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May 6, 2013
Roy Green in Beyond the boom: have we frittered away our opportunities? asks a very good question: "Where are jobs and growth to come from after the commodity boom?"
Improved productivity is central to rising living standards and sustainable economic growth especially when Australia is repositioning and competing globally as a “high cost” economy. Consequently, living standards will be even more dependent in the future on increasing our rate of productivity growth, particularly in trade-exposed sectors.
Bruce Petty
Australia has had abundant previous experience of commodity booms, which have all ended badly, with lessons that produced considerable reflection. What Australian policy-makers had to do was reflect on past mistakes The short answer to Green's question is that the jobs and growth will come from building a dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy.
However, as Green adds:
Clearly, structural change is taking place throughout the world economy, as a consequence mainly of technology and business model innovation and the changing patterns of international trade and development. But it is equally clear that Australia has been so lulled into complacency by the resources boom that we are not taking as much advantage of such change as we could be...Even with the pick-up in productivity growth over the past year, it will be a huge challenge to compensate for terms of trade decline in a high cost economy with a continuing strong dollar.
Australia has done so little towards building a dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy based on new technology and innovation. The market changes associated with the deregulation of product and labour markets has shifted much of the jobs growth to casual work in low productivity sectors.
The Coalition's policy behind the sound bite politics of “Stop the boats, "climate change is crap”, and “axe the tax” is that the job of the federal government is to look after the interests of the big mining industry; an industry deeply hostile to climate change and clean energy policies. This fossil fuel industry would scrap all subsidies for renewable energy and cancel all wind farm developments. Like the state-based coalition governments, Abbott's Coalition remains stuck on the policy that deems that renewables are costly and useless, and don’t reduce emissions, and that the renewable energy target should be killed or neutered.
Their coal dependency position is “coal lock-in” due to high capital costs and long assets life spans. That means Australian citizens will be forced to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in pollution control upgrades for outdated and obsolete coal power plants.
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wind energy for the Coalition is something to do with Danish turbines on sticks producing some kind of dinky pretend power.