The AFR has shown its poorly concealed hand. Recently I noted that the editorial loves to preach good policy while lobbying for the opposite:
The HILDA data instead confirms that Australian prosperity will only be rebooted through a revival in productivity growth. That in turn, requires a new pro-growth productivity agenda from Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, even if the Prime Minister figures that the so-called quiet Australians simply want an end to policy activism. Among other policy failures, the mess of energy and climate change policy now threatens to drive energy-intensive industries offshore while undermining the reliability of electricity supply. The Coalition government has relied on a more recent mini-revival in commodity prices and Australia’s lowest ever interest rates to hold up the economy and limp back into budget surplus.
Quite right. So, how should we go about it? The main issue is that capital productivity is very poor:
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
