Ann: Annual Report 2022, page-19

May I recommend reading 'The Australian' this morning - buy the hewspaper - for former Productivity Commission Cahirman Gary Banks' assessment that Australia is heading in the wrong direction. He singles out energy policy madness (along with industrial relations).

An extract:

"Inaugural Productivity Commission chair Gary Banks says Australia is going backwards on energy, industrial relations, taxation and government spending, with the public losing confidence in democracy and the nation facing new sovereign risk problems.

Professor Banks, the chair of the Productivity Commission between 1998 and 2013, said the nation was losing the ability to implement policies to properly “cope with change, to be competitive and support economic growth”.

In an interview with The Australian ahead of the release of a review into Australia’s productivity performance, Professor Banks said Australia had written off its comparative advantage in energy, failed to pursue lowest cost emissions cuts and electricity was becoming an unreliable luxury.

(BHP is saying) saying the government’s industrial relations agenda would harm productivity and any move to increase taxes in the resources sector would lead to “reduced investment, fewer jobs and ... lower living standards for Australians”.

Professor Banks said “the monumental bungling of the so-called energy transition” had seen multiple governments contrive to “maximise the cost to the nation of reducing emissions” while evidence-based policy had been abandoned in favour of “simple-minded belief”.