State, territory and federal governments held a closed-door meeting on Thursday in a bid to kick-start a new wave of competition reforms that would strengthen the economy and increase real wages for working Australians.
This masthead can reveal the meeting, held in Sydney and hosted by NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, forms a starting point for federal plans to renew competitive pressures to lift productivity.
Increased competition forces businesses to invest in new equipment and their staff.Credit: Bloomberg
Representatives from every administration in the country, as well as the federal competition taskforce and Ian Harper, who headed a competition review in 2015, were also at the meeting.
This week’s national accounts showed that while productivity has lifted over the past six months, it is still lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, the Productivity Commission reported Australians had lifted their working hours but business investment that would boost output had slipped.
Many economists believe the global and Australian slowdown in productivity is partly due to a lack of competitive pressures, which force businesses to find new ways to lift output or better employ their staff.
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A suite of competition reforms started under the Hawke government, from breaking up state monopolies to cracking down on collusion between businesses, was found by the commission to have delivered a 2.5 per cent boost to GDP. In today’s dollars, that is equivalent to $62.5 billion.
Federal Competition Minister Andrew Leigh told Thursday’s meeting that competition benefited consumers and businesses, from cities to regions and across the economy.
“Australians enjoyed cheaper electricity, more choice in telecommunications that brought down prices, and gained an important and respected regulator in the form of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission,” he said.
Source Agencies
