National cabinet is reaching the end of its fairly limited lifespan, proving less effective as a business-as-usual forum for Australian governments, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has said.
Mr Barr on Wednesday said the forum had been an effective mechanism in steering the pandemic response, as it had opened Prime Minister Scott Morrison up to a wider array of feedback than he would have solicited.
"It became a national civics lesson. I don't think most Australians had any idea that most service deliveries - almost everything that affects your day-to-day life - is delivered by state and territory governments, and the federal government is just a big money-churning machine. They don't actually do much, certainly in the domestic context. That's no criticism, that's just the way the constitution was structured," Mr Barr said.
Mr Barr said national cabinet was not the best vehicle to deliver long-term policy reform as it was "set up to enable quick responses at a political level to a crisis environment", and the former Council of Australian Governments was not a fantastic forum either.
"But - I'm possibly uniquely placed to say this - all of the policy reform work, all of the hard yakka that occurs, is among the treasurers, not the first ministers," Mr Barr, who also serves as ACT Treasurer, said.
The Chief Minister spoke at an event organised by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia at KPMG's Canberra offices on Wednesday, where he formally launched a four-year economic plan.
Mr Barr said the ACT government was "cautiously optimistic" about the post-COVID economic future for the territory, which had continued to record growth.
The new economic development priorities set three missions for the ACT government: giving Canberrans back more time, pushing the city beyond net-zero emissions, and growing the knowledge economy.
