Australia is failing its younger generations and the chair of the Productivity Commission believes a policymaker “growth mindset” can help.
Danielle Wood says the generational bargain is in peril.
“Young people today believe they won’t live better lives than their parents did,” the head of the nation’s economic think tank will say at the National Press Club on Monday.
“I’m worried too.”
Australians born in the 1990s were the first generation not to earn more than those in the decade before them.
Now in their 30s, millennials are struggling to enter the property market “as policy choices have contributed to house prices growing much faster than incomes for the best part of three decades”.
This generation will also bear the brunt of climate change and the cost of decarbonisation, made worse by policymakers who have dodged the cheapest options, namely a national carbon price.
Ms Wood, due to speak before the federal government’s economic reform roundtable on Tuesday, says the challenges facing younger generations amount to productivity problems.
About squeezing more from less, productivity allows wages to grow and helps “build things better and faster”, such as homes and clean energy infrastructure.
The commission has already spelled out a long list of recommendations to kickstart anaemic productivity growth in five separate reports released before the roundtable.
Suggestions include reforming the corporate tax system and financial incentives for workplace training.
Ms Wood will also call for an attitude shift at the highest levels of government policymaking and delivery.
“This ‘growth mindset’ – an elevation of growth and the benefits it brings – has been missing from Australian policy for far too long,” she said.
She will point to the “growth of the regulatory burden” as symptomatic of a policy culture failing to prioritise growth.
“Regulatory hairballs” are everywhere, she will argue, from 31-step approvals and licensing surveys for would-be Queensland cafe owners to “evermore stringent requirements for energy efficiency in the construction code”.
Australia’s key economic stakeholders are set to gather in Canberra to propose solutions to the nation’s ailing productivity as part of the government’s hotly anticipated roundtable.
Almost 30 groups representing farmers, pharmacies, universities and small, medium and large businesses have urged the government to reduce red tape and reform taxes without raising costs.
“Australia is facing an uncertain future unless we fix the real challenges within our economy,” Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said.
Environment groups have also urged the government to address concerns like nature law reforms.
“Nature’s economic role is too important to leave out of national reform conversations,” Australian Land Conservation Alliance chief executive Jody Gunn said.
“If we invest in the solutions it brings, we all win.”
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