Shane Warne Stand rebuild still on the agenda; MCC members back rules to crack down on card fraud
Plans to rebuild or refurbish the stand – which covers half the MCG and was built in 1992 – have been in the mix for some time, as it had an anticipated lifespan of about four decades and is considered an ageing asset.
The Victorian government and the MCC have already completed a feasibility study to determine the future of the 45,000-seat stand – previously known as the Great Southern Stand – which caters for nearly half the stadium's capacity.
MCC chief executive Stuart Fox told the club's annual general meeting on Tuesday night that the Warne stand overhaul would 'certainly be challenging' and would require additional public and private funding support as the club 'wouldn't be capable of doing that on our own'.
This masthead reported three years ago that the Victorian government, emboldened by its agreement with the AFL to host every grand final until 2057, would be expected to foot the majority of the bill.
The MCC has recorded a net profit of $38.35 million for the financial year ending March 31. The latest result came after the club posted a net profit of $32.1 million last financial year. The club has also reported having cash reserves of nearly $80 million.
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Fox and MCC president Fred Oldfield told the meeting that the project remained a high priority.
'We've done the initial work on the Shane Warne Stand, and that was in conjunction with the Victorian government,' Fox said.
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Big Battery Boom: should regional Australia be worried about fires?
Australia is in the midst of a big battery boom, with hundreds of mega-batteries soon to be dotted across regional areas. But the boom has brought concerns from country residents, farmers, and even volunteer firefighters about the potential fire risks it could bring with it. To find out more, ACM went inside an operational big battery to learn how it worked and how risky it really was. Australia is in the grips of an energy revolution that is transforming many regional areas. Wind and solar farms have been the most obvious part of that change, but batteries are the next crucial piece: a power source when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. There are 30 big batteries operating across the country - seven in Victoria, six each in NSW, Queensland and SA, and eight in WA. These 30 batteries can store 3 gigawatts (GW) of power. But forecasts by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) show Australia will need at least 22GW by 2030 and 49GW by 2050. That's a lot more batteries, and most of them will be built in regional areas. Ballarat, Warrnambool, Albury-Wodonga and Newcastle will all have a handful of batteries around them in the next five years, but nearly every regional town will have at least one nearby. ACM travelled to Gippsland in south-east Victoria to visit a big battery built on the site of the former Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Hazelwood was Australia's dirtiest power plant when it was decommissioned in 2017. Its owners - the French energy company Engie - decided to replace the power station with a battery, to make use of the huge power lines that once plugged into the plant. Compared to the towering chimneys of the coal plant, Hazelwood's big battery is pretty modest. It resembles a large gravel car park, but instead of cars, it is dotted with dozens of white metal cubes arranged in rows of six. Each cube contains 14 batteries about the same size as you would find in a small electric vehicle. The battery is just 18 months old, coming online in December 2023 at a cost of somewhere near $150 million. At 150 megawatts (MW), it is equivalent to 30,000 rooftop solar systems generating for an hour. The whole site emits a low roar - the sound of hundreds of industrial fans cooling the battery units. Batteries have an unfortunate association with fire in the public imagination, driven largely by regular videos of electric scooters, e-bikes and electric cars catching on fire. Engie media manager Dylan Quinell says there is a wide spectrum of fire safety protection depending on the type of battery use. "At the bottom, in terms of regulation, you'd have things like electric scooters," Mr Quinell says. "EVs have much better fail-safes and protections, but then with a BESS it's much higher again." But big batteries have caught on fire in the past. The Victorian government's Tesla battery outside Geelong caught fire during testing in July 2021. The battery had been offline at the time of the fire, meaning its monitoring and prevention measures were off. Another Tesla battery near Rockhampton in Queensland also caught fire in September 2023, and one of the world's largest batteries caught fire in California in January 2025. It has spurred concerns in some regional communities about the bushfire