Economy

Anthony Albanese understands the power of symbolism. He has carefully cultivated signals that women will be front and centre of his government’s agenda, particularly its economic one. From the gender balance of participants and speakers at its jobs and skills summit, to the formation of a Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, and the embrace of gender-responsive budgeting, there can be no criticism that women have gone unnoticed by the new government. The challenge for the prime minister is to marry the power of symbolism with real policy action.

As the government moves towards its first budget in October, uncertainties about our economic outlook are mounting. That’s partly because it is increasingly difficult to read the world economy, and there’s a growing belief that our interest rates must be getting close to a peak with the Reserve Bank of Australia’s increases. It’s also unclear just how long the impact of those moves will take to flow through.

The successful jobs and skills summit clearly established the significance to our future of improving our national productivity, yet it didn’t attempt to fill in the detail of how to achieve this. The government needs to adopt a clear objective to improve productivity – perhaps a simple target such as doubling the national rate of productivity growth by 2030, or even earlier.

Anthony Albanese is storming the Bastille erected by a sclerotic government more intent on its own maintenance of power and privilege than effectively advancing the national interest. The spectacle may not be as dramatic as that moment in French history that saw the old order swept aside in bloody revolutionary fervour, but its significance for Australia could be just as profound.

Anthony Albanese is looking to foster ‘a new culture of co-operation’ for the future, rather than pitting unions against business. What’s good for the worker should always be good for the employer. It’s a guiding light he has followed during his senior political career.

Our society is losing sight of the significance and requirements of ‘good governance’. Governance refers to the system by which our key organisations are managed, most importantly elected governments and corporations. It clearly identifies who are the decision-makers and how they are held accountable.

The policy challenge for the Albanese government is compounded by pressures left deliberately by the Morrison government, or attributable to its incompetence and neglect – in aggregate, record debt with budget deficits stretching as far as the eye can see. Important and urgent structural challenges are needed in the health system, and aged and disability care in particular, along with energy, housing, defence and climate policy.

Australians are, on average, the fourth-richest people in the world. Before we start celebrating our luck or cleverness, we should be sobered by The Smith Family’s statement in its most disturbing TV advertising, that one in six of our children and young people are growing up in poverty.

The concept of Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower should be a no-brainer. A clean-energy revolution is under way that will drive societies around the globe to a low-carbon existence. This will rival in significance the Industrial Revolution, which was driven by fossil fuels – coal-fired power, and petrol and diesel engines.

This week, the need for the new Albanese government to fix the mess it has inherited became personal for millions of Australians at the mercy of a failed energy market. The threat of blackouts and of freezing in their homes in the middle of one of the worst winter cold snaps for years brought with it an unexpected urgency.