Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Thank you to everyone who contributed to this inquiry, with a special commendation to the chair and deputy chair, the secretariat and my colleagues on the committee. A dynamic economy is one where every Australian can fulfil their potential, where life is rich with opportunity, where our society is diverse, cohesive and fair and where every Australian enjoys a high standard of living and can access world-class services they need. But the evidence is suggesting that our economy is not performing as well as we might hope. In the last decade, GDP per capita growth has been just 0.6 per cent per year and labour productivity growth has grown at its lowest rate for six decades. While the wealth of retired generations has grown handsomely, the wealth of younger generations has stagnated.

These are real concerns, so it's appropriate that the committee has inquired into the topic of competition and dynamism and sought out opportunities for Australia to lift its game. The majority report is a thorough inquiry into competition issues and makes a large number of sensible, strategic recommendations, including on things like the use of public sector data and competition infrastructure, and has a focus on public sector procurement so that all firms can thrive. One particularly important part of the report is access to capital for startups, small businesses and dynamic, growing firms, because young firms are critical for productivity growth. They identified issues in funding, including the FIRB process and the superannuation performance test, as well as challenges in accessing bank finance. I strongly support the recommendations of the report, but I also believe we need to go further to address critical economic challenges we are facing, so I've provided some additional comments and recommendations.

To start with, the report is mainly silent on industrial relations and tax. These are very significant drivers of productivity in our economy, but both issues have become bitterly politicised. I think we need a sensible centrist, stable approach that prioritises productivity and dynamism. I recommended some institutional reforms such as establishing a tax reform commission and tasking the Productivity Commission to review the impact of our industrial relations settings, as well as other specific changes such as government incentives to reduce stamp duty.

The main report acknowledged that government regulation can both drive competition and dynamism as well as hinder it and made recommendations on the government's work on regulation rightsizing as well as specific regulation recommendations on particular industries. All of these recommendations are extremely important. I also acknowledge that the challenges of rightsizing regulation are so significant that we may need even further support, including asking the Productivity Commission to identify priority areas for regulatory review and establishing a minister for better regulation, learning from the experiences of the New South Wales government, to lead a complete overhaul of our regulatory approach. In my comments I also highlighted how climate affects dynamism and also focused on how we can increase the diffusion of innovation, which is so important to raising dynamism across all firms in our economy.

Finally, in discussions on dynamism there is so often a focus on business and bad actors, on rent-seeking. This is all absolutely appropriate, and it was an appropriate focus of much of the report. But I believe there is far too little looking in the mirror on the role of government and the public sector in holding back dynamism through its own services, actions and decision-making. I commend the main report, which identified that increased government transparency can improve the dynamic effects of the government sector, but I also believe we can go further. I believe that government should make sure that it relies on cost-benefit analyses when it assesses infrastructure investments and develop a broader, effective evaluative framework to more broadly assess government spending. I believe and recommended that the government should also appoint a minister for customer service, again learning from the experiences of New South Wales, to drive a changing culture so that businesses and citizens are at the heart of government practices, including through things like establishing a federal small business and codes list. Finally, I believe the government should commit to respond to and publish the responses to all inquiries and reports so that the time that committees like ourselves, but also members of the public, have put into inquiries across the parliament is not wasted.

My overarching message to the government is that now is the time to address economic dynamism. The Treasurer has indicated that his priority is to start to moving from fighting inflation to starting to drive growth, and I believe that, if we undertake the right economic reforms, we can do both. I acknowledge that the government has made some great progress in things that drive dynamism, including its focus on competition, reforms to skilled migration, increasing apprenticeships, and its recent commitment to the regulatory grid, which was an important part of the recommendations of the report. It is great to see the government already taking action on this. However, I do not think we are doing enough to address the challenges we face or to address the opportunities we can see.

We have been a lucky country, but we also need to make our own luck. I urge the government to proactively address the recommendations in the report, including those I have raised in my additional comments, and to present to this House how they will act on them with alacrity. Economic dynamism is not just an idea. It drives the quality of our lives. It underpins the wonderful services that we can access in Australia. It drives the economy in such a broad way that allows all Australians to thrive. The time to act on it is now, and I commend this report to the House.

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