Good ideas strangled by red tape: Treasurer to crack down on bureaucracy
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted left-leaning governments are strangling their own good intentions with bureaucracy, arguing it is time to deliver supply side solutions to problems ranging from housing to renewable energy.
In his first extended sit-down newspaper interview since May's federal election, Chalmers has demanded regulators overseeing everything from the banking sector to consumer law identify regulations that can be axed or simplified to reduce costs and increase the pace at which the economy can grow.
Chalmers revealed the recently released book Abundance, which argues progressives need to re-think their overly rules-based approach to making the change they want, had been a wake-up call for the left of politics.
The book, by American journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, was 'doing the rounds' of the ministry and senior MPs keen take on board the authors' insights which include trying to strip red tape from scientific research and housing construction.
Chalmers said the upcoming productivity roundtable would tap into the ideas outlined in Abundance.
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'I mean the fascinating thing I found about Abundance was basically, even if you have quite a progressive outlook, we've got to stop getting in our own way,' he said.
'We want good things to happen, we've got to stop strangling good things from happening. I think that's very, very compelling for us.
'It's confronting for us because it's a kind of a – the term 'wake-up call' gets used a bit too easily – but there's a sense of at what point do we start getting in our own way, preventing good things from happening because of an abundance of good intentions.'
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