Daniel L

What they won't tell you at today's productivity summit: Everything is cooked. Businesses face astronomical land, labour & energy costs. Why? Albo hitting the pedal on the mother of all immigration programs in order to flip electorates has thrown kerosene on the mother of all housing bubbles which is now a conflagration consuming all. Labour costs through roof as everyone's drowning in rent & mortgages, and 10% real inflation, yet even with highest casual wages in the world people are choosing between heating and eating. Energy through roof pretending windmills and solar can power a G20 economy. Hot tip: you can't. You need to move the power through time and space to where its needed. You also can't run industrial thermal loads or precision manufacturing on intermittent power with phase instability. The mass immigration program is importing welfare recipients, not workers. 30% don't pay tax and I would think the vast majority are net negative in costs to the tax payer for services and infrastructure. Australian education is now regarded as a joke. Entire non-govt sector created 53,000 jobs in 2024, but they're bringing in about that many PER MONTH. New mortgage issuance is money creation, so is out of control government waste like $50b+ of NDIS p.a. That money issuance has real inflation running at 10%. The country is utterly cooked, blind freddie can see the wheels are falling off the bus at a tremendous rate. They think they can fix it with 2 days WFH and a 4 day work week which will collapse CRE. The housing market will pop and it will not be a soft landing, it will bring down the banks and the AUD. I'm sure today a few brain farts think there's no problem another tax can't fix. What multinational would touch this place? What viable business can you create here? Suggest one. There's 122 pay guides to decide what to pay someone, the funeral industry has different rules to the cemetery industry. 7.1m people work >35h, 1.5m SME owners leaves 8.6m people supporting 28m others including 2.5m public servants. Half the country is dependent on the taxpayer now. Manufacturing can't run, smelters can't run, can't make plastic, glass, a tin can ffs. Everyone's white knuckling it to make mortgage payments and eat, dodging yet another gaza protest and hoping they don't cop a machete to the head. Want to improve productivity? You can't until you deal with input costs. I feel sorry for the poor fools that turned up to the round table because they'll just be used as a veneer of legitimacy to push through some more awful policy.