Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher

JAMES GLENDAY, HOST: It's a big week of talking productivity and economic efficiency in Canberra, and I'm happy to say the Finance Minister and Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, joins us now from Parliament House. Minister, welcome back to News Breakfast.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Thanks for having me on, James.

GLENDAY: Now, the Treasurer has criticised what he calls grumps and cynics who have been questioning the point of this week's Roundtable. And I don't want to be labelled a grumpy cynic, I do want to know, though, do you have some ideas that you're going to take to this that you're essentially hoping will be endorsed at this Roundtable?

GALLAGHER: Well, I think some of the references the Treasurer is making there is to some of the cynicism around hosting this and that all, you know, ideas have been pre-determined, and that's not the case. It's a genuine meeting of civil society, the union movement, industry leaders and government to look at some of these challenges we've got across our economy and see if there's areas of consensus. And I think in the last couple of weeks, with all the coverage of the ideas and submissions that are coming forward to that meeting, you can see that there's no shortage of ideas. So, I think the hard work over the next three days is really to see which, if any of those, can there be some, you know, gathering around.

GLENDAY: Yeah, last week, though, the ABC was leaked a list of possible outcomes for this. So that would suggest not letting a thousand flowers bloom, you're kind of trying to focus people's attention. Are there a couple of things that you'd like to see come out of this?

GALLAGHER: Look, I think there's going to be an excellent discussion around AI. That's one of the areas that I've been looking at closely as Minister for Public Service. We're looking at how we kind of make sure we've got the systems and processes around the deployment of AI across our own government systems. But I think there'll be a broader discussion around the economy, how AI operates across the economy. And of course, as Minister for Women, I always like to be looking at how some of these ideas impact on women, and whether putting a gender lens across some of the discussions, I think will be particularly useful for me.

GLENDAY: Do you hope that there's a big list of things that are on the to do list at the end of this, some you can implement straight away, some that maybe are for down the track, some that are like longer term goals for reform?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, without pre-empting the discussions, I imagine if that is something that comes out of it that would be a great outcome. I mean, obviously the government's got its own mandate from the election. We've got our own platform we took to that. We're in the process of implementing that step by step. PM has been very clear about that, but, you know, we are hoping that there are areas of consensus that can come out of this meeting. I imagine there's been a lot of coverage of, for example, approvals around housing and how to make sure that we are dealing with that, and that's across, you know, whole level, all the levels of government, and more broadly. So, you know, there are, there will be definitely areas, I think, that will be able to move pretty quickly, and others that would be long term.

GLENDAY: Just on housing. By mid-next year, the median house price in Sydney, according to some forecasts, is expected to hit about $1.83 million. The median full-time worker earns about $90,000, how can people under the age of 40 in particular get really excited about productivity and making the economy more efficient when they can't afford to buy their own home?

GALLAGHER: Well, that's exactly the discussion that needs to be had around housing and for us, it's around the fact that we haven't built enough houses for decades in this country, and the fact that we have to look at how we speed that up and how we offer a range of housing options for people, whether that be from looking at how we deal with the supported home housing sector or affordable housing all the way to home ownership. And that's, you know, we went to the election with some policies around that, but there's definitely more work we have to do. It takes too long to build a house that adds to cost of housing, and we've got to make sure that we're tackling these issues, otherwise these problems will continue.

GLENDAY: Just lastly, Minister, we put this to the Treasurer last week, he was pretty clear that negative gearing and capital gains tax are off the agenda for this summit. The unions want a discussion about that. Welfare groups want a discussion about that. There are a couple of polls out today, though, suggesting that your government is as popular as it's ever been. Are you going to get a better time to make really difficult political decisions?

GALLAGHER: Where I sit, I feel like we make really difficult decisions all the time. But look, let's see, there's a discussion around tax, there's a discussion around budget sustainability, there's a discussion about economic resilience, there's a discussion about productivity. That will be had this week, and I have no doubt there will be ideas that come out of that, that, you know, will be hard across the economy, but we don't go in with any predetermined list. Let's see how those discussions go.

GLENDAY: Alright. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, we do appreciate your time.

GALLAGHER: Thanks, James.