In the abstract, Jim Chalmers cutting red tape for productivity in Australia makes perfect sense. But at the human level, the case for intervention is compelling.
The curtain has fallen on the treasurer’s economic roundtable, otherwise known as “Canberra Coachella”; a nod to the annual music festival held in the Colorado Desert in California where the cool kids soak in the dust and determine the latest shape of western pop culture.
Last week’s beat was set by the American alt-lib duo Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, whose Abundance manifesto has become the new black among progressive legislators and technocrats.
There’s no denying their melody is compelling – the idea that while the conservative right might seek to tear government down, the erstwhile left tends to love government to death; every political campaign a heroic battle for another piece of regulation that slows down the march of progress.
They note that in the US the bluest states have the highest rates of homelessness, that environmental protection laws are slowing the clean energy transition and that, if government wants to solve the pressing problems we face, it needs to get out of its own way for true abundance to be shared.
You don’t need to strain the ears too hard to identify the same beat infusing last week’s Canberra geek-fest with a pause on building standards, streamlining environmental laws and light-touch regulation of the emerging AI technologies to kickstart productivity.
According to the latest Guardian Essential report, the public is open to calls for paring back regulation.
But Canberra’s specific policy outputs risk hitting the bum notes inherent in this groove because without a subtle hand “abundance” just becomes a new way of serving up free market’s greatest memories and latest hits.
This is most pronounced in the current fetish with “supply-side” interventions to the national housing challenge where a cocktail of perverse investor tax incentives, poorly planned immigration and the collapse of social housing and cheap rentals has rendered property beyond the reach of most young people.
The roundtable’s agreement to suspend a national construction code deigned to improve the sustainable, environmental impact and accessibility of new homes is the cheapest and least onerous path government can possibly take; far simpler than addressing these structural issues.
The “abundance” soundtrack has also been played to justify overriding community control of local development plans, most brazenly in the New South Wales government’s play to demolish neighbourhoods across Sydney in its pro-developer free for all.
Similar risk emerges with environmental safeguards around the rapid rollout of renewable energy projects required to meet the ambitious targets now required to address decades of climate inertia.
As roundtable participant and former Treasury secretary Ken Henry has rightly argued, the solution is not to remove regulations but to harmonise them.
The quest for abundance is hitting an even more insidious tone when it comes to industry calls for a light touch regulatory approach to AI, fuelling a naive optimism that is proving infectious with economists and policymakers.
It’s here where the public response to the abundance doctrine gets interesting; with most Australians dancing to a different beat, saying they want more rather than less regulation on housing, environment and AI.
This gap between the idea of a shared abundance driven by regulatory nihilism and the reality of broken sectors where we don’t trust the free market to deliver outcomes that are in our interests is the real creative tension that emerged from the roundtable.
Resolving these contradictions is where the serious work of government begins. Rather than falling into crude regulatory binaries, the trick might be in devolving power down to those most affected; communities, workplaces and industries that bear the brunt of change.
If there were green shoots to emerge from last week’s discussions, it’s the agreement between the tech industry and the ACTU to work to address the illegal exploitation of creative content that is underpinning AI’s large language models.
A final question in this week’s report shows this very specific piece of regulation has even higher levels of support than generic regulation of AI.
The tables show a shift in attitudes to the role of government regulation; in the abstract cutting red tape makes perfect sense; drilled down to specific sectors it becomes gnarlier; at the human level the case for intervention is compelling.
For every act or omission a government chooses to take, there are consequences that build on themselves until they take on a form of their own.
The generous takeout from the roundtable is that the government and its chosen inner circle have taken it on themselves to untangle some of the blockages that they believe are holding the nation back. But in doing so they will also be accountable for the gaps they create.
Fun fact: the first Coachella was held when Pearl Jam decided to stage its own event off-grid to evade the tentacles of the corporate predator Ticketmaster. In culture as in politics, transformation comes in imagining new realities rather than submitting to the inevitability of business as usual.
Whether “abundance” is just a one hit wonder or a new model for progressive politics will be determined in its adaptation.
Written by Peter Lewis, originally published in the Guardian, 27 August 2025