risk big batteries could pose. An ABC report in May 2025 revealed CFA volunteers in Dederang in northern Victoria were opposed to a proposed big battery near the town. CFA member Doug Connors said volunteers weren't equipped to fight battery fires. "As a brigade, we're equipped and trained to fight grass and scrub fires," Mr Connors said. The coordinator of Hazelwood's big battery, Jonathan Vila, says he can understand the concerns, but the Hazelwood site was extremely safe. "The batteries here are made from lithium iron phosphate, which is less volatile than previous battery technologies," Mr Vila says. "Each battery cube is fan and liquid cooled and has a system that sends an alert if there's any problem. Mr Vila says each cube can isolate from the rest of the big battery system instantaneously, and there's a temperature trigger that fills the cube with chemical firefighting foam if it gets too hot. "The US manufacturer, Fluence, has done extensive testing, trying really hard to set them on fire. It was actually a huge effort. "When they did manage to start a fire, it was totally contained within the cube, so it never jumped from cube to cube." All of the previous high-profile big battery fires were using older, different technology than the Hazelwood battery. Mr Quinnell says a key part of the approval and construction process at the Hazelwood battery was engaging local firefighters in the planning process. "The local Fire Rescue Victoria and CFA crews have come to the site to review it and understand it," he says. "Once they saw the safety mechanisms and the reality of the battery, they were really comfortable with it. "I think whenever a developer does a decent job, it really has to bring the community along with it and make sure they're involved in the process." While the Hazelwood battery is only 150MW, there are already plans to expand it. The existing power lines coming into Hazelwood have the capacity to carry 1.6GW, more than 10 times the existing battery output. The next phase is likely to be much quicker and much cheaper to build. Just a decade ago big batteries were seven times more expensive than they are in 2025, with the latest forecasts predicting a further 14 per cent drop in the next year. The Hazelwood expansion will be mirrored Australia-wide, with more than 20GW of big battery projects in the planning pipeline. More than 60 batteries are being built across the country, with a further 83 passing the approval process and 57 awaiting approval. Australia is in the midst of a big battery boom, with hundreds of mega-batteries soon to be dotted across regional areas. But the boom has brought concerns from country residents, farmers, and even volunteer firefighters about the potential fire risks it could bring with it. To find out more, ACM went inside an operational big battery to learn how it worked and how risky it really was. Australia is in the grips of an energy revolution that is transforming many regional areas. Wind and solar farms have been the most obvious part of that change, but batteries are the next crucial piece: a power source when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. There are 30 big batteries operating across the country - seven in Victoria, six each in NSW, Queensland and SA, and eight in WA. These 30 batteries can store 3 gigawatts (GW) of power. But forecasts by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) show Australia will need at least 22GW by 2030 and 49GW by 2050. That's a lot more batteries, and most of them will be built in regional areas. Ballarat, Warrnambool, Albury-Wodonga and Newcastle will all have a handful of batteries around them in the next five years, but nearly every regional town will have at least one nearby. ACM travelled to Gippsland in south-east Victoria to visit a big battery built on the site of the former Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Hazelwood was Australia's dirtiest power plant when it was decommissioned in 2017. Its owners - the French energy company Engie - decided to replace the power station with a battery, to make use of the huge power lines that once plugged into the plant. Compared to the towering chimneys of the coal plant, Hazelwood's big battery is pretty modest. It resembles a large gravel car park, but instead of cars, it is dotted with dozens of white metal cubes arranged in rows of six. Each cube contains 14 batteries about the same size as you would find in a small electric vehicle. The battery is just 18 months old, coming online in December 2023 at a cost of somewhere near $150 million. At 150 megawatts (MW), it is equivalent to 30,000 rooftop solar systems generating for an hour. The whole site emits a low roar - the sound of hundreds of industrial fans cooling the battery units. Batteries have an unfortunate association with fire in the public imagination, driven largely by regular videos of electric scooters, e-bikes and electric cars catching on fire. Engie