The term "productivity" has become like Paul Keating’s famous “galah in the local pet shop”: even our squawking feathered friends are going on about it, but doing precious little to make it happen.

Anyone who didn’t notice that the Albanese Government chose employees over employers in their first term of government simply weren’t paying attention or are blatantly one-eyed. So, the calibre of the Government in its second-term in power will be determined by how they can be more supportive of the businesses who employ their constituency and who have the biggest impact on the productivity goal that was outlined by the Prime Minister yesterday at the National Press Club.

In his Press Club Address, Anthony Albanese told us we’ll set to have a roundtable of business and other leaders, presumably union bosses and academics, as well as industry experts, who’ll outline how Australia can boost its flagging and disappointing productivity.

So, what will be on the table? What rabbits does Albo want to pull out of his hat?

Try these:

Business leaders will push for holistic tax reform, cuts to red tape and faster approvals for major projects.

1. The Government will vow to cut red tape just like all past governments have and failed.
2. The PM yesterday said he was committed to helping to boost “private sector activity and private sector investment”.
3. Economists will call for tax reform to give incentives for businesses to invest and employees to want to work.
4. Start-up and new age business owners would call for a dumping of the taxing of unrealised gains, which could KO investment in these generally very productive businesses.
5. While unions will talk a supportive commitment to boosting productivity, they won’t want reduced pay rises and an undermining of workplace conditions, including changes to work-from-home arrangements.

The Australian’s Geoff Chambers captured what the big -end-of-town wants with this from the Business Council of Australia’s CEO Bran Black, who said he’d be very clear about policies that the business community believes will be counter-productive to improving productivity:

“The BCA is committed to bringing forward constructive policies that will drive more business investment,” he said. “These policies include red tape reduction, faster approvals on major projects, harnessing the potential of AI, advancing research and development, undertaking broad tax reform, unlocking more trade and investment and delivering the energy transition.”

While that’s want big business wants, what about small business owners, who employ 42% of the country’s workforce? This is where a lot of this country’s productivity potential lies and has been ignored by successive governments for decades!

Recently I talked with an historically-successful small business owner who said her business enthusiasm had been jaded since the shock-onset of the Covid lockdown and then the transitional period back to normal working conditions from 2021, which featured 13 interest rate rises, persistently high inflation that pushed up costs for power and transport and then delivered the now entrenched new work-from-home expectations of most employees.

While she admits that she loves her business, she worries about spiking insurance premiums, especially for workers compensation that have become so worryingly high because of mental health claims. Even the Labor Government in NSW is pushing for caps on compensation for those suffering those work-related issues!

She worries about her business productivity and is finding it hard to maintain her usual positivity. Now she says she has to be careful when recommending her staff work more productively lest they claim bullying or harassment. And then there are those whose performance justifies sacking or a redundancy, who then go on stress leave. While this adds to the cost of exiting such a worker, there’s also the distraction that eats up time that should be used for better production ideas, innovations and greater profits that can make higher wages more affordable.

In total, there are 2,589,595 small businesses in Australia, making up 97.2% of all businesses in the country. These businesses employ 5.1 million workers. Not only should this roundtable have real small business owners there telling their story, but someone in the Government also has to have the guts to help them get their business success ‘mojo’ back.

If they do that, productivity will go ballistic!

The PM says he’s a Labor Prime Minister and won’t take a backward step on industrial relations reform, which is a worry. In the 1980s, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating had ‘the rocks’ to ask the union movement to give ground on a number of areas hurting the country’s productivity. This partly explained why we avoided a recession for around 20 years.

At Albo’s roundtable, the PM has to take on those causing problems for our productivity. It gets down to the old footie saying: “No guts, no glory!”