John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There are a number of reasons why productivity will vary from time to time. One of those reasons is that you can have—and it is happening in the case of the resource industry—an extraordinary increase in employment in advance of an increase in the product brought forth by the investment, which accounts ultimately for both the product and also for the gains in employment. It is true that changes to the Australian economy over the last 20 years have produced increases in productivity and it is also true that changes recently made are going to lead in time to further increases in productivity, and I refer in particular to the workplace relations changes. If they flow through, Mr Speaker, I believe—

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