Choosing a battleground where the country loses

Significantly, the cash rate, which was 0.35 per cent on election day, is 4.85 per cent, the highest since 2008. Canstar puts the cost of this year's rises alone at $456 a month on a $600,000 mortgage.

The Government conveniently blames the war in Iran forgetting that before the war, the cash rate had already increased to 3.60 per cent and began rising again on February 3, 25 days before it started.

Last week the bank said fuel was only part of the story, and that weak productivity growth "continues to constrain potential growth".

That is the number underneath all the others. Output per hour worked is almost 3 per cent lower than in the quarter Labor took office. An economy that cannot increase what it produces each hour ends up with rising unemployment and rising interest rates at the same time.

Which brings us to the system every employer in the country must work inside. Drawing on HR Nicholls' research, it has become the most complex in the developed world: 122 modern awards containing 205,816 separate rates of pay across 8,739 pages, 70 per cent more than in 2009.

Onto that pile this government has added nine workplace relations Acts and, on our count, 81 separate changes since late 2022. Multi-employer bargaining. Arbitration imposed when bargaining stalls. Same job, same pay. Union delegates' rights in every award. A right to disconnect.

Every hour an employer spends decoding all this is an hour not spent producing anything.

How can you expect productivity from a system designed to limit it through complexity?

They take decisions about how work is organised out of the workplace, the only place productivity has ever been lifted, and hand them to tribunals, union officials and Canberra.

They make it dearer to hire, riskier to change and harder to reward the people who do more.