This week’s Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra is ostensibly a moment of real political import.

Echoing Bob Hawke’s effort of the early 1980s – which brought government, unions, and business together and foreshadowed the major reforms of the era – the 2022 version seeks much the same.

This time, a group of 100 or so leaders from business, government and non-government sectors are being brought together ‘to address our shared economic challenges’ and to ‘recommend immediate actions and opportunities for medium and long-term reform’.