Firstly, congratulations to the Uni-Norths Rugby Club on winning their way through to their first-ever first-grade grand final since the OWLs were formed by Norths amalgamating with Uni (ANU/Canberra Uni). They had a comprehensive victory in the major semi over Royals, 59 to 19. Both clubs have had a good year, and the first-grade competition has been very competitive with all six teams dangerous on their day.
It seems Albo and Treasurer Jim Chalmers are hoping to emulate Bob Hawke and Paul Keating’s initial summit, which set the groundwork for record-breaking reforms to Australia’s financial system and kick-started our growth and rising prosperity for the next 25 years.
Government, business and unions all played a constructive role in this, and the then Opposition welcomed the reforms. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case this time.
For starters, the ACTU has flagged some ambitious claims that will stymie productivity and growth. Less work for the same pay is what they are fundamentally offering with their ambit claim for a four-day work week. The amount of government red and green tape has grown tremendously in size since the 1980s. Excessive red and green tape crushes enterprise, employs more public servants (who do not create or make anything), and discourages investment. Albo boasts that he has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but save for 20,000 new jobs, all of them are public service jobs.
People need to be encouraged to work more, not less. Businesses, especially new businesses, need incentives — cheap land to enable them to set up, tax breaks like no payroll tax for five years, or perhaps no payroll tax at all. (I thought the GST was meant to do away with payroll tax.) The 24 people at this forum need to think outside the square.
Countries where business was encouraged and government restrictions and impediments to growth were removed tend to go ahead in leaps and bounds. Trump’s business-oriented approach in his first and now second term, and the resultant increase in productivity and growth in the US, are testimony to this approach. The UK economy in the 1980s boomed as a result of the business-friendly approach Margaret Thatcher took. I heard yesterday that, as a result of some dramatic action taken by the colourful new Argentinian president — who travels down the back end of the plane with the plebs when he flies — that former basket-case economy is now going gangbusters. He has apparently reduced the number of public servants by half.
During the last Liberal government in the ACT (1994 to 2001), we compensated for the loss of 10,000 federal public servants (in 1996) by incentivising the private sector to invest in Canberra. This was achieved by such initiatives as rates and payroll tax holidays, and cheap grants of land — at no cost to the Territory. This helped create 29 new businesses we didn’t have before, all but three of which survived and prospered, and in three years created 9,990 new jobs — all in the private sector. We need some lateral thinking at this summit. All attending must be prepared to compromise and be realistic.
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