KPMG Australia (KPMG) welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Productivity Commission's Productivity Inquiry (the Inquiry).
KPMG notes that productivity growth has slowed since the turn of the century. Since productivity growth has contributed almost all of Australia’s improvement in material living standards since federation, it is essential that the productivity slowdown is arrested and turned around if Australians are to enjoy continued increases in living standards, social disadvantage is to be reduced and the Australian and global environments are to be preserved and repaired.
KPMG proposes that the Productivity Commission’s report includes pathways to and recommendations for productivity-raising reforms in the following areas:
1. Competition
2. Research and development
3. Infrastructure
4. Emissions reductions
5. Workplace relations
6. Modernisation in the digital age
7. Taxation
8. Gender-based reforms
9. Education and training
10. Immigration.
While this list is not exhaustive, successful reform in these areas would go a long way to restoring productivity growth rates to the productivity boom levels of the 1990s and early 2000s.
This submission outlines 13 recommendations at section one and provides an overview of each of the proposed reform areas at section two.
