Canberra
The Prime Minister wants to broker closer co-operation between business, unions and government as part of a new national competitiveness agenda designed to smooth the nation’s economic transition out of the resources boom.
The Prime Minister has also rejected myths created by Tony Abbott about the Australian economy, saying the Opposition Leader is attempting to scare Australians over their economic well-being rather than producing serious alternative policy.
In a speech to the National Press Club today, the Prime Minister also called on the business sector to use the existing Fair Work Act to drive productivity gains and to sharpen its engagement with Asia, particularly Indonesia.
In an assessment of the economic challenges facing Australia, the Prime Minister said the nation must adjust its policies to recognise the end of the China resources boom and an anaemic global economic recovery in the wake of the global financial crisis.
While resource and commodity exports are up, the prices we receive for them have now fallen almost 25 per cent since their peak and are likely to fall further.
Economic policy must now focus on a transition from an investment-intensive phase in our minerals and energy sector toward a focus on new investment in other sectors of the economy including the trade sector that will now be advantaged by a lower dollar.
Managing this economic transition is now a core task of Australian economic policy. The nation can manage this transition by our domestic industries and our exporters taking advantage of a new, lower Australian dollar, boosting supply, and exporting a greater range of goods and services to a greater range of markets throughout the world.
Since becoming Prime Minister a fortnight ago, Mr Rudd has met four times with the ACTU and the Business Council of Australia to enlist their support for closer co-operation.
Over coming days senior ministers will continue the consultations to hammer out a work program on the ways forward to boost productivity.
Agenda items include rising energy prices, unintended rigidities in the labour market, business productivity, red tape, education, skills and training, infrastructure and small business.
The core of this new national competitiveness agenda must be a common agreement to lift the rate of annual productivity growth from its existing level of 1.6 per cent to 2 per cent or better.
The Prime Minister had challenged Mr Abbott to join him at today’s NPC function for a debate about Labor’s record, its policies for the future and the Coalition’s competing policy vision.
Mr Abbott failed to attend.
Mr Abbott’s ongoing attacks on the Government’s record are not based in fact and he has failed to produce any new policy beyond a daily diatribe of negative politics designed to make Australians feel the nation is on the verge of falling apart.
The objective facts do not support his claims.