With respect, Australia’s foremost journalist imho, Paul Kelly...

With respect, Australia’s foremost journalist imho, Paul Kelly ‘belled the cat’ in the AUST today:
’…inaugural Productivity Commission chair Gary Banks issued a long-pent-up lament at Australia’s entrenched failure under governments from both sides to confront and address our declining productivity with its penalty for living standards. The nation is locked into underperformance with no easy exit pathway.
Banks said our biggest problem arose from our own failures – policy mismanagement, the two standouts being our bungled energy transition and our U-turn on workplace reform.
His lethal remark was that “we have been busily eliminating our comparative advantage in energy while on the other hand we are reviving our traditional disadvantage with respect to labour. This has helped suppress investment and productivity growth and taken a toll on real incomes. It did not need to happen like this. Governments knew better and in the past have done better”…’