Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers hopes the upcoming Intergenerational Report provides some long-term thinking about how to make Australia stronger than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, unlike last month's budget.
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The five-yearly IGR was first introduced in 2002 by former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello and aimed to detail economic and demographic trends over the next 40 years, while analysing their impact on government finances.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is due to hand down his version this month after being delayed by a year.
"We've barely heard a peep about it. This doesn't give me confidence that it's treated as a priority or an opportunity," Dr Chalmers told parliament in a speech on Wednesday.
"Given the form of those opposite we have low expectations for anything other than another partisan exercise designed to justify harsher cuts to Medicare and the NDIS."
He believes the IGR should be an opportunity to improve the long-term thinking that could drive a resurgence in growth, job security, wages and broad-based prosperity.
He wants the IGR elevated in its importance so it is released in the middle of each three-year parliamentary term on an agreed consistent template, supplemented by more topical analysis.
"It could do a much better job measuring what matters - like a permanent focus on intergenerational disadvantage, geographic disadvantage and economic mobility, alongside traditional economic measures," Dr Chalmers said.
"Climate change and energy should be a permanent fixture as well."
He says for the second time in just over a decade, Australia risks outperforming in a crisis and underperforming in its aftermath.
"Without a comprehensive vision for economic reform it is unlikely that economic growth, living standards and incomes will perform any better over the next 40 years than they have in the last five," he said.
He said while beginning as a "great idea" under Mr Costello, the 2015 version of the IGR under the Abbott government was just a political exercise to try and justify its horror 2014 budget.
He said even before COVID-19, it was clear the government had got its projections wrong, and ignored changes like climate change altogether - one of the key intergenerational threats to the economy and the budget.
Australian Associated Press
