Australia’s decline in productivity, and falling business investment, has policymakers worried. It’s why they’re meeting in Canberra this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In some states, it’s a flexible RDO [rostered day off] regime, and in other states, it’s fixed,” he said in an interview with The Business host Kirsten Aiken.<\/p>\n
“So what that means, on a flexible regime is we can keep the site open all the time and manage those RDOs over time \u2014 versus if it’s a fixed site RDO, we have to close down the whole project. So things like that impact productivity.”<\/p>\n
Mr Lombardo also wants to see more “harmonisation” across the states’ building regulations, which he says will make a “big difference” for his industry.<\/p>\n
“If we constantly have change with those codes, it just makes it complex to follow the rules and execute.”<\/p>\n
He also identified Australia’s “aging workforce” as a problem, and the lack of skilled labour compared to a decade ago.<\/p>\n
“Post-COVID, we had a lot of people leave the industry, so I’d love to see things [initiatives] around apprenticeships,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I hear that some of the states are starting to focus on that, so it’d actually be great to really put some effort behind how we train and upskill.<\/p>\n
“And if we can’t get the people, we’ve got to think about migration, getting immigrants or skilled labour into our construction industry.”<\/p>\n
‘Never been harder to try and grow’<\/p>\n
Andre Ransom \u2014 the owner of a Sydney construction business, Kestrel Building \u2014 says there are certain regulations that are driving up costs for smaller builders, which lead to more costs being passed onto the consumer, and therefore higher property prices.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Andre Ransom is the managing director of Kestrel Building, a residential construction company in Sydney. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
One issue he identified was the fact that construction employees receive more generous redundancy payouts compared to workers in other sectors.<\/p>\n
“If an employee who has worked for you for less than a year decides to resign and work for another building company, he’s entitled to redundancy unless he has engaged in gross malpractice,” Mr Ransom said.<\/p>\n
“I know of no other industry with rules like that.”<\/p>\n
For most other industries, employees are not entitled to a redundancy if they worked at the business for less than a year, according to the Fair Work Act. In addition, they’ll only receive this payout if the employer terminated their role (generally, against the worker’s will in most cases).<\/p>\n
In comparison, a building and construction employee is entitled to a redundancy payment \u2014 even if they resign voluntarily. That’s because the term “redundancy” is defined as “ceasing to be employed” (which is broader than being “terminated”, as the Fair Work Act requires).<\/p>\n
“To run construction costs a lot of money, and so many have gone bust. It’s never been harder to try and grow,” Mr Ransom said.<\/p>\n
Health impacts on the workplace<\/p>\n
Matthew Britland, a former nurse who has led numerous pharmaceutical companies, views the productivity debate from a different angle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matthew Britland is a consultant in the drug development industry. (ABC News: David Chau)<\/p>\n
“The health problems we have as a nation are having a major impact on productivity in the workplace, as people with avoidable diseases are off for long periods of time,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Governments tend to approach healthcare as if it were a ‘cost’, as opposed to an ‘investment’, and often doesn’t see the long-term productivity gains.”<\/p>\n
As examples, he cited the Australian government’s relatively slow approval of new treatments compared to other regions like the United States and Europe.<\/p>\n
After the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approves a new medicine, it’s up to a government body called the PBAC (Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee) to decide whether the taxpayer should subsidise it.<\/p>\n
“Australia is one of the slowest jurisdictions to reimburse new medicines. There’s a gap of around 680 days between when the TGA approves something, and when the government decides to foot the bill for it.<\/p>\n
“The only way you can get equity of care in Australia is to get reimbursed for medicines.<\/p>\n
“While we have some of the best outcomes in world, they’re nowhere where they should be, and this results in patients being forced to use older, less effective therapies, and have to take more time off work.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many people in Australia, the way things are in the economy may be as good as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[33820,63466,28,63463,63464,101,26120,63467,10963,63465,17711,63462,7525,3733,47630],"class_list":["post-93373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-bluescope-steel","tag-business","tag-economic-reform","tag-economic-reform-round-table","tag-economy","tag-jim-chalmers","tag-lendlease","tag-productivity","tag-productivity-round-table","tag-property","tag-red-tap","tag-reform","tag-tax","tag-tax-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}