The upcoming Economic Reform Roundtable offers policymakers a unique opportunity to take stock and wholistically consider the significant economic issues facing Australia.

To help inform discussions at the Roundtable, this e61 Policy Report highlights relevant e61 research, and potential policy directions, aimed at achieving the Roundtable’s stated goals of improving resilience, productivity and fiscal sustainability.

To achieve these goals, we provide policymakers with recommendations in four key areas:

• Fostering a more dynamic labour market through removing unnecessary impediments to labour mobility, and focusing on protecting workers not jobs.

• Better managing the trade-offs involved in the growing formal care sector by targeting assistance to those most in need and removing impediments to productivity gains in the sector.

• Improving the efficiency and resilience of the Australian tax system through broadening the base of income and expenditure taxes.

• Enhancing the quality and efficiency of government services through rethinking the State-Federal relationship and encouraging devolution of service delivery to States where better placed.

This Policy Report also provides context to e61’s two-page submission to the Economic Reform Roundtable, which can be found below.

Decisions made, and processes established, at the Economic Reform Roundtable should not be seen as the end of the work, nor the only work, required to improve resilience, productivity and fiscal sustainability. Ongoing effort and commitment by governments at all levels will be needed to succeed in this difficult reform area. Additionally, many of the problems and potential solutions are not fully understood. Future e61 research aims to shed light on some of these key areas, including in business dynamism, skills and education, housing, social policy and overall fiscal policy.