Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government working with investors to address some of the nation's big economic challenges?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bendigo for her second question this week. She's now asked as many questions in four days as the member for Hume has asked me in more than four weeks. When we have our fair share of economic challenges—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Petrie is warned.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in this country and we have our fair share of constraints on the budget, it's more important than ever that governments work with investors in our economy to try to satisfy some of our big national economic objectives. There are ways that we can do that to ensure that investors get good returns for their investors and for their members when it comes to super funds at the same time as we address some of the big economic challenges that have been left unattended for too long in this country.

That's why tomorrow, for the first time, the Treasurer's Investor Roundtable will be convened in Sydney. The investor roundtable will bring together the four big banks, Macquarie, the industry funds, the retail funds, BlackRock, Blackbird, the Future Fund, representatives of the state treasurers and others to begin to deal with and take advantage of some of the big challenges and opportunities that are in our economy right now. Around the table in Sydney tomorrow there will be trillions of dollars of funds under management ready to find ways to get good returns at the same time as we address some of these challenges. The first order of business tomorrow will be the government's housing accord, and I pay tribute to the housing minister for her work on the housing accord as part of our broader sweep of housing policies, which are so important in dealing with one of the biggest economic challenges we have around housing affordability. The challenge is—when it comes to this particular part of the housing market that the housing accord will address—that, when we've got low unemployment in this country, we need to make to easier for people to live near where the jobs and opportunities are being created. At a time of low vacancy rates and high rents, we need to make it easier. So I welcome the interest of the big investors in this country—super funds, banks and others—as we try to work together to deal with this big economic challenge.

If we make progress here, and I'm confident that we will, there's nothing preventing us from turning to some of the other challenges in our economy, whether it's the challenges which have been left to us in energy markets, whether it's challenges in data or digital or whether it's recognising the opportunities in critical minerals and advanced manufacturing. There's a big opportunity here. Big investors in this country want to work with the government, the government wants to work with them, and we'll be getting on with it.