Treasurer Jim Chalmers has convened his much-hyped Economic Reform Roundtable, a three-day extravaganza billed as the key to unlocking productivity, resilience, and budget strength, by bringing together business leaders, union bosses, academics, and policy wonks. What a crock.

Chalmers claimed this gabfest would forge consensus on bold reforms. He’d already declared victory before the curtain had risen, staring down the ‘grumps and cynics’ who dared to question its value. But let’s cut through the spin. Does it really take three days of catered deliberations to conclude that Australia needs to cut government spending?

Productivity isn’t some esoteric puzzle requiring endless panels and PowerPoints. It’s the driver of our standard of living, but it’s been stalled by Labor’s bureaucratic bloat and fiscal profligacy. Chalmers’ roundtable, with its leaked Treasury advice hinting at timid outcomes like freezing certain expenditures, reeks of the same old Labor playbook: consult, delay, and deflect.

What drives me mad is that Chalmers is pushing for Hawke-style consensus, trying to reinvent 1980s corporatism. Unions represent almost nobody nowadays, except protected workshops who live it up on the public purse while thumbing their noses at ordinary Aussies doing it tough. Hardly a consensus.

The Opposition … do we have an Opposition? I haven’t heard from them for ages.

Meanwhile, Senator Matt Canavan (along with his ‘Dark Nats’) is hosting his own counter-forum, zeroing in on energy prices as the real productivity killer. While this is a timely reminder that not everyone is buying the Treasurer’s consensus-building charade, I don’t think Canavan’s anime-style cartoons are doing the counter-point any favours.

DARK NATS EPISODE 1 pic.twitter.com/ca6awbogSe

— Senator Matt Canavan (@mattjcan) August 21, 2025

History offers stark lessons for Chalmers. Remember Ronald Reagan’s quip:

‘Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.’

Australia is living this nightmare. Our productivity growth has flatlined, dragged down by a public sector that’s ballooned to unsustainable proportions. Government spending as a share of GDP hovers around 26 per cent, funding everything from green energy Ponzi schemes to welfare expansions that discourage work.

The result? A workforce weighed down by red tape, high energy costs, and disincentives to innovate. Not to mention a sizable proportion of the population looking at ways to become disabled a la ‘King Size’ Homer Simpson achieving 300 pounds by eating ‘non-toxic’ plasticene to get on his company’s disability program. It beggars belief.

It doesn’t take a PhD in economics (or political science – the Treasurer and I share the same doctorate from the same university) – or three days in a conference room – to see the fix. Reducing government spending is all that needs to be done in the short term. Cut the fat from non-essential programs, streamline regulations, and let markets breathe. Thatcher did it in Britain, transforming a sick man of Europe into a dynamo by privatising, deregulating, and reigning in the state. Closer to home, the Howard-Costello era slashed debt and unleashed growth through fiscal discipline.

Yet Chalmers, flush with record terms of trade windfalls that have patched over a $100 billion budget hole, prefers summits over surgery. He doesn’t want to cut spending, he wants to increase it but needs to tax you more to achieve his socialist goals.

Critics will no doubt cry that spending cuts are heartless, ignoring the vulnerable. Nonsense.

Prudent fiscal policy protects the vulnerable by fostering a vibrant economy that creates jobs and lifts wages. Endless government intervention, by contrast, breeds dependency and stifles enterprise. The roundtable’s focus on ‘clean energy’ and AI risks? Without addressing the elephant in the room – bloated public expenditure – it’s just more hot air.

And the irony? This forum itself exemplifies the problem. Taxpayer-funded talk shops produce more reports gathering dust while real reforms languish. Chalmers might pat himself on the back for ‘building consensus’, but with unions representing less than 1 in 8 Aussie workers, they are given too much credence.

Australians deserve action, not aspiration. (Government giving us aspiration? Give me a break.)

Energy prices are soaring, and productivity is plummeting. That means our living standards are plummeting, too. It really is that simple.

In the end, productivity isn’t forged in forums, it’s unleashed by freedom. The Treasurer, should spare us the three-day spectacle. The decision to cut spending is as obvious as it is urgent.

Whoever is participating in the recent polls praising the performance of the Albanese Government must be hand-picked. There’s no way anyone would be cheering Labor on as our standard of living goes down the gurgler as Labor and their useful idiots cheer them on.

Three days of talk? Just cut the spending and get out of our headspace.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.