media manager Dylan Quinell says there is a wide spectrum of fire safety protection depending on the type of battery use. "At the bottom, in terms of regulation, you'd have things like electric scooters," Mr Quinell says. "EVs have much better fail-safes and protections, but then with a BESS it's much higher again." But big batteries have caught on fire in the past. The Victorian government's Tesla battery outside Geelong caught fire during testing in July 2021. The battery had been offline at the time of the fire, meaning its monitoring and prevention measures were off. Another Tesla battery near Rockhampton in Queensland also caught fire in September 2023, and one of the world's largest batteries caught fire in California in January 2025. It has spurred concerns in some regional communities about the bushfire risk big batteries could pose. An ABC report in May 2025 revealed CFA volunteers in Dederang in northern Victoria were opposed to a proposed big battery near the town. CFA member Doug Connors said volunteers weren't equipped to fight battery fires. "As a brigade, we're equipped and trained to fight grass and scrub fires," Mr Connors said. The coordinator of Hazelwood's big battery, Jonathan Vila, says he can understand the concerns, but the Hazelwood site was extremely safe. "The batteries here are made from lithium iron phosphate, which is less volatile than previous battery technologies," Mr Vila says. "Each battery cube is fan and liquid cooled and has a system that sends an alert if there's any problem. Mr Vila says each cube can isolate from the rest of the big battery system instantaneously, and there's a temperature trigger that fills the cube with chemical firefighting foam if it gets too hot. "The US manufacturer, Fluence, has done extensive testing, trying really hard to set them on fire. It was actually a huge effort. "When they did manage to start a fire, it was totally contained within the cube, so it never jumped from cube to cube." All of the previous high-profile big battery fires were using older, different technology than the Hazelwood battery. Mr Quinnell says a key part of the approval and construction process at the Hazelwood battery was engaging local firefighters in the planning process. "The local Fire Rescue Victoria and CFA crews have come to the site to review it and understand it," he says. "Once they saw the safety mechanisms and the reality of the battery, they were really comfortable with it. "I think whenever a developer does a decent job, it really has to bring the community along with it and make sure they're involved in the process." While the Hazelwood battery is only 150MW, there are already plans to expand it. The existing power lines coming into Hazelwood have the capacity to carry 1.6GW, more than 10 times the existing battery output. The next phase is likely to be much quicker and much cheaper to build. Just a decade ago big batteries were seven times more expensive than they are in 2025, with the latest forecasts predicting a further 14 per cent drop in the next year. The Hazelwood expansion will be mirrored Australia-wide, with more than 20GW of big battery projects in the planning pipeline. More than 60 batteries are being built across the country, with a further 83 passing the approval process and 57 awaiting approval. Australia is in the midst of a big battery boom, with hundreds of mega-batteries soon to be dotted across regional areas. But the boom has brought concerns from country residents, farmers, and even volunteer firefighters about the potential fire risks it could bring with it. To find out more, ACM went inside an operational big battery to learn how it worked and how risky it really was. Australia is in the grips of an energy revolution that is transforming many regional areas. Wind and solar farms have been the most obvious part of that change, but batteries are the next crucial piece: a power source when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. There are 30 big batteries operating across the country - seven in Victoria, six each in NSW, Queensland and SA, and eight in WA. These 30 batteries can store 3 gigawatts (GW) of power. But forecasts by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) show Australia will need at least 22GW by 2030 and 49GW by 2050. That's a lot more batteries, and most of them will be built in regional areas. Ballarat, Warrnambool, Albury-Wodonga and Newcastle will all have a handful of batteries around them in the next five years, but nearly every regional town will have at least one nearby. ACM travelled to Gippsland in south-east Victoria to visit a big battery built on the site of the former Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Hazelwood was Australia's dirtiest power plant when it was decommissioned in 2017. Its owners - the French energy company Engie - decided to replace the power station with a battery, to make use of the huge power lines that once