In March this year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked the Productivity Commission (PC) to assess competition-enhancing reform options to reinvigorate the stalled process of productivity gains. He did so against a decade-long background of flagging productivity gains and actual falls since 2022.

Illustrating his ignorance about why such alarming trends were taking place, the Treasurer asked the PC to recommend solutions in the context of ‘adapting to the Net Zero transition’ (code for forcing the displacement of low-cost coal with high-cost wind and solar) and the ‘expansion of the care and support economy’.