Productivity continues to be the panacea of economic debate in Australia. Everyone — the galahs of the Financial Review, the Reserve Bank, the opposition — insists productivity growth will fix what ails us, from weak wages growth, to inflation, to poor investment.
The latest is shadow spokesperson for being invisible Angus Taylor, who is peddling higher productivity as the magical solution to the problem now facing the Coalition on immigration.
That problem is, the more we cut immigration, the greater the workforce shortages Australia will face. And even though the opposition is not promising anything significantly different than Labor on immigration — though what the Coalition’s policy actually is depends what day of the week it is and who’s talking — it wants voters to think it’s taking a chainsaw to migration.
Peter Dutton and Taylor’s effort to square this circle is to insist workforce shortages will be fixed by higher productivity and greater participation.
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