Australians enjoy an extraordinary quality of life. It is becoming ever clearer, however, that this will not continue if we are complacent. Productivity growth is one of the metrics most closely tied to our Australian quality of life, and a critical aspect of our ongoing challenge to manage inflation.

Australian productivity has not meaningfully improved in a decade and today, our productivity growth languishes well behind most comparable nations, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

This report addresses the growing challenge of Australia’s lagging productivity, and the need to compete harder for business investment which can help improve it. The report finds that productivity growth (which is currently growing at 0.5 per cent over the last year) would need to quadruple to around two per cent each year to 2030 just to match our performance last decade, which is the weakest in 60 years.

The report also identifies where the most effort is needed to shift the momentum of productivity towards growth:

• streamlining and removing regulatory red tape to make it easier to do business
• reversing recent workplace laws that are a handbrake on productivity growth
• undertaking education reforms to enhance workplace skills and capabilities
• reforming our taxation system to better support business investment, and
• supporting increased research and development along with the uptake of new technologies.