View from The Hill: How much can Jim Chalmers get out of the economic reform roundtable?

By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

We’re now less than a month away from the start of the Albanese government’s “economic reform” (aka “productivity”) roundtable, but it has become quite hard to get a fix on exactly what this gathering will amount to.

The guest list for the August 19-21 summit is obviously tight, given the government decided it wanted the meeting to fit into the cabinet room (so avoiding a more extensive “talkfest”).

But excluding the states and territories from a meeting that discusses deregulation and taxation means major players in these policy areas are not in the room (the NSW treasurer,…

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