Labor needs to \u201cturn the ship around\u201d through its upcoming economic roundtable where the Albanese government\u2019s goals to boost productivity and investment in Australia will take centre stage.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s ailing productivity will be the subject of the roundtable led by Treasurer Jim Chalmers next month where leaders across business, politics and unions will discuss the nation\u2019s poor growth.<\/p>\n
AI Group chief executive Innes Willox is one of the attendees and urged the Albanese government, which has returned to parliament with a massive majority, to develop a clear picture of how to drive the nation\u2019s economy forward at the roundtable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an opportunity for the government to \u2026 get clear understandings around the big challenges that we face around productivity and investment and all the things that go into that,\u201d Mr Willox told Sky News’ Business Now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is sort of like a legacy moment, a watershed moment. Not only for the government but also for the country because we have one chance here to turn the ship around and start to get things heading in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Willox was hopeful of genuine change from the Albanese government as he said there had been an \u201cepiphany\u201d from some Labor members about the nation\u2019s economic future.<\/p>\n
He said it came from a novel by two US journalists titled \u201cAbundance\u201d that had become popular in Canberra.<\/p>\n
The shift, Mr Willox said, was a “recognition” that “governments have indulged in process over outcomes, dollars over delivery and complexity over certainty”.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to turn all of that around so that we get government focused on the things that matter,” Mr Willox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment in many ways, whether business likes it or not, is a partner of business, but it’s a partner that has to act in the interests of business as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don’t, we’re just going to continue to see a decline in living standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Economic and productivity reform was a lower priority during the Albanese government\u2019s first term, despite slow growth and the country sitting in a per capita recession.<\/p>\n
Labor struggled with sky-high post-pandemic inflation during its first term – which ate into household budgets.<\/p>\n
Inflation rose more than 17 per cent over about three and a half years while wages fell behind, prompting Labor to introduce an array of cost of living assistance measures such as energy bill relief.<\/p>\n
Labor will look towards fostering long term economic prosperity at the productivity roundtable from August 19 to 21.<\/p>\n
Here, the government said it will strive to “enhance economic resilience and strengthen budget sustainability”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labor needs to \u201cturn the ship around\u201d through its upcoming economic roundtable where the Albanese government\u2019s goals to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[18835,64,63,18834,99,16171,164,18836,1788,3324,16172],"class_list":{"0":"post-17692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-ai-group","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-industry-group","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-economic-roundtable","14":"tag-economy","15":"tag-innes-willox","16":"tag-labor","17":"tag-productivity","18":"tag-productivity-roundtable"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}