“At this stage, these guys look a lot like the Fraser government. There’s been a shock and they’re trying to be cautious, but there are huge challenges facing this country that have to be dealt with. They can’t be kept being put off.” One critic of Chalmers inside the ALP argues that he has been too cautious so far and that “everything Jim has done so has been done with one eye on the next job” – the prime ministership.Another MP states: “The criticism that is getting round, that he is no Keating, is really biting him and he doesn’t like it.”announced the biggest changes to merger lawsOrdinarily, that would be enough to grab reformers’ attention.
But just saying the word “reform” doesn’t mean you’re actually doing it, as a Labor-leaning economist who asked not to be named, says. Instead, it “belies the truth”.“There’s been little progress on aged care reform, though Anika Wells was brave enough to suggest some form of user-pays. On the NDIS, they’re just pretending to solve the problems. And there is the WA GST deal, which is a time bomb costing billions of dollars,” the economist says.
“Many of the issues we are grappling with didn’t exist in this form 30 or 40 years ago”: Treasurer Jim Chalmers.“The best way to align our economic and national security interests and deliver the next generation of prosperity is to make ourselves an indispensable part of the global energy transformation – and that’s a very different challenge to that navigated by previous governments, even the great ones.
“The bottom line isn’t that those tax issues are unimportant, it’s that people have turned them into the only thing that is important.”] is used to writing about.”That agenda has included the first major reforms to the Reserve Bank in more than a generation.. And Chalmers took a substantial risk in opposition to argue for the review that he put in place and which has generated the changes which are working their way through parliament.
Competition has been absent from the political agenda since the global financial crisis. Chalmers and his economic team are pressing ahead with reforms that could deliver long-term financial benefits while causing a huge political storm with vested financial interests.Next month’s budget is likely to contain major reforms to aged care where years of inaction by both sides of politics has left the Albanese government facing some politically dangerous but economically necessary choices.
“We have a 30-year productivity problem, and we have been here for two years; it can’t be fixed overnight,” Chalmers says.Chalmers is widely regarded as Albanese’s most likely successor and it’s easy to see why: he’s a working-class boy from Logan, sounds like a normal human being, has a photogenic family, the outsider’s background and the insider’s understanding of the Labor Party.
Ultimately, this is just a rejig to income tax thresholds and rates. It was never “tax reform” when the original plan was unveiled by Morrison, more simply returning bracket creep to workers. When Chalmers delivers the budget on May 14, the cuts will be portrayed as helping Australians deal with cost-of-living pressures. But that still doesn’t make it tax reform.
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