plugged into the plant. Compared to the towering chimneys of the coal plant, Hazelwood's big battery is pretty modest. It resembles a large gravel car park, but instead of cars, it is dotted with dozens of white metal cubes arranged in rows of six. Each cube contains 14 batteries about the same size as you would find in a small electric vehicle. The battery is just 18 months old, coming online in December 2023 at a cost of somewhere near $150 million. At 150 megawatts (MW), it is equivalent to 30,000 rooftop solar systems generating for an hour. The whole site emits a low roar - the sound of hundreds of industrial fans cooling the battery units. Batteries have an unfortunate association with fire in the public imagination, driven largely by regular videos of electric scooters, e-bikes and electric cars catching on fire. Engie media manager Dylan Quinell says there is a wide spectrum of fire safety protection depending on the type of battery use. "At the bottom, in terms of regulation, you'd have things like electric scooters," Mr Quinell says. "EVs have much better fail-safes and protections, but then with a BESS it's much higher again." But big batteries have caught on fire in the past. The Victorian government's Tesla battery outside Geelong caught fire during testing in July 2021. The battery had been offline at the time of the fire, meaning its monitoring and prevention measures were off. Another Tesla battery near Rockhampton in Queensland also caught fire in September 2023, and one of the world's largest batteries caught fire in California in January 2025. It has spurred concerns in some regional communities about the bushfire risk big batteries could pose. An ABC report in May 2025 revealed CFA volunteers in Dederang in northern Victoria were opposed to a proposed big battery near the town. CFA member Doug Connors said volunteers weren't equipped to fight battery fires. "As a brigade, we're equipped and trained to fight grass and scrub fires," Mr Connors said. The coordinator of Hazelwood's big battery, Jonathan Vila, says he can understand the concerns, but the Hazelwood site was extremely safe. "The batteries here are made from lithium iron phosphate, which is less volatile than previous battery technologies," Mr Vila says. "Each battery cube is fan and liquid cooled and has a system that sends an alert if there's any problem. Mr Vila says each cube can isolate from the rest of the big battery system instantaneously, and there's a temperature trigger that fills the cube with chemical firefighting foam if it gets too hot. "The US manufacturer, Fluence, has done extensive testing, trying really hard to set them on fire. It was actually a huge effort. "When they did manage to start a fire, it was totally contained within the cube, so it never jumped from cube to cube." All of the previous high-profile big battery fires were using older, different technology than the Hazelwood battery. Mr Quinnell says a key part of the approval and construction process at the Hazelwood battery was engaging local firefighters in the planning process. "The local Fire Rescue Victoria and CFA crews have come to the site to review it and understand it," he says. "Once they saw the safety mechanisms and the reality of the battery, they were really comfortable with it. "I think whenever a developer does a decent job, it really has to bring the community along with it and make sure they're involved in the process." While the Hazelwood battery is only 150MW, there are already plans to expand it. The existing power lines coming into Hazelwood have the capacity to carry 1.6GW, more than 10 times the existing battery output. The next phase is likely to be much quicker and much cheaper to build. Just a decade ago big batteries were seven times more expensive than they are in 2025, with the latest forecasts predicting a further 14 per cent drop in the next year. The Hazelwood expansion will be mirrored Australia-wide, with more than 20GW of big battery projects in the planning pipeline. More than 60 batteries are being built across the country, with a further 83 passing the approval process and 57 awaiting approval. Australia is in the midst of a big battery boom, with hundreds of mega-batteries soon to be dotted across regional areas. But the boom has brought concerns from country residents, farmers, and even volunteer firefighters about the potential fire risks it could bring with it. To find out more, ACM went inside an operational big battery to learn how it worked and how risky it really was. Australia is in the grips of an energy revolution that is transforming many regional areas. Wind and solar farms have been the most obvious part of that change, but batteries are the next crucial piece: a power source when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. There are 30 big batteries operating across the country - seven in Victoria, six each in NSW, Queensland and SA, and eight in WA. These 30 batteries