silverguide.site –

Jim Chalmers cuts a lean figure in his Parliament House office, and, unusually for a man of such apparently limitless energy, a weary one.

It’s days out from the most consequential Labor budget in a generation, but I open with a remark about how he recently told a journalist that he had shed 17 kilograms – you can see it in his face.

“I basically just, I woke up after Christmas and just thought, this is the year I’m going to get on top of it,” Chalmers tells Guardian Australia, adding it was mostly about cutting out the late-night work take-away food.

“A lot of people assume wrongly that it was the jab,” he volunteers, sensing the unasked follow-up question. “And no judgement at all about that,” he shrugs; people talk, and they may as well have the facts.

Our federal treasurer sets himself a punishing pace, and we are down to a final sprint to Tuesday at 7.30pm when he steps up to address the parliament and the Australian people.

For all the bold talk, the approach to reform under Anthony Albanese’s government has been incremental.

Small but meaningful steps to tweak superannuation concessions for the very wealthiest. Or, famously, taking “bite-sized chunks” with tax reform that are easy for the public to digest.

This budget will be different, Chalmers reckons.

“This is is the most ambitious budget of the five that I’ve handed down, also the most responsible and [with] the highest degree of difficulty,” he says – and not for the first time.

The US-Israel war on Iran has threatened to overshadow and derail Labor’s second-term agenda, sending fuel prices through the roof in March.

The panicked buying that left petrol stations empty has passed, and the government’s announcement this week of a $10bn plan to expand the nation’s skinny fuel reserves passed with relatively little fan fare.

But that doesn’t mean the news cycle isn’t dominated by the swings between hope and despair about a peace deal that will open the strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump casts a long shadow over the world.

“Every day there’s been substantial, substantial volatility in the global oil price. And so in lots of ways, we’re hostage to decisions taken in [Washington] DC and Tehran,” he says.

A reformist legacy at stake

The Albanese government is keen to sell its reformist agenda amid criticism that it risks wasting a thumping parliamentary majority at a time when the public appears desperate for change, if unwilling to pay for it.

There is “a real urgency for economic reform” that has to be responded to, despite the “rollercoaster” of news from the Middle East. After all, it seems like we have entered an era of almost perpetual crisis, he says.

“And that has made it a much more difficult budget to put together. But the thing that I’m really proud of is we haven’t used those international developments as an excuse not to do some of the bigger, harder reforms in the budget.”

The pre-announced “hard decisions” include a major overhaul to the NDIS that will save an estimated $35bn over four years, and a phased scaling back of the electric vehicle discount.

Chalmers repeats the promise of a “substantial tax reform package” under the banner of intergenerational fairness amid a growing despondency that our kids will be worse off than previous generations.

This tax package is headlined by mooted changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, and could include some additional income tax relief.

“These intergenerational anxieties are well founded, and we take them seriously enough to take some difficult decisions to try to address them.”

With unaffordable homes at the heart of these anxieties, Chalmers flags further measures will be revealed on budget night.

“We are concerned about the long-term decline of owner-occupiers in the market, and particularly the way that that is concentrated among younger people and younger families.

“We’ll have more to say about housing in the budget; but, overwhelmingly, our focus is on supply, building more homes for more people, making sure that there are more affordable options for people.”

Then there’s productivity – the catch-all word that encapsulates a declining economic vibrancy that is dragging on the country’s prosperity.

In a pre-budget “drop”, Chalmers on Friday night announces a raft of pro-growth reforms to slash red tape which he says will deliver a $13bn boost to the economy.

The unsexy stuff

The “productivity package” includes a laundry list of measures, like making it easier for migrant trade workers to start work by accelerating occupational licensing, and simplify building regulations.

The $20,000 instant asset write-off will be made permanent for small businesses, and the government will make it easier for firms to operate across state lines, including by making more product standards consistent between jurisdictions.

The reforms, which respond to many of the reform areas identified in the Productivity Commission’s “five pillars” inquiries, will together reduce regulatory costs by $10.2bn a year, the government estimates.

The national conversation is often centred around the “big bang reforms” of previous eras that are now hard to replicate – as they say, you can only float the dollar once.

That means the path forward is by taking a myriad, smaller steps, as Jo Masters, the chief economist at Barrenjoey, told a Women in Economics event at the National Press Club this week.

“Red tape and regulation are perhaps not headline grabbing, but can really make such a material difference in our economy”.

Still, even moving in the right direction will not be enough to get us where we need to go, so great is the gap between where we feel we are and where we feel we should be.

There remains the fear that this budget will be “good”, but not good enough to meet the moment.

Will it be enough?

Chris Richardson, an independent economist, says he hasn’t seen a political or policy opportunity like this in his lifetime. It’s an opportunity he does not believe the government is seizing.

“To be fair they are doing more than I thought they would do,” Richardson says.

But “doing better than the last lot” is too low a benchmark, he says, especially when set against the fact that over the past two decades our living standards have grown by only a third as much as the average in the rest of the rich world.

“Are we doing a bunch of necessary changes? Yes. Is that better than we have seen for many years? Also yes. Will history judge it enough? No.”

After being hustled out of the treasurer’s suit of offices, I get back to my desk to find an email.

The next morning Chalmers’ media team have organised a photo opportunity from 5:45am for candid shots of our treasurer doing his morning run up and down the hill to Parliament House.

I check, at that time the sun won’t be up for another hour.

The treasurer is putting in the hard yards. It remains to be seen how his budget will measure up to the challenge.