Chalmers slams ‘grumps and cynics’, insists roundtable aims for genuine ideas not rubber stamping Labor plans

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has hit out at the “grumps and cynics” of this week’s economic roundtable and insisted the motive is not to rubber stamp Labor-choreographed policies.

It comes as Anthony Albanese told reporters in Perth he was upbeat about the “full suite of issues” on the agenda, flagging “jobs of the future” and “responsible fiscal policy” as priorities.

The duo used Sunday media appearances to lambast Opposition skepticism that the roundtable was a “stitch up” orchestrated to endorse predetermined outcomes, insisting the Government was open to any ideas put forward.

“There will always be the usual kind of grumps and cynics who say the usual grumpy and cynical things about this,” Dr Chalmers said.

The PM added he would “make no apologies” for “opening up to ideas”.

“What we’re doing is inviting people to come in, from business, from unions, from civil society, to put forward their ideas about how we deal with the economic challenges of boosting productivity,” Mr Albanese said.

The Coalition intensified their concerns about the event after the ABC on Thursday published details of a leaked Treasury document which included recommended outcomes from the event.

The leaked pre-written list included advice to pause changes to the National Construction Code, a National AI plan, and clearing a backlog of home approvals under dated environmental laws. It made no mention of big tax reform.

But the Treasurer stressed the Government had not pre-empted any outcome and insisted the briefing was prepared based on ideas already put forward.

“We’re not pre-empting or predetermining the outcomes of the discussions that we’re having in the coming week, but we are preparing for them,” Dr Chalmers said at a press conference in Queensland on Sunday.

“I think it is entirely unsurprising that when people put literally hundreds of ideas to us, that the Treasury does the work on that.

“We’ll see if there’s consensus and momentum around some of those ideas.

“Not pre-empting the discussion in the coming week but certainly preparing for it.”

The Treasurer also flagged that his government had slashed hundreds of “‘nuisance tariffs” on imports.

“There are good reasons to swim against the tide a bit when it comes to tariffs, some of these nuisance tariffs in our economy, risk doing more harm than good,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“We’re very proud of that progress that we’ve been able to make unilaterally, because tariffs push up compliance costs on business.”

Shadow industry minister Alex Hawke slammed the Government for using minor policy tweaks to mask their lack of ambition on major policy reform.

“This Government doesn’t seem to have a big agenda on tax and the economy,” Mr Hawke said.

“They say, ‘oh, look, we’ve done these 10 tiny little things here that don’t impact a lot of people and they don’t raise any money, and that’s reform’.

“Well that is just a clean up of some pretty low hanging fruit and that isn’t a substitute for actual meaningful things that will get productivity moving.”

Shadow industrial relations Minister Tim Wilson warned the Government were not going to find “courage sitting around a round table”.

“You need to actually put proposals forward, debate them and take the Australians together,” he said.

Already, 900 submissions have been received and more than 40 off-shoot forums have been held ahead of the three day roundtable, which kicks off in Canberra on Tuesday.

Mr Hawke also slammed the guest list, accusing the Government of sacking it with Labor and union affiliates, saying “the union movement” was “aggressively front-running this summit”.

Nine of the 24 people invited are either current or former Labor MPs, union officials, or party-aligned professionals.

It includes former WA Labor treasurer Ben Wyatt, NSW Labor treasurer Daniel Mookhey, former QLD Labor treasurer Andrew Fraser and four union officials.

Dr Chalmers on Sunday said he was unsure of who had first pitched the idea between him and the PM but claimed the two were on the same page about their ambitions for it.

It comes after the pair had made contradictory statements in the lead up to their level of ambitions for the boardroom blitz, which was first labelled a productivity roundtable by the PM before being altered by Dr Chalmers to an “economic reform roundtable”.

“It came from a couple of discussions after the election. I’m not sure who first raised it, but we’ve been on the same page on this throughout,” the Treasurer said.