KATINA CURTIS: Thickets of red tape holding back Abundance are in government’s sights

Jim Chalmers has read it, Clare O’Neil has read it, Chris Bowen has read it, Andrew Leigh gave an entire speech about reading it. Katy Gallagher is halfway through, and Daniel Mulino has it on his reading pile.

Even Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg is reading it – more to find out his opponents’ thinking than to seek advice – while his erstwhile colleague Jason Falinski wants his party to seize the “abundance agenda” as it searches for relevancy.

An abundance of ink has been spilled this past week about the book that’s shaping Canberra’s thinking.

Abundance, the 220-page manifesto from US reporters Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson about progressive politics and red tape, has sold out in the bookshops near Parliament, such is the hold it has taken on government.

Anthony Albanese hasn’t read it, but everyone else involved in shaping his economic agenda is on board.

Chalmers is “obsessed” with the way Klein and Thompson crystallise the thinking Australia’s economic ministers have been working on.

Scarcity is a policy choice, the argument goes, where the regulatory burden heaped on by well-meaning legislators ends up putting the country in stasis.

It asks, what do we need more of and how do we get it?

But it’s not the sole influence on Labor’s second-term agenda.

Chalmers has also been looking to the UK for inspiration, both current leader Keir Starmer and the thinking of veteran Labour figures.

You can hear the echoes of all this in the government’s rhetoric.

Starmer declared in a landmark speech in March he wanted to untangle bureaucracy, build houses faster and cut red tape costs.

The British Prime Minister spoke of his sense of urgency about delivering for working people and said he believed in the power of government.

Albanese has said now was a time “when government has to step up” while Chalmers has spoken of an “obsession with delivery”..

Already, Chalmers and Gallagher have written to regulators asking them to identify red tape to go – an approach one observer described as straight from the Starmer playbook.

Once you realise the “abundance agenda” is colouring the ministry’s thinking, you can see its hues all over the place.

Everyone is looking for the “good kind of deregulation” in order to speed things up.

There is a genuine desire in the housing and renewable energy spaces to clear away thickets of regulation.

O’Neil had already started efforts before the election to get housing approvals moving faster, urging State governments to streamline planning requirements and get out of the way.

Murray Watt continues work to get the reforms of environmental laws on track amid widespread acknowledgement the approvals system is broken.

The proof will be in whether the government can succeed in Chalmers’ aim to “get out of our own way”.