Ditching economic jargon for simple explanations makes reform possible

Ahead of last week’s economic reform roundtable, I wrote in The New Daily that the Australian people will support controversial policies if the government spends ample time explaining the problem.

I cautioned against engaging in techo-talk such as increasing productivity growth, which working Australians equate with working harder and losing their jobs altogether.

Yet in wrapping up their reporting on the roundtable, most journalists preferred to describe the three-day event as a “productivity roundtable” – from a small sample I took, the ABC (three times), The Guardian, The Conversation, the Nine Network, The Australian, Crikey and The Financial Review.

Isn’t it the media’s job to speak in terms the public will understand?

In his closing media conference, Treasurer Jim Chalmers barely used the productivity word.

He made one flurry of three references to productivity in response to a journalist who used it three times in a single question. At least Chalmers can’t be accused of not answering the question.

This might all seem a bit pedantic, but the adoption by politicians of words used by technocrats – who are totally entitled to use them – instead of converting them into everyday language, can cause a massive communication problem with the electorate.

Is it any wonder that voters routinely describe politicians as being out of touch?

When I arrived as a young economic adviser in the Hawke office in June 1986, the government was explaining to the community that we needed to cut spending because the terms of trade had fallen by 3 per cent.

The problem with this language, I argued, was that everyday Australians didn’t know what was meant by the terms of trade, and 3 per cent seemed a small number.

By the election campaign speech in 1987, Hawke’s explanation was much clearer, speaking of: “The loss of $9 billion in our national income … a collapse in world trade that has now cost every Australian family $2000.”

Treasurer Paul Keating was even more succinct, having warned on a restaurant wall phone in an interview with John Laws that Australia risked becoming “a banana republic”.

The purpose of these recollections is not to take a trip down Memory Lane but to remind us of the importance of explaining problems to the Australian people in their language – not in the insiders’ economic language – if they are to be persuaded to support policy changes.

In my most recent TND column, I set out my effort in describing the purpose of the economic reform roundtable:

“In our ageing population, where we still have lots of poverty, domestic violence and child abuse, we need government revenue to care for those who cannot care for themselves. But the tax burden is too heavy on workers who have tax taken out of their pay packets, and young people are finding it too hard to get into a home. By continuing to grow the economy, we can gain the necessary revenue without running big budget deficits.”

Some variation of this, and a single sentence derived from it, should be the subject of media interviews, social media posts and podcasts by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, other ministers and the entire caucus.

As wise political advisers have pointed out, just when our leaders are about to vomit from saying the same thing, voters are just beginning to hear it.

The message could be better crafted than my effort, but it must precede taking controversial policy measures.

It could be distilled as seeking fairness between younger and older generations – young people pay too much tax and can’t afford to get into a home, while many older people have multiple homes and other forms of wealth enabled by tax shelters.

The Albanese government is onto this. Controversially, it restructured the Coalition government’s stage-three tax cuts that had favoured high-income earners to a new scale that benefits lower- and middle-income earners.

And its final piece of legislation before calling the 2025 federal election was to provide further tax relief to those same taxpayers. The Coalition voted against both measures.

So far, the government is doing a pretty good job of explaining the problems it is trying to fix.

The Coalition’s vociferous opposition simply serves to amplify the government’s message.

If voters conclude the government is on their side and not on the side of privileged baby boomers who constitute most of the Coalition’s support base, then reform will not only be possible, it will also be strongly supported.