The Labor government’s touted productivity roundtable seemed like a stunt to create an impression that one of the critical challenges faced by Australia — our falling productivity — was in fact being addressed.
Many of us gave it the benefit of the doubt, because you have to discuss these issues and have business leaders in a dialogue with our leaders.
It was good that Shadow Treasurer Ted O’Brien was there and able to intervene in a Jim Chalmers bout of self-congratulation on the economy that bore little resemblance to reality.
But here is the problem — Labor under Albanese and Chalmers is fundamentally an anti-productivity government. It is obsessed with wealth redistribution, crony capitalism and the welfare state. It is dictated to by unions, and these dictations have found their way into legislation that makes us less competitive and less productive.
Energy policy was barely discussed at the roundtable, as though everyone accepts that the transition is going swimmingly, and that cheap and affordable power will just continue as we move from the 24/7 generation of coal and gas to the intermittent nature of renewables.
Anyone seriously looking at the grid and assessing the successes and failures of other nations in their energy transition would see the flaws in this.
This particular energy transition is one of the biggest economic gambles Australia has ever embarked on, and the probability and consequence of getting it wrong is too horrific to contemplate.
Government ministers seem to put the viability and competitiveness of business (particularly small business) last on their list of priorities when drafting legislation.
This is evident in the regrettable changes to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and in the new industrial relations laws, which have hit small businesses hard with a mountain of regulation.
In addition, Labor is on a spending spree, with diminishing economic activity to pay back the debt in the future.
According to research published by the Centre for Independent Studies in July, more than half of Australian voters rely on the government for their main income, through public-sector wages, welfare payments, or subsidies.
The Institute of Public Affairs found that between August 2022 and August 2024, 82.1 per cent of new persons employed were in the public sector.
It’s not to say that people who work in the public service (in many cases) don’t provide a valuable service, but an economy based on taxpayer-funded jobs is a house of cards.
Tax was discussed, but there seems to be little appetite for real reform — and efforts by the previous coalition government to address the productivity-killing phenomenon of bracket creep were reversed by Labor.
They have no plans that I can see to reform tax in a meaningful way — just crazy grabs for money, like the unrealised superannuation capital gain fiasco.
What does it all mean?
Well, on this pathway we are in managed decline as a nation, and that means a decline in our living standards and opportunities for our next generations.
A bold government with vision and understanding of what drives the economy needs to come in and fix this trajectory, and Albanese and Chalmers’ incarnation of Labor is clearly, by its own rhetoric and actions, not that.
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