The former Wizard founder and chairman-turned host and author has had his ear to the ground, and he reckons he’s figured out exactly what’s wrong with Australia right now.

Mark Bouris, a name that probably rings a bell because of the Apprentice and Wizard Home Loans fame—is now helming Yellow Brick Road and hosting his own podcast, where he dishes out economic takes like they’re hot chips. Recently, he threw a rhetorical grenade on social media, asking “what’s going wrong in this country?” His verdict?

We’ve abandoned nation‑building for a short‑term juggling act.

Bouris isn’t accusing our politicians of lazy pandering. He claims they’re just overwhelmed by trying to keep every interest group content: climate activists, housing‑anxious millennials, wage‑stressed workers, ageing healthcare beneficiaries.

The result? A patchwork of firefighting, no daring vision.

He says he longs for days when leaders like Hawke‑Keating or Howard‑Costello thought decades ahead—rolling out big, structural reforms like compulsory super and GST that lifted everyone, not just their constituencies.

Cue the national sigh of recognition. Bouris strikes a chord because beneath the surface, the numbers are ugly. But he’s oddly uncheerful about that.

Take productivity for example. ABS data shows labour productivity growth has barely budged—just 0.9 percent averaged over 20 years up to 2022‑23—and recent quarterly figures show productivity down 1.2 percent year-on-year to December 2024. On a quarterly basis, the latest stats showed no improvement—productivity flat at 99.50 points in Q1 2025, where Q4 2024 also lingered at 99.50.

In short: stagnation masquerading as resilience.

Worse, private‑sector job creation has collapsed. About 82 percent of new jobs since 2023 came courtesy of state or federal coffers—public spending propping up participation while productivity slides  . That’s not sustainable. Add to this a plunge in apprenticeship starts—down 30 percent relative to the working‑age population—which threatens a $140 billion hit unless employer incentives reappear .

Anyone want a productivity cure? The Productivity Commission points at overwork (yes, record‑long hours) and broken investment incentives as pain points. Meanwhile, tax reform buffs argue that poor productivity cost the average full‑time Aussie worker about $500 000 over the past 25 years—and argue only real structural reform can reverse that .

Even Deloitte CFOs are slipping productivity into pitch‑palms. They’re betting on AI to bail us out—citing weekly time savings of 5.3 hours for GenAI users—but less than a third have actually adopted it amid resource constraints .

And what about the state grappling with climate and energy, global trade tensions, and renewable shifts? Government is splashing out billions on green hydrogen and solar manufacturing—but critics say that’s not enough to offset weakening productivity, or the inertia of private‑sector innovation  .

So here’s Bouris’s genius—or at least his point: without nation-building, we’re sailing blind. No big idea, no structural growth, just scrambling for votes while the engine sputters. He’s not wrong. The numbers are out—and they’re painfully clear.

Here are his comments in full from Twitter (I'll never call it X, Elon):

I put up a post recently asking a simple question: what’s going wrong in this country? I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I’m not trying to sound arrogant, but I do want to start an honest conversation. The post struck a nerve — people got behind it — and I think it’s…

— Mark Bouris (@markbouris) August 4, 2025