JIM CHALMERS: Let’s get cracking. Can I acknowledge Country and can I also say to treasurers and your teams from right around Australia, states and territories, welcome to Canberra. Thank you for this opportunity to engage with you. It’s a special meeting in a few ways but we have 3 new colleagues here and one new colleague who’s an apology. I wanted to acknowledge Chris, the new Treasurer of the ACT. I wanted to acknowledge Bill, the new Treasurer of the Northern Territory. I wanted to acknowledge David is over there, the new Treasurer of the best state in the Commonwealth – Queensland. And also in his absence, I wanted to acknowledge the new Treasurer of Tasmania, Guy Barnett, who’s not able to be with us today but will be joining us at the next occasion.
This is a good time to meet. This has been a pretty full‑on week here in the capital in terms of Commonwealth legislation. It’s a tribute to our colleagues in the Senate, particularly the Finance Minister Katy Gallagher that not that long ago, here in this building, last night 31 bills were passed as part of 45 bills passed just this week in the parliament, the last sitting week of the parliamentary year for us, and around a third of those 31 bills passed last night, 11 of the bills passed last night were Treasury bills and in areas where people around the table have been very helpful and very involved like competition policy, housing policy, as well as some of the other reforms that we were able to progress through the parliament last night.
What we’ve been able to show collectively here and as a government in the Commonwealth is an ability to stay focused on the main game for our people which is the cost of living and the fight against inflation, at the same time as we keep the wheels of economic reform turning and I see today’s meeting really in that light – an opportunity to advance on a number of reform fronts, whether it be competition policy, the productivity fund, thinking about housing and planning and also some of the big agreements that we’ve been discussing as well.
The best kind of economic reform is cooperative economic reform and we’ve got a terrific combination of treasurers from around the country, from different backgrounds, different parties, different perspectives, but the thing that unites us is we have a genuine interest in economic reform. It can be hard, as we know, getting things through the Senate, we know it’s hard in your own jurisdictions advancing economic reform, but I really wanted to say thank you for the partnership that we’ve been able to build when it comes to keeping the wheels of economic reform turning. It’s wonderful in that regard to have a couple of guests here today, Kerry Schott who’s with us, thank you Kerry for all of your work, really quite considerable, amazing work to help inform our reform agenda and also Andrew Leigh who’s here, my colleague from the federal parliament. I’m looking forward to discussing all of this with all of you.