Push to recognise overseas qualifications before unions and business clash on tax
Treasurer Jim Chalmers hailed the first day of the three-day Canberra talkfest as a moment of consensus on skills reform, prompting Labor to do an about-face and start drafting a joint statement of intent after last week downplaying expectations of any international summit-style statement.
As Chalmers prepared to oversee disputes over artificial intelligence at Wednesday's session, he lauded the collaboration of economists, captains of industry and workers' representatives, who he said had 'really risen to the occasion'.
But other sources in the closed-off cabinet room said the meeting was highly stage-managed. 'No one is challenging anyone,' one participant said on the condition of anonymity.
Former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe launched a significant attack on Labor's economic record, saying in a clip released as the roundtable began that Chalmers had spent more at a time when restraint was needed to bring down inflation.
'After COVID, we haven't really got back to a clearly articulated framework for decision-making with fiscal policy,' Lowe said in a video recorded a month ago and released on Tuesday by the University of NSW and think tank e61.
Noting that higher interest rates were the chief tool used to tackle inflation, Lowe said 'exercising discipline is not popular, and exercising restraint is not popular. It's much easier for the political class to say, if things need to slow, we'll get the central bank to do that with interest rates, and they can, they can take the blame.'
At the roundtable, there was broad backing for slashing another tranche of so-called 'nuisance tariffs' – tiny charges on imports which add to compliance costs and consumer prices.
But trade union bosses at the high-profile talkfest, including the ACTU's Sally McManus, raised concerns about acknowledging some foreign degrees and warned that industries would need to be protected if tariffs were removed.
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