Prime Minister Anthony Albanese graced the National Press Club this week for the first time since the election and expressed concern about productivity. So he should.

Labour productivity declined by more than six per cent between March 2022 and June 2023 before flatlining for the rest of his term.

There’s no mystery to this. Labor’s huge surge in immigration was absorbed by the ever-expanding public sector – think of the massive growth in the NDIS, for example. There was also a seven per cent increase in hours worked, but no proportional increase in output. That’s because Mr Albanese raised the minimum wage and boosted pay in the care sector, while reintroducing rigidities into the labour market via industrial relations laws that empower unions to revive all sorts of time-honoured time-wasting practices.

At the same time, the government has squandered billions on green hydrogen, batteries, transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines – only to make electricity more expensive and more unreliable.

All that government spending pushed up interest rates, driving up prices, so even those fortunate enough to secure a pay rise found their money bought less.

Worse, as the Productivity Commission notes, there has been a persistent underinvestment by business in machinery, equipment and innovation – the very things that drive productivity. But why would any business invest in plant and equipment in Australia under such conditions? High interest rates, weak demand, skyrocketing energy costs, and the constant threat of load shedding every time the wind drops or a coal plant goes down for repairs. Net zero policies have made it clear: there’s no incentive to maintain reliable baseload power.

The result is that over the past three years, GDP growth has decelerated sharply. A short-lived export bump after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine briefly flattered the numbers in 2022, but Labor’s policies quickly took hold. Growth fell to 1.4 per cent in 2023–24, then to 1.3 per cent in 2024–25.

Worse, this anaemic growth has had to be spread among a rapidly growing population. The result is a full-blown per capita recession. Economic growth has gone backwards in individual terms. GDP per capita declined in nine of the past eleven quarters – the most sustained contraction since the 1970s. In the March 2025 quarter alone, it fell another 0.2 per cent.

While Australians are working longer hours for less, Mr Albanese is taking it easy. Parliament last sat during Budget week on 27 March and won’t return until 22 July – a gap of nearly four months. That means the House of Representatives will sit for only 40 days this year, far below the usual 65 to 70. By comparison, the U.S. House of Representatives typically sits for around 147 legislative days per year.

This is pathetic. Yes, fewer sitting days means fewer chances to pass damaging legislation – but also fewer opportunities for scrutiny, for ministers to be questioned, and for matters of public importance to be aired.

So what’s Mr Albanese’s plan to reverse the productivity slide? A talkfest. Treasurer Jim Chalmers will convene a roundtable with union mates and invite business leaders to nod along politely. At the Press Club, Albanese reaffirmed his commitment to unions, penalty rates and rising real wages. But that won’t raise productivity.

What makes this all worse is that Australia is going backwards. Productivity is now lower than it was in 2016, erasing nearly a decade’s worth of gains. The economy has grown, but output per worker has shrunk. We are now producing less, per hour worked, than before the smartphone was in everyone’s pocket.

We are now below the OECD average and lagging behind Canada and New Zealand. Even Japan, long the global cautionary tale of economic stagnation, is faring better in some metrics.

Much of this comes down to capital shallowing: more workers, but fewer tools. More people arriving, but without the investment in machinery or infrastructure they are being funnelled into low-productivity sectors like care and welfare services, where output is difficult to measure and incentives to innovate are practically nil.

And when energy becomes a handbrake on production – when load-shedding becomes the norm rather than the exception – productivity doesn’t just stagnate. It collapses.

What needs to happen is for the Opposition to increase its productivity. It completely failed to hold the Albanese government to account during the election. Over the next three years, it must build a compelling case for growth. That means telling the truth: net zero is not achievable, and virtually no major country is meeting its climate commitments. We need to cut the red, green and black tape strangling investment in critical minerals and energy. We need to restore workplace flexibility, put a cop back on the building industry beat, and invest in defence – not to stimulate high-tech manufacturing, but to ensure we can defend a nation that has become dangerously complacent.