Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Minchin, representing the Treasurer. Can the minister explain why productivity growth, critical to our long-term economic prosperity, was zero in 2006-07 against a forecast of 2.25 per cent? Is zero productivity growth the best the government can do? If this really is a budget for the future, can the minister also indicate why it forecast productivity growth of only 1.75 per cent per annum over the last two years of the forward estimates? Isn’t this barely half the productivity growth rate achieved during the 1990s? Why can’t the government do better on productivity than we were doing almost a decade ago?