Homeowners will be happy with Tuesday’s interest rate cut but Reserve Bank of Australia chair Michelle Bullock shares a common concern about Australia’s productivity, saying Australian households are feeling the burden of weaker productivity growth.  Our living standards will now take longer to improve than previous generations experienced.

Better productivity would mean we produce more goods and services with the same or less resources, seeing workers earn more pay, you enjoy lower prices, and small businesses make higher profits so they can hire more staff and expand in and support your local community.

Our food producers, productive small businesses and manufacturers are under attack from the Albanese and Allan Labor governments taxing unrealised gains in asset values, battling skyrocketing energy prices, tied up in green and red tape, and railroaded for energy and mining projects.

I met food manufacturing sector representatives this week who cannot secure the same government assistance as minerals processing.  Food processors complain energy prices and labour costs are the two biggest threats to their survival in regions like Mallee.

Regrettably, the Albanese Government is beholden to their union masters who will be behind the steering wheel of next week’s ‘productivity roundtable’.  Don’t expect to see a finger lifted to address crippling labour costs and associated red tape.

On form, I suspect Labor will double-down on the expensive, reckless renewable energy rollout and will not acknowledge how unachievable and diabolically expensive it really is.

This week I met with Nathan Falvo from Orchard Tech, a leading agricultural and horticultural contract management company based in Robinvale.  Orchard Tech have done all the work to secure workers from the former Coalition government’s deal with Vietnam to bring in 50 much needed workers.  Vietnamese workers were expected in the region by now, but Labor has hit the brakes and it may be 2026 before Orchard Tech welcomes them to Robinvale.  I have written to Foreign Minister Penny Wong for an explanation, with zero response.

Sadly, it seems the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister are more focussed on posturing about Palestine than on productivity in Robinvale, Swan Hill and regional Australia.