Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I am aware of the speech and, Senator Sinodinos, I think we were both at that function. I thought there was a very good discussion in the context of that speech about the importance of getting the facts right on productivity. It was a very good speech, if I might say so.

It is the case that we understand—I would hope on both sides of politics, certainly on this side—the importance of productivity. It is regrettable that we saw under the Howard government a decline in productivity growth over quite a number of years. Of course, while you cannot—as the Prime Minister said in her speech—read too much into some of the shorter term figures, the quarterly or annual figures, it is encouraging to see Australia's productivity growth having picked up over the past year. As the Prime Minister referred to, labour productivity growth in the market sector has increased by about 2.3 per cent in the March quarter and 5.3 per cent over the past year.

I do not want to overstate that. Senator Sinodinos would know that with productivity, by definition, one has to take a long-run perspective. But those are pleasing results for last year; certainly far more pleasing than we have seen in terms of the long-term decline in productivity which started about a decade ago.

The government's investments in productivity include our record investments in skills. As the Senate might recall, we delivered some $3 billion in the skills package in the last budget. We have seen training places and mentoring services delivered. A key part of that was the vocational education and training reforms—about a $1.75 billion package. In addition, the government is also making investments in critical infrastructure, and I am happy to return to this in a supplementary question. (Time expired)