Productivity? Government is a dead weight on the economy

Past performance is the best predictor of future performance, so the business chiefs heading to Anthony Albanese's Productivity Summit should know they are about to be carved up and handed to the union movement.

Just as the Jobs and Skills Summit was a front for legislating industrial relations back to the 19th Century, the Productivity Summit will be a front for cementing those norms in place even more.

To ensure that, the word salad chefs in the Prime Minister's kitchen are cooking up ways to redefine productivity so it looks like, even tastes like, productivity to the ordinary voter, but has no nourishment at all.

You might think that productivity means doing more with the same, or fewer, resources, but then what would you know? You probably think being a woman isn't an option for those of us with XY chromosomes, but Labor governments everywhere will tell you that you are wrong.

So, if you can't fathom the intersectionality of biology and ideology, you are obviously not bright enough to fathom the intersectionality of ideology and economics.

This is a government that knows how to talk the talk and redefine the walk so you never have to take a step. When confronted with the need to build more houses they sorted it – 1.2 million more over fixed years. Fixed, done and dusted. How do I know? I've seen the media release and they've told me about it ad nauseam. The fact we will not get even close to meeting that target is neither here nor there.

Once the government has spoken things can be assumed to have happened. Look at their energy transition and its mirage of dramatically cheaper prices and expanded jobs and economic output.

Expect the semantic strategies to be applied to the Productivity Summit. And indeed, expect the energy transition, an area where we are doing less with more, to be a key plank in the productivity manifesto, as it already is.

In December 2024, the Treasurer commissioned the Productivity Commission to produce five reports on how we can increase our productivity, with one of those reports to investigate: 'Investing in cheaper, cleaner energy and the Net Zero transformation.' The title assumes the conclusion and the fix is already in.

One of the strange things about this summit is that the Productivity Commission was supposed to provide interim reports about now, and while the Productivity Summit is supposed to complement the PC's work, it feels to me like it is really an attempt to gazump it.

The Productivity Commission used to be a bastion of commonsense. It's the successor of the Tariff Board, which in the 60s under 'Alf' Rattigan started nudging the country towards openness, transparency, and competition. In 1974 it was transformed into the Industry Assistance Commission before merging with some other bodies to become the Productivity Commission.

But lately, it's had some interesting notions.