can store 3 gigawatts (GW) of power. But forecasts by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) show Australia will need at least 22GW by 2030 and 49GW by 2050. That's a lot more batteries, and most of them will be built in regional areas. Ballarat, Warrnambool, Albury-Wodonga and Newcastle will all have a handful of batteries around them in the next five years, but nearly every regional town will have at least one nearby. ACM travelled to Gippsland in south-east Victoria to visit a big battery built on the site of the former Hazelwood coal-fired power station. Hazelwood was Australia's dirtiest power plant when it was decommissioned in 2017. Its owners - the French energy company Engie - decided to replace the power station with a battery, to make use of the huge power lines that once plugged into the plant. Compared to the towering chimneys of the coal plant, Hazelwood's big battery is pretty modest. It resembles a large gravel car park, but instead of cars, it is dotted with dozens of white metal cubes arranged in rows of six. Each cube contains 14 batteries about the same size as you would find in a small electric vehicle. The battery is just 18 months old, coming online in December 2023 at a cost of somewhere near $150 million. At 150 megawatts (MW), it is equivalent to 30,000 rooftop solar systems generating for an hour. The whole site emits a low roar - the sound of hundreds of industrial fans cooling the battery units. Batteries have an unfortunate association with fire in the public imagination, driven largely by regular videos of electric scooters, e-bikes and electric cars catching on fire. Engie media manager Dylan Quinell says there is a wide spectrum of fire safety protection depending on the type of battery use. "At the bottom, in terms of regulation, you'd have things like electric scooters," Mr Quinell says. "EVs have much better fail-safes and protections, but then with a BESS it's much higher again." But big batteries have caught on fire in the past. The Victorian government's Tesla battery outside Geelong caught fire during testing in July 2021. The battery had been offline at the time of the fire, meaning its monitoring and prevention measures were off. Another Tesla battery near Rockhampton in Queensland also caught fire in September 2023, and one of the world's largest batteries caught fire in California in January 2025. It has spurred concerns in some regional communities about the bushfire risk big batteries could pose. An ABC report in May 2025 revealed CFA volunteers in Dederang in northern Victoria were opposed to a proposed big battery near the town. CFA member Doug Connors said volunteers weren't equipped to fight battery fires. "As a brigade, we're equipped and trained to fight grass and scrub fires," Mr Connors said. The coordinator of Hazelwood's big battery, Jonathan Vila, says he can understand the concerns, but the Hazelwood site was extremely safe. "The batteries here are made from lithium iron phosphate, which is less volatile than previous battery technologies," Mr Vila says. "Each battery cube is fan and liquid cooled and has a system that sends an alert if there's any problem. Mr Vila says each cube can isolate from the rest of the big battery system instantaneously, and there's a temperature trigger that fills the cube with chemical firefighting foam if it gets too hot. "The US manufacturer, Fluence, has done extensive testing, trying really hard to set them on fire. It was actually a huge effort. "When they did manage to start a fire, it was totally contained within the cube, so it never jumped from cube to cube." All of the previous high-profile big battery fires were using older, different technology than the Hazelwood battery. Mr Quinnell says a key part of the approval and construction process at the Hazelwood battery was engaging local firefighters in the planning process. "The local Fire Rescue Victoria and CFA crews have come to the site to review it and understand it," he says. "Once they saw the safety mechanisms and the reality of the battery, they were really comfortable with it. "I think whenever a developer does a decent job, it really has to bring the community along with it and make sure they're involved in the process." While the Hazelwood battery is only 150MW, there are already plans to expand it. The existing power lines coming into Hazelwood have the capacity to carry 1.6GW, more than 10 times the existing battery output. The next phase is likely to be much quicker and much cheaper to build. Just a decade ago big batteries were seven times more expensive than they are in 2025, with the latest forecasts predicting a further 14 per cent drop in the next year. The Hazelwood expansion will be mirrored Australia-wide, with more than 20GW of big battery projects in the planning pipeline. More than 60 batteries are being built across the country, with a further 83 passing the approval process and 57 awaiting approval.
