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Australians are less likely to start companies or switch jobs than in the past, reflecting a drop in economic dynamism over the past decade that has underpinned the nation’s worst productivity performance in history. The increasing concentration of power among a dwindling number of big firms in key industries – “from banks, to beer, to baby food” – has also robbed the economy of vitality, Competition Minister Andrew Leigh told The Australian.“It constrains the ability of the budget to build infrastructure and help poor people here and overseas. Whether your priority is paying down debt or boosting teacher quality, you should be worried about the drop in productivity,” he will say.

Mines, gas projects, farms and other industries in Australia’s second-biggest resources market and third-biggest agriculture sector could be shut down by a bureaucrat’s decision, under secret legislation drafted by the Queensland Environment Department. Several high-level sources said the draft bill as circulated would give a bureaucrat, likely the Environment Department’s director-­general, the power to wind back retrospectively existing environmental approvals, licences, and permits to slash production ­capacity.An industry source said: “It’s frankly outrageous. It would give power to a bureaucrat to unilaterally and retrospectively close businesses. It’s sovereign risk of the highest order.”

The most important hurdle I had to confront was that, despite a clear directive from the minister for defence to the secretary of Defence and the chief of the Defence Force to advise on military capabilities for the defence of Australia, they had been unable over the preceding 12 months to arrive at any agreement. First, I would offer two pieces of advice that were given to me by Sir Arthur Tange when he was the permanent secretary of Defence. He told me the most important single piece of documentation for any defence planner is “a map of one’s own country”. By this he meant a map of Australia and its region. In my review we made Australia’s unique geography central to our force structure priorities. Second, Tange asserted that “strategic policy without money is not strategic policy”. My review was given relatively generous financial guidance by government, but four years after the 1987 white paper – of which I was the primary author – the defence budget was radically slashed because of prime minister Paul Keating’s recession that we had to have. That must not be allowed to recur.

South Korean steel maker Posco will partner with Gina Rinehart to pump more gas into the domestic market with a $1 billion coal seam expansion, as the Albanese government insists the fuel is vital to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. With work set to begin in coming weeks, one of Australia’s biggest Asian energy allies and Ms Rinehart’s Hancock Energy aim to lift annual production at their jointly owned Queensland Senex venture in the Surat Basin to 60 petajoules within two years. Senex says the investment, which still needs approval by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, will create more than 200 construction jobs at its Atlas and Roma North projects, and help close a looming shortfall in domestic gas supplies that the competition regulator said this month could reach more than 56 petajoules, or 10 per cent of forecast 2023 demand.

Media Release | The Hon Madeleine King MP
Minister for Resources and Minister for Northern Australia | 5 August 2022.

Soaring coal and gas exports, turbo­charged by the Ukraine war, have driven the largest trade surplus in the nation’s history, filling government coffers and potentially halving the forecast budget deficit for the past financial year. An ongoing commodity price boom drove the nation’s trade surplus to a record $17.7bn in June, ­according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, leaving the trade balance for 2021-22 more than 54 per cent higher at an unprecedented $137.4bn. CBA senior economist Belinda Allen described the trade figures as “truly extraordinary in the context of where we were in 2016, when we were recording very persistent deficits”.

Perhaps the single best option for tackling these issues is to provide an unlimited work bonus which would allow pensioners to earn as much as they want from work and just pay income tax like everyone else. This is not to suggest a universal pension — eligibility would still be subject to an assets test and other income tests — but to give pensioners greater freedom to work if they choose to. It will give greater freedom and prosperity to pensioners who choose to work, it will increase revenue from the tax on additional income earned, and it will provide immediate relief to businesses across Australia struggling with worker shortages.