Productivity

After the election the newly elected PM told caucus "substitute productivity for anxiety and keep on replaying the song".

"Productivity .. someone's watching me and my productivity ..yeah..."

The theme for the second term of the Albanese government is quality and productivity. If it is successful, a third and fourth period of Labor Government will be assured by greater national prosperity and rising living standards for all. It will return Labor to a Hawke/Keating golden 8 year era when the Labour Movement allowed employers to trade off wage rises for government sponsored increases in the "social wage". This period set Australia up for a highly constructive period of economic development in the 1990s and 2000s that handed the Howard government a perfect platform. Labor created a new economic model of productivity which ushered stability and profitability for Australian producers, rising wages for Australian workers and many major economic and social innovations including superannuation, improvements to Medicare and a range of other industrial benefits for Australian workers.

Labor is evolving to a higher state of thinking and planning but if faces a perenial problem. It lacks an independent national think tank that is capable of working on big futuristic problems like supplanting the electricity grid and creating new alternative jobs in mining intensive areas like the Hunter. Labor's ideas weakness stems from the fact that it is limited to the qualities of its electoral success stories and the civil service. Of course every parliament likes to think it has all the answers and all politicians are suspicious about institutions that outlast them. The Labor think tanks that do exist are either politically opportunistic like the Australia Institute or monumentally oriented like Hawke, Whitlam, Evatt etc.. They are safe so long as they keep on preaching the ever lasting greatness of their namesakes. One innovation that would be useful is to create grants in aid tied to national problem solving research and ask the think tanks to make submissions. Former MInisters and others could be asked to lead research projects that set an agenda for the future. This would create a dynamic atmosphere of competitive ideas and researchers and matching support and participation from the union movement could be sought in the same way that the Evatt Foundation did through the  leadership of Peter Robson, Tom Mc Donald and Wendy Caird from 1988-1996. Of course Ministers have the capacity to do this under their own auspices that are a lot less public. The future depends on the bigness of the PM and his colleagues.

One of the problems the labour movement faces is that the actual concept of productivity is too narrowly, economics based. Economists do not ask: what is the 'good and high quality' goods and services that the Australian economy and society can produce better than any other country? This is a more sociological form of inquiry. In the early and mid twentieth century American manufacturing excellence at Ford, Harley Davidson, Caterpillar dominated the world. In the post war period Japanese and German manufacturers  created benchmarks such as Toyota, Honda, Stihl. In the early twenty first century China is arguably breaking ahead with electric cars, robots and artificial intelligence.

Australia is blessed and cursed by neoclassical economists who measure productivity as the efficiency with which inputs (such as labor, capital, and technology) are transformed into outputs (goods or services) in the production process. It is typically measured as the ratio of output to input, often expressed as total factor productivity (TFP) or labor productivity. Neoclassical theory assumes that productivity improvements drive economic growth, with diminishing returns to capital and labor unless offset by technological advancements.This is such a narrow way to look at the world and it measures only what currently exists, not what could exist in the future.

Some big important questions are: What does a good post-colonial Australia look like? What does a strong resilient post monarchical Australia look like? What do healthy, strong resilient Aboriginal communities look like? What is the optimal structure for federal, state and local governments? Is suburbia the best way of accommodating housing needs? If so, what are the best suburbs? What are good and high quality cities, regional towns and cities and remote communities? Economists dont ask these questions let alone define productivity through them.

How can egalitarianism and aspirational ethics be blended together to form a new kind of Australia?  What are the things that Australia will produce in the future that will most benefit Australians and the world? what kinds of infrastructure is most needed to create a higher better society? What kind of infrastructure improvements are the best for our future Australian community? How can Australian highways and roads be improved in the best way possible? How can converges between our highways be more environmentally efficient. What is the best rail system for the countryWhat is the best aviation infrastructure for the country?

What is the best mixed transportation and navigation system for the country? How can Australian fresh and salt water be maintained at the highest quality? What of our rivers and streams? Many of these questions are being solved and debated as a matter of course in the cloisters of universities and within the civil service, but politics has the capacity to give them more public urgency and fuels them as national issues. 

There are lots of mundane but important productivity issues. What is a good primary school? What is a good high school? What is a good University? What do they look like? What and where are they? What are their features? 

What are the weaknesses of our current economy and society and how can they be overcome? What is the best hospital? What does it look like? How do ostensibley social service institutions contribute to greater economic and community goals?

 Can we build in flexibility to our social welfare state? Can we have more productive and healthy enlightened senior citizens? What are the best mineral extraction processes in Australia? How can existing mines and primary resources sites be improved rehabilitated and contribute to new post primary industry enterprises? What is the best Australian farm? What are the best Australian farming practices?

The Albanese Labour government has won a second and most probably third and possibly fourth term of government. It has the opportunity to set the future for Australia in profound ways. It needs to think boldly but most importantly ask the right questions now. In the past, labour has achieved monumental changes to the nature of Australian life from the 8-hour day, the arbitration system and fair wages to the Medicare system and NDIS. Labor's modus operandi the idea of ensuring everybody gains in equal and fair ways now needs to be supplemented with a concept of high quality. If the nation is to grow Australians require an improvement of national institutions and a reset of the original Colonial structures that define the nation. In the 21st century we need a reset,  these are the great challenges ahead.