Treasurer Jim Chalmers says ‘not surprising' Australia's birthrate has slowed but rejects bringing back baby bonus

News.com.au

3 days ago

Jim Chalmers says it's 'not surprising' Australia's birth rate has slowed given the 'financial pressures' on families, however, he has rejected calls to bring back the Costello-era $3000 baby bonus in favour of 'better, more enduring ways to support parents'.
The comments come ahead of Labor's highly anticipated Economic Reform Roundtable, which will bring business and unions groups to Canberra for three days of intensive discussions on how to lift Australia's sluggish productivity rate.
'It's not surprising that the birth rate has slowed given the pressures on people, including financial pressures,' he told NewsWire.
'We want to make it easier for them to make that choice. If they want to have more kids, we want to make it easier for them to do that, and that's what motivates a lot of our changes.'
However, as Australia struggles to boost the economy, and in turn raise wages and living standards, it's also contending with a sluggish birth rate of 1.5 births per woman, which is under the 2.1 figure needed to sustain population growth.
Boosting productivity was also essential to ensuring that Australia's ageing population could weather economic headwinds, the Treasurer said.
'Now, the reason why the productivity challenge is important to this is because our society is ageing, and over time, there will be fewer workers for every person who's retired,' he said.
'We need to make sure that our economy is as productive as it can be, as strong as it can be to withstand that demographic change, which is going to be big and consequential.'
Mr Chalmers also spurned calls from former Liberal prime minister John Howard to resurrect the $3000 baby bonus cash incentive bought in by his treasurer Peter Costello in 2004.
The Queenslander's parliamentary colleagues have advocated for other measures to spur a baby boom, including Nationals senator Matt Canavan's proposed $100,000 loans for first-time parents to buy their first home.
Parliament's maverick father of the house Bob Katter also proposed incoming splitting for parents so they paid less overall tax.
For example, a household where two parents earn a combined income of $150,000 pays about $10,000 less tax than a household with a single worker pulling in $150,000.
Instead, Mr Chalmers said Labor's supports were 'more enduring,' pointing to policies like guaranteeing three days of subsidised child care for families earning less than $533,280, increasing paid parental leave to 25 weeks, and paying super on government-funded parental leave to tackle the gender superannuation gap.
'That policy from a couple of decades ago was a one-off payment, and we found ways to support parents which is meaningful and enduring, not one off. That's the main difference,' he said.
'Our political opponents … haven't said how they would fund that, how they would pay for that, whereas we've been carefully budgeting all this help for parents in our budgets and providing that in an ongoing way.
'We're always in the market for ideas about ways to support families. We've got all this cost-of-living help rolling out, (like) all the childcare changes. All of that, I think, demonstrate a willingness on our part to support families (in making) decisions about whether they want to have kids or have more kids.'
Mr Chalmers says the 'generational anxiety' plaguing Australia youth simultaneously contending with rising house prices and inflation will also be a touchstone ahead of the economic reform roundtable, which at one point was called the productivity roundtable before it was quietly changed.
He concedes productivity can 'sound like a cold lifeless piece of economic jargon' but explains the metric is 'about efficiency' and 'about how we make our economy stronger to deliver for more people so that they can earn more and get ahead and be better off'.
Generational equality has also fuelled some of the roundtable's more controversial submissions, including the Australian Council of Trade Unions' call to limit negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions on just one property by the next five years, and teal Wentworth MP Allegra Spender's overhaul of the tax system that she says is overly reliant on income taxes.
The ACTU has also reiterated calls for a four-day work week, while the Productivity Commission irked business bodies with calls for a new 5 per cent cash flow tax and a road user charge to ensure EV drivers, who skip the fuel excise, also contribute to road upgrades.
How to best handle the opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, while mitigating the risks and job losses, will also be debated on day two; however, Mr Chalmers is quietly optimistic.
'I think one of the big challenges, broadly, but especially for young people, is how they adapt and adopt technology, so a big focus will be how do we skill people up to use artificial intelligence so that it's it works for them, not against them, particularly in the workplace,' he said.
Mr Chalmers will use talks to create consensus on what he says is the 'most transformative influence on our economy and our lifetime', and while he doesn't want to pre-empt decisions, education settings and regulation will likely be immediate action points once talks end on Thursday.
'(AI) has to change the way we think about skills and capabilities, and I'll work closely with colleagues in the education portfolios, the industry portfolio and elsewhere to make sure that we've got the settings right,' he said.
'Whether it's regulation, whether it's education, in a whole bunch of areas, governments have to catch up and keep up with the accelerating pace of technological change.'