Initiative by party’s thinktank, the Chifley Research Centre, is in partnership with the Clinton-linked Center for American Progress

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Labor’s thinktank, the Chifley Research Centre, will on Tuesday launch a new inclusive prosperity commission to help shape the opposition’s economic policy development process in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

The initiative, to be undertaken in partnership with the Clinton-linked US progressive thinktank, the Center for American Progress, will be headed by an advisory group of seven commissioners, which includes the former group chief executive officer of National Australia Bank, Cameron Clyne, trade union boss Dave Oliver, social researcher Rebecca Huntley, and the executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence in Melbourne, Tony Nicholson.

The project will be led by the Chifley Research Centre executive director, Michael Cooney, and Wayne Swan, the former treasurer, who recently renominated for his Queensland seat of Lilley.

The commission will be launched on Tuesday at Labor’s two-day national policy forum, which is currently discussing the party’s draft national platform for its national conference due in July.

Internal tensions loom over a binding vote on same-sex marriage, the current policy on asylum seekers, future recognition of Palestine and economic issues, like free trade.

Swan’s decision to continue on in politics for another term has also sparked some internal disquiet, with some Queensland colleagues suggesting he is intent on lining up a return to the frontbench.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said on Monday he was pleased Swan had decided to renominate given he was a “welcome contributor” – but he skirted a direct question about whether Swan would be welcome back on the Labor frontbench.

The current shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, told Guardian Australia he had no issue with Swan participating in the Chifley project.

Bowen welcomed the former treasurer’s contribution to the commission, and described it as a “great initiative.”

Swan said Australia needed a more substantial conversation about economic growth in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

He said growing inequality presented a threat to economic growth. The core principle of the new inclusive prosperity commission was “that equality itself is a driving force for economic growth”.

“Producing wealth in the first place requires equitable growth; otherwise the economy will not grow because demand will be deficient,” Swan said.

“Strong, stable and sustained growth demands active public policy to spread the gains of wealth creation and limit wealth concentration. The commission will deliver a high-level economic analysis charting the path to a high-pay, high-productivity economy.”

The commission is expected to conduct public meetings and hearings and release research both this year and next, before producing a final report in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

Cooney said the public policy consensus that existed before the global financial crisis – “all deficits are bad; all privatisation is good; minimal regulation of the labour market and lower wages plus lower taxes for the wealthy are the only [path] to growth” – had demonstrably failed.

He said Labor had to take on an entirely new conversation which referenced recent work on the economic impacts of inequality from the IMF, World Bank and scholarship like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century.

“Australia faces major long-term economic challenges which cannot be addressed by a stale conversation about a next ‘wave of reform’ derived from a reheated serve of trade liberalisation, deregulation and domestic competition,” Cooney said.

Addressing colleagues at the national policy forum on Monday, Shorten said he expected robust debate over Labor’s new national platform and its policy direction, and he warned “we will all have to make compromises over the coming days”.

On Monday, Shorten outlined a draft first chapter of the national platform which contains more progressive language on women and gay rights – and contains fewer explicit references to Labor’s historical relationship with the trade union movement.

The revised language is positive about the impacts of globalisation and rejects “fortress Australia”.

On the balance between market forces and fairness, the platform says: “We believe in the fair distribution of wealth and we embrace responsibility for its creation. For Labor, the choice between a strong economy and a fair society is always a false one, we know each is the precondition for the other and each supports the other.”