Twenty of Australia’s major environmental organisations have called on Treasurer Jim Chalmers to give greater weight to environmental concerns during this week’s three-day economic reform roundtable.
In a letter to Chalmers and Environment Minister Murray Watt, the groups, including the Australian Land Conservation Alliance, BirdLife Australia, and WWF Australia, said urgent nature-based investment and reforms were needed.
Without them, they warned, the decline of Australia’s natural capital would weaken productivity, economic growth, and disaster resilience.
The coalition of groups urged the government to strengthen environmental laws, phase out subsidies that harm the environment, and establish an independent environmental regulator.
They also argued that nature should be treated like other economic assets, with its condition measured and tracked to forecast how its decline will affect jobs, exports and living costs.
In addition, they called for increased funding for environmental programs from both the government and private sector.
Treasurer Optimistic on Reform Agenda
The roundtable, beginning on Aug. 19, is designed to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to chart reforms for the economy. Chalmers told reporters it was “all about building consensus and momentum.”
“We’ve been working really hard in the lead up to this round table, and I’m confident that all of the effort that’s gone into this has already been worth it,” he said during an address on Aug. 18.
He described weak productivity growth as one of the country’s most pressing issues.
“This productivity challenge has been bedevilling our economy for a couple of decades now, the weakest decade for productivity growth in the last 60 years was the Coalition decade,” Chalmers said.
Despite this, he said he was confident the talks would lead to a constructive outcome.
“I’m optimistic that there is an appetite for reform. There is ambition when it comes to dealing with the three major challenges in our economy, productivity, first of all, but also economic resilience and also budget sustainability as well,” he said.
Chalmers indicated he would outline broad reform directions at the conclusion of the roundtable, but did not commit to a timeline for implementing changes.
“I’ve tried to be really careful not to pre-empt the discussions of the reform roundtable. We have obviously done a lot of preparation, but the timing of any changes that come out of these discussions will be driven in part by the magnitude of the changes which are being proposed,” he said.
The treasurer also dismissed suggestions of any tax hikes.
“We went to the election having cut taxes once and proposing to cut taxes two more times. We cut taxes last year, we’re cutting them next year. We’re cutting them the year after,” he said.
