Economic reform roundtable: Commbank boss, teal MP among 13 more names added to Jim Chalmer’s invite list

The Government has announced the next invitees to its upcoming roundtable for economic reform, including business leaders, major investors, and a mix of state and independent politicians.

The latest invitations include Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn, Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, and former Mirvac CEO and current Rio Tinto and Macquarie board member Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz.

States will be represented by NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, who also chairs the Board of Treasurers, while Western Australia is indirectly represented through former WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt, now a board member of Woodside. Former Queensland Labor Treasurer Andrew Fraser will also attend, in his roles as chair of the Australian Retirement Trust and chancellor of Griffith University.

Mr Fraser will help represent the powerful superannuation sector, while Cath Bowtell, a one-time Labor candidate, will speak for long-term capital as chair of super-backed infrastructure investor IFM.

Also attending is Kerry Schott, former head of the Energy Security Board, who brings deep infrastructure experience from her time at Sydney Water and is a current board member of AGL.

ACCC Chair Gina Cass Gottlieb will bring her much-respected expertise in competition, joining other senior officials including RBA Governor Michele Bullock, Productivity Commissioner Danielle Wood, Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson, and Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Steven Kennedy.

“The latest round of invitees includes expert voices on economic policy, leaders with broad industry and policy experience, and important perspectives from regulators, the public sector and the states,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement.

“It’s an outstanding group of people who we believe will make a big contribution to the future direction of economic reform. They are thought leaders chosen for their ability to contribute meaningfully across a broad range of areas and over each of the three days.”

They will join trade union leaders, peak industry groups and the head of the Australian Council of Social Service. Shadow Treasurer Ted O’Brien is also invited.

The list includes a sensible mix of investors, industry, and state officials, though the government treasurers represented are all Labor.

The standout additions are teal independent MP Allegra Spender and former Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry.

Dr Henry, who remarkably still has some hair despite his 2010 tax reforms being consigned to the too-hard basket, was a key adviser to Ms Spender’s tax ‘green paper’ released last year, suggesting the government may be quietly building consensus to revive some of those ideas.

One thing is clear: the Net Zero transition is firmly on the agenda. Dr Henry on Thursday excoriated lawmakers for ignoring ecological limits, calling out the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for failing both development and conservation.

“Our destruction of the natural environment now poses an existential threat to everything we value,” he told the National Press Club.

“Lifting productivity growth is going to require much better articulation of the natural constraints affecting the choices available to us.”

He now chairs the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, and Dr Schott is similarly focused—she chairs the Carbon Market Institute and recently led NSW’s Net Zero and Clean Economy Board.

The roundtable also reflects generational change, with most attendees from Generation X and a smattering of millennials, including Mr Mookhey and Ms Wood.

Matt Comyn and Scott Farquhar are firmly aligned with the renewable transition.

In its submission to the roundtable, CBA called for “an abundance of low cost, reliable, low emissions energy.”

“Australia’s abundant renewable energy resources provide an opportunity to develop new export industries such as green hydrogen, ammonia and green metals. Capitalising on these opportunities will require targeted policy to support domestic value-added manufacturing, and infrastructure investment to connect renewable generation to industrial demand hubs.”

Mr Farquhar, Australia’s fourth-richest person, is investing heavily in renewables through his private wealth vehicle, Skip Capital.

Spender, Henry and CBA have all argued the current tax system unfairly favours wealth over wages. As Comyn told The Nightly: “We’ve got to look at the balance between the imposition (of taxes) on labour versus on wealth.”

The CBA and Ms Spender have backed lower income tax, with Ms Spender also calling for bracket indexation. Dr Henry calls the government’s reliance on bracket creep and its failure to address housing affordability “wilful acts of bastardry.”

So far, the government has lost little political skin from its plan to tax super balances over $3 million. Even the inclusion of unrealised capital gains, which stirred up wealthy readers of subscription newspapers, failed to spark widespread resistance.

Labor is heading into the roundtable acutely aware of the youth vote, now the largest bloc in the country and reshaping political outcomes.

As Kos Samaras told The Nightly, millennials and Gen Z voters now outnumber boomers and are changing election outcomes, particularly in inner-city seats. Many are turning away from major parties and backing independents like Spender. Labor increasingly depends on preferences from such candidates, who channel younger voters’ concerns about housing, climate and fairness.

CommBank appears to be listening. “The next generation may be the first in modern history in Australia to be financially worse off than their parents,” it warned in its submission.

Dr Chalmers has primed the group to be bold, backed by an unredacted Treasury briefing that spelled out the need to either raise taxes or cut spending sets the tone.

With persistent deficits near $40 billion, soaring interest costs, and productivity stagnation, the country cannot simply grow its way out of trouble.

That’s problematic in a more uncertain world.

“The volatility and unpredictability and uncertainty is really a defining and ongoing feature of the global economy,” Dr Chalmers said Friday, referencing four major shocks in less than two decades.

The attendees have lived through the GFC and COVID, and now face the collapse of the global trading system that underpinned decades of Australian prosperity. They are facing a future will be shaped by climate change, AI disruption, and global power shifts.

One test of whether the government has the confidence to act will be acarbon tax, long backed by economists including Dr Henry, and supported by Ms Spender.

It will be interesting to see how Susan Lloyd Hurwitz and Ben Wyatt, directors of Rio and Woodside respectively, respond to that.

Insiders have told The Nightly, that the Government doesn’t want to be the one pushing these reforms from the top down.

Rather the hope is business and unions can agree on a policy which it can take to Parliament.

If so, the Government is continuing its small target philosophy that helped it win the last election

But this time, the real test will be whether those in the room have the courage to chart a bigger future.

As Mr Comyn put it: “We should be encouraging the Government and hopefully making it easier for them to bring those reforms through, because change isn’t easy.”