The Advertiser
6 hours ago
- The Advertiser
This gobsmacking four-day working week proposal sets us back 25 years
The ACTU's gobsmacking proposal for a national four-day working week would take our country's productivity back a quarter of a century, drive businesses to the wall and turn us into an uncompetitive international laughing stock. The idea that businesses could afford to pay the same for 20 per cent less output, while meeting customer demand and keep costs down for consumers is simply ludicrous. Anyone with a sense of self-awareness knows we face challenging times: poor productivity, major technological change, massive global upheaval, skills and labour shortages and more. Now is the time to work smarter, not less, to keep us competitive and economically viable. This proposal, less than a week before the Treasurer's Economic Reform Roundtable to discuss boosting productivity and improving economic settings, simply fails the pub test. Fortunately, the federal government has been quick to kick it into the long grass where it should remain. The notion that paying people the same to work 20 per cent less means they will be more productive when they do work just doesn't stack up. It unfortunately shows the ACTU is not serious about identifying what is good for Australian workers or the community. At the current rate of productivity growth, it would take more than 25 years to generate enough productivity for business to break even with the proposal. That's a quarter of a century to get our productivity back to where it is now, while the rest of the world powers ahead. This would commit an entire generation's worth of national productivity gains to a union frolic, when so many other urgent and pressing issues need more investment in our country. If the unions were serious about increased workplace flexibility, they could have gone to the Fair Work Commission and proposed it as part of renegotiation of awards. This would open a proper discussion on trade-offs which link flexibility to productivity improvements. We need more flexible workplaces. Employers want it and many employees want it. One obvious area of need is to give both more options to change working times by agreement. Neither business nor workers benefit when rigid hours are forced on them. But this isn't where the ACTU went. They've simply tried to create a media headline by throwing out an unrealistic claim lacking any evidence or realistic prospect. They cited a small academic study whose authors concede they can't verify there would actually be economy-wide productivity gains. This isn't the serious and good faith discussion required at next week's Roundtable. This followed on from the Victorian government plan to give employees a legislated right to work two days a week from home. It seems the union movement and some in government don't want Australians to work at all. They want to turn back time, cut productivity and make Australia less attractive to much-needed investment. It also comes at a time when the country is desperately short of workers with the right skills for our needs. More than 340,000 jobs currently sit vacant - around 100,000 more than normal - and a third of the labour force work in occupations classified as in national supply shortage. Standing down 20 per cent of our workforce capacity will only make the skills shortages cruelling our industries - particularly in regional Australia - that much worse. This is reckless and irresponsible and seeks to prioritise feel-good headlines over sound policy and economic management. It would have serious impacts across the country, in particular in our regions, harming working people, businesses of all sizes and local communities. It also comes at a time when the Australian government is rightly trying to focus on doing the opposite - lifting productivity, which is the ultimate source of higher wages and prosperity for generations to come. The importance of reversing Australia's productivity crisis could not be clearer. The Reserve Bank of Australia, a day before the ACTU announced its "plan", said Australians faced declining living standards because of falling productivity. This threatens to be an intergenerational failure of epic proportions. The leaders of today should not betray the legacy of preceding generations by failing to bequeath an Australia in which each generation can build on the hard work and smart decisions of its forebears. Countries around the world are fighting tooth and nail to improve their competitiveness, including in the race to successfully seize the opportunities created by changing technologies such as artificial intelligence. The RBA is warning us that Australia is on a fast track to going backwards unless we can increase our productivity. We need to take notice and work smarter together to meet this challenge. The ACTU and governments at all levels should be reckoning with these issues and - with the productivity challenge the government has called out through next week's Economic Reform Roundtable - not indulge in luxury beliefs and fanciful notions which will only harm working Australians, their families and communities. The ACTU's gobsmacking proposal for a national four-day working week would take our country's productivity back a quarter of a century, drive businesses to the wall and turn us into an uncompetitive international laughing stock. The idea that businesses could afford to pay the same for 20 per cent less output, while meeting customer demand and keep costs down for consumers is simply ludicrous. Anyone with a sense of self-awareness knows we face challenging times: poor productivity, major technological change, massive global upheaval, skills and labour shortages and more. Now is the time to work smarter, not less, to keep us competitive and economically viable. This proposal, less than a week before the Treasurer's Economic Reform Roundtable to discuss boosting productivity and improving economic settings, simply fails the pub test. Fortunately, the federal government has been quick to kick it into the long grass where it should remain. The notion that paying people the same to work 20 per cent less means they will be more productive when they do work just doesn't stack up. It unfortunately shows the ACTU is not serious about identifying what is good for Australian workers or the community. At the current rate of productivity growth, it would take more than 25 years to generate enough productivity for business to break even with the proposal. That's a quarter of a century to get our productivity back to where it is now, while the rest of the world powers ahead. This would commit an entire generation's worth of national productivity gains to a union frolic, when so many other urgent and pressing issues need more investment in our country. If the unions were serious about increased workplace flexibility, they could have gone to the Fair Work Commission and proposed it as part of renegotiation of awards. This would open a proper discussion on trade-offs which link flexibility to productivity improvements. We need more flexible workplaces. Employers want it and many employees want it. One obvious area of need is to give both more options to change working times by agreement. Neither business nor workers benefit when rigid hours are forced on them. But this isn't where the ACTU went. They've simply tried to create a media headline by throwing out an unrealistic claim lacking any evidence or realistic prospect. They cited a small academic study whose authors concede they can't verify there would actually be economy-wide productivity gains. This isn't the serious and good faith discussion required at next week's Roundtable. This followed on from the Victorian government plan to give employees a legislated right to work two days a week from home. It seems the union movement and some in government don't want Australians to work at all. They want to turn back time, cut productivity and make Australia less attractive to much-needed investment. It also comes at a time when the country is desperately short of workers with the right skills for our needs. More than 340,000 jobs currently sit vacant - around 100,000 more than normal - and a third of the labour force work in occupations classified as in national supply shortage. Standing down 20 per cent of our workforce capacity will only make the skills shortages cruelling our industries - particularly in regional Australia - that much worse. This is reckless and irresponsible and seeks to prioritise feel-good headlines over sound policy and economic management. It would have serious impacts across the country, in particular in our regions, harming working people, businesses of all sizes and local communities. It also comes at a time when the Australian government is rightly trying to focus on doing the opposite - lifting productivity, which is the ultimate source of higher wages and prosperity for generations to come. The importance of reversing Australia's productivity crisis could not be clearer. The Reserve Bank of Australia, a day before the ACTU announced its "plan", said Australians faced declining living standards because of falling productivity. This threatens to be an intergenerational failure of epic proportions. The leaders of today should not betray the legacy of preceding generations by failing to bequeath an Australia in which each generation can build on the hard work and smart decisions of its forebears. Countries around the world are fighting tooth and nail to improve their competitiveness, including in the race to successfully seize the opportunities created by changing technologies such as artificial intelligence. The RBA is warning us that Australia is on a fast track to going backwards unless we can increase our productivity. We need to take notice and work smarter together to meet this challenge. The ACTU and governments at all levels should be reckoning with these issues and - with the productivity challenge the government has called out through next week's Economic Reform Roundtable - not indulge in luxury beliefs and fanciful notions which will only harm working Australians, their families and communities. The ACTU's gobsmacking proposal for a national four-day working week would take our country's productivity back a quarter of a century, drive businesses to the wall and turn us into an uncompetitive international laughing stock. The idea that businesses could afford to pay the same for 20 per cent less output, while meeting customer demand and keep costs down for consumers is simply ludicrous. Anyone with a sense of self-awareness knows we face challenging times: poor productivity, major technological change, massive global upheaval, skills and labour shortages and more. Now is the time to work smarter, not less, to keep us competitive and economically viable. This proposal, less than a week before the Treasurer's Economic Reform Roundtable to discuss boosting productivity and improving economic settings, simply fails the pub test. Fortunately, the federal government has been quick to kick it into the long grass where it should remain. The notion that paying people the same to work 20 per cent less means they will be more productive when they do work just doesn't stack up. It unfortunately shows the ACTU is not serious about identifying what is good for Australian workers or the community. At the current rate of productivity growth, it would take more than 25 years to generate enough productivity for business to break even with the proposal. That's a quarter of a century to get our productivity back to where it is now, while the rest of the world powers ahead. This would