Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What were the findings of the Productivity Commission's interim report released today, and why is meaningful action on climate change such an important economic reform?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Spence for his important question. Today, the Australian parliament reflects the will of an Australian people who want to see meaningful action on climate change and who want to move beyond that toxic combination of ideology and idiocy which has characterised the last decade of climate policy from those opposite. They want to move beyond that and to embrace the economic and environmental opportunities presented by meaningful action on climate change. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister and the minister and to every member of this parliament who wants to see that meaningful action on climate change so that we can embrace properly, after a decade of inaction, the opportunities that are presented to us.

A better future relies on a more productive economy powered by cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy. A wasted decade on energy policy and a wasted decade of flatlining productivity has come with serious costs and consequences for the Australian people. The Productivity Commission report out today shows that the last decade's productivity growth has been the slowest in more than half a century. That has meant that gross national income is $4,600 lower per Australian than it would have been if productivity growth had kept pace with the long-term average.

So, those opposite pretended for all those years that productivity would be growing at 1½ per cent, despite the 20-year average being 1.2 per cent, and we've had to clean that up in the budget assumptions that I released to the parliament last week. We understand that we will only get the growth we need in our economy and the wages growth that's been missing for a decade of wage stagnation and deliberate wage suppression if we make our economy more productive. That's the focus of the jobs summit, and that's the focus of our economic plan: skills, childcare reform, investing in key industries, in supply chains, and doing something meaningful and ambitious about cleaner, cheaper and reliable energy.

This is a crucial economic reform. It's why today is so important to the future of our economy—because cleaner and cheaper energy is about jobs, it's about investment certainty, it's about creating new industries and leveraging our traditional economic strengths. For too long, as the climate wars raged in this country, these opportunities have gone begging. That's made our economy weaker and it's made Australians poorer at the same time. For too long, investors, employers and businesses have been denied the policy certainty and vision that they've needed to make investments in the future. That's why the business community is lining up to support our government's Powering Australia plan. It's why Australians lined up on election day to make their views known as well. And it's why, after a decade of dithering, delay and denial, we will move beyond the ideology and idiocy of those opposite and we will get this done. (Time expired)