It’s Monday the 18th of August, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is heading into a major week for his government on a high. Two polls out today both have good news for the PM: the Resolve Political Monitor shows Labor's primary vote climbing, and Newspoll says the Prime Minister's personal popularity has rebounded to levels not seen for two years. The Resolve data even suggests the government would increaseits majority if an election were held today. But the PM won't have much time to celebrate polls, with the government's much-anticipated roundtable on economic reform kicking off tomorrow amid a slump in productivity.
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Fear-o-meter
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has an enormous majority in the lower house - Labor holds 94 seats of the 150 available. And according to the Resolve Political Monitor in Nine newspapers today, he would actually increase that majority if an election was held today.
If that's not a mandate to actually do something at the economic reform roundtable tomorrow, then I don't know what is.
Over the weekend, the Prime Minister declared Labor "stands for lower taxes" ahead of the summit, and said the agenda for the roundtable is "whatever people want to raise."
But whether anything comes of it... well, that's another story. Last week it was reported the PM and Treasurer Jim Chalmers held private talks about the need to rein in expectations about the roundtable.
The Australian economy is grappling with a productivity crisis. The Reserve Bank last week downgraded productivity forecasts. It's a handbrake on our already-sluggish economic growth.
The last thing we need is for this roundtable to become just another talkfest, with a list of ambitious policies that won't be implemented until after the next election... almost three years away. A McKinnon poll of 2,000 Australians showed nearly two thirds believe the government should consult on major reform, but not delay until after another election.
The Prime Minister has been given a mandate to run the country - and that means dealing with our productivity challenge. The polls show voters are backing him in. He shouldn't wait for another election to do something bold. Just get it done.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
How do we fix the productivity crisis?
Ahead of the economic reform roundtable tomorrow in Canberra, Stephen explains why productivity matters, and how it can be improved.
"In a nutshell, productivity is the way that we improve our living standards. So if we, as a society, as an economy, can produce more output, that means that we're getting more national income and that is divided between corporations and the workers. That's sort of one of the distributional issues about productivity.
Productivity is not one of these things that you get a sugar hit in one year. It's one of these long run structural things that if you've got an efficient economy that's innovative, that's got a competitive tax system, that's got a competitive labor market with skills and knowledge and education needed to undertake this new technology, something that's really pertinent right now, you'll get more economic output for the level of capital investment and your labour, your workers. And that's how productivity improves the living standards of all people.
And it's been lacking the last decade, decade and a half or so. It's been very, very weak whereas back in the day, if we can say pre-2000, we were having really solid, strong sustained lifts in productivity."
