Experts Endorse EV Road Charge, Throws Doubt on Other Productivity Roundtable Outcomes

Support emerged for tariff cuts and EV charging, but AI focus, construction code pause, and immigration neglect drew strong criticism.

Electric vehicles (EV) line up outside a Tesla dealership in Melbourne, Australia, on April 19, 2023. William West/AFP via Getty Images

Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrapped up his much-hyped three-day productivity roundtable last week with agreement on ten priorities, from scrapping nuisance tariffs to introducing a road user charge for electric vehicles.

But while the government hailed consensus, some economists and commentators dismissed the outcomes as underwhelming and misdirected.

After the wrap, Chalmers said the 10 areas agreed upon included tariff reform, construction code changes, red tape cuts, a road user charge, national market integration, trade reform, tax equity, investment incentives, housing-related reforms, and AI regulation.

“There was 29 hours of discussion, in the end. There was, by our count, something like 327 different contributions made over the course of those three days,” he said.

Red Tape and Productivity Doubts

Gigi Foster from the University of New South Wales said she was positive about three priorities: reducing red tape, workforce development, and tax reform.

“On declining per capita productivity, again I’d point to over-regulation as one underlying cause that the government could perfectly well begin to address,” she told The Epoch Times.

Graham Young, executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, also spoke to The Epoch Times and warned that cutting red tape is easier said than done.

“There was an agreement to cut red tape, but that is easy to agree to, and difficult to enact,” he said.

He pointed to the pause on the new National Construction Code as an example of misplaced reform.

“That won’t improve productivity because industry currently operates without it, and when the pause ends, it will decrease productivity. The code is not about safety, but about things like energy efficiency and accessibility, which ought to be decisions left to the purchaser,” Young argued.

Roundtable Disappointments

Foster dismissed other priorities, including making AI a national focus, creating a single national market, and modernising government services.

“Those least-important three are mainly nice-sounding fig leaves using which government actors can hide favours to well-connected people while actually not delivering anything of real use or help to the Australian people,” she said.

Young was more blunt, calling the roundtable “deeply disappointing.”

He said Australia’s economy and tax system remained “on a knife-edge” due to heavy reliance on company tax and royalties from coal and iron ore exports to China.

“Apart from the risk of an economic downturn in that country, they neglected entirely the mercantilism of China, plus the fact that it is Australia’s biggest security threat,” he said.

He also criticised the omission of immigration from the discussions, calling the intake “unsustainable” and blaming it for historically high housing costs, inflation, and falling productivity.

“Whether you were born here or migrated here, without addressing this issue, the benefits of living in Australia will be eroded substantially,” Young said.

EV Tax Welcomed, Spending Limits Rejected

Both experts agreed on one point: support for a road user charge on electric vehicles. Young called it “long overdue,” noting it was a rare example of a practical measure.

Road User Charging (RUC) is a distance-based fee for drivers—particularly EVs and heavy vehicles—designed to fund road maintenance and infrastructure. While the policy drew broad support, no final model was agreed upon.

But Young said the government’s refusal to limit expenditure to a fixed percentage of GDP was a major concern since increasing such spending indicated a larger government sector, which in turn pushes the private sector out and lowers the economy’s efficiency.

“So higher taxes, bigger government, same level of red tape, no plan to diversify sources of national income, and increased demand for limited resources from immigration,” he said.

He concluded that the “only thing, apart from costs of EVs to change, appears to be the rhetoric.”

Coalition Joins Critics

The event also failed to impress the Opposition, which dedicated much of Question Time to criticising it.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley labelled the forum a “Canberra talk fest.”

She said the “best announcement” was Labor’s partial adoption of Coalition housing policies, such as the freeze on the Construction Code and a smaller-deposit scheme for first-home buyers.