Business Council of Australia (BCA) chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, says Wednesday’s national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that Australia is “sleepwalking into a living standards crisis”:
“Today’s GDP figures confirm that growth in Australia’s economy has continued to slow with annual economic growth at just 2.1% and productivity falling.
“This compares to our long-run average growth of 3.3%, meaning we are slipping further behind the rest of the world”.
“GDP growth per capita is in recession, which means the income of each and every Australian is falling. Outside the pandemic, this is the first back-to-back decline in ten years”.
“Governments around Australia need to pull out all stops to make Australia more competitive and the only way to do this is to lift investment and productivity – this is the only way to lift real wages and living standards”.
“Business is deeply concerned that it is clear our productivity numbers are going backwards, which means real wages will go nowhere”.
Take a look at the next chart of Australia’s labour productivity growth:
You will see that labour productivity spiked over the pandemic when the government ramped stimulus and net overseas migration turned negative.
We effectively got a period of “capital deepening” as the nation’s capital stock was spread over fewer people, which boosted productivity.
But now that net overseas migration is running at record levels, productivity growth has collapsed because we are getting “capital shallowing” and the nation’s capital stock is being spread over far more people.
What makes the BCA’s crocodile tears so egregious is that it has been one of the key players lobbying for more immigration.
It even launched a new propaganda report, “Migration makes Australia stronger”, to push its case.
“Big Australia” immigration is a myth, according to Jennifer Westacott. The 14.2 million increase in population projected in the 2023 Intergenerational Report says otherwise.
The BCA is like an arsonist complaining about a fire that it helped create.