commit an entire generation's worth of national productivity gains to a union frolic, when so many other urgent and pressing issues need more investment in our country. If the unions were serious about increased workplace flexibility, they could have gone to the Fair Work Commission and proposed it as part of renegotiation of awards. This would open a proper discussion on trade-offs which link flexibility to productivity improvements. We need more flexible workplaces. Employers want it and many employees want it. One obvious area of need is to give both more options to change working times by agreement. Neither business nor workers benefit when rigid hours are forced on them. But this isn't where the ACTU went. They've simply tried to create a media headline by throwing out an unrealistic claim lacking any evidence or realistic prospect. They cited a small academic study whose authors concede they can't verify there would actually be economy-wide productivity gains. This isn't the serious and good faith discussion required at next week's Roundtable. This followed on from the Victorian government plan to give employees a legislated right to work two days a week from home. It seems the union movement and some in government don't want Australians to work at all. They want to turn back time, cut productivity and make Australia less attractive to much-needed investment. It also comes at a time when the country is desperately short of workers with the right skills for our needs. More than 340,000 jobs currently sit vacant - around 100,000 more than normal - and a third of the labour force work in occupations classified as in national supply shortage. Standing down 20 per cent of our workforce capacity will only make the skills shortages cruelling our industries - particularly in regional Australia - that much worse. This is reckless and irresponsible and seeks to prioritise feel-good headlines over sound policy and economic management. It would have serious impacts across the country, in particular in our regions, harming working people, businesses of all sizes and local communities. It also comes at a time when the Australian government is rightly trying to focus on doing the opposite - lifting productivity, which is the ultimate source of higher wages and prosperity for generations to come. The importance of reversing Australia's productivity crisis could not be clearer. The Reserve Bank of Australia, a day before the ACTU announced its "plan", said Australians faced declining living standards because of falling productivity. This threatens to be an intergenerational failure of epic proportions. The leaders of today should not betray the legacy of preceding generations by failing to bequeath an Australia in which each generation can build on the hard work and smart decisions of its forebears. Countries around the world are fighting tooth and nail to improve their competitiveness, including in the race to successfully seize the opportunities created by changing technologies such as artificial intelligence. The RBA is warning us that Australia is on a fast track to going backwards unless we can increase our productivity. We need to take notice and work smarter together to meet this challenge. The ACTU and governments at all levels should be reckoning with these issues and - with the productivity challenge the government has called out through next week's Economic Reform Roundtable - not indulge in luxury beliefs and fanciful notions which will only harm working Australians, their families and communities. The ACTU's gobsmacking proposal for a national four-day working week would take our country's productivity back a quarter of a century, drive businesses to the wall and turn us into an uncompetitive international laughing stock. The idea that businesses could afford to pay the same for 20 per cent less output, while meeting customer demand and keep costs down for consumers is simply ludicrous. Anyone with a sense of self-awareness knows we face challenging times: poor productivity, major technological change, massive global upheaval, skills and labour shortages and more. Now is the time to work smarter, not less, to keep us competitive and economically viable. This proposal, less than a week before the Treasurer's Economic Reform Roundtable to discuss boosting productivity and improving economic settings, simply fails the pub test. Fortunately, the federal government has been quick to kick it into the long grass where it should remain. The notion that paying people the same to work 20 per cent less means they will be more productive when they do work just doesn't stack up. It unfortunately shows the ACTU is not serious about identifying what is good for Australian workers or the community. At the current rate of productivity growth, it would take more than 25 years to generate enough productivity for business to break even with the proposal. That's a quarter of a century to get our productivity back to where it is now, while the rest of the world powers ahead. This would commit an entire generation's worth of national productivity gains to a union frolic, when so many other urgent and pressing issues need more investment in our country. If the unions were serious about increased workplace flexibility, they could have gone to the Fair Work Commission and proposed it as part of renegotiation of awards. This would open a proper discussion on trade-offs which link flexibility to productivity improvements. We need more flexible workplaces. Employers want it and many employees want it. One obvious area of need is to give both more options to change working times by agreement. Neither business nor workers benefit when rigid hours are forced on them. But this isn't where the ACTU went. They've simply tried to create a media headline by throwing out an unrealistic claim lