The Business Council has long called for a national fund to help address Australia's ailing productivity, by incentivising states and territories to undertake reform, and the Commonwealth's National Productivity Fund is a significant step in the right direction.
BCA Chief Executive Bran Black said a fund incentivising states to implement productivity enhancing reforms is needed to help reverse the trend of lagging productivity that is impacting our ability to increase real wages.
"The BCA has long called for a national fund to assist in lifting our ailing productivity growth - which is currently at six-decade lows - to boost real wage growth and increase living standards," Mr Black said.
"We welcome this new fund and think it is a significant step towards addressing bottlenecks that are holding back our productivity growth."
"The BCA looks forward to further engagement on how the fund will work and whether there's scope for its expansion into many areas that continue to hold back our productivity."
The BCA's long-standing calls for a national reform fund follow a tried and tested approach taken to deliver the landmark competition reforms of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and have the objective of seeing states and territories incentivised to tackle challenging reforms that deliver significant productivity growth.
These include reforms such as abolishing stamp duty in favour of a broad-based land tax, reducing regulation, improving housing approval rates, harmonising payroll taxes across jurisdictions and removing restrictions on trading hours.
Mr Black said the fund announced today could help address issues in the building sector to lift productivity and increase housing supply.
"The BCA's recent It's time to say yes to housingreport argued that a reform fund could help secure better alignment on zoning and planning regulations, which would make it faster and easier to build a home," Mr Black said.
"The Commonwealth has an important role to play in helping states and territories improve productivity and address our housing crisis, and today's announcement represents a positive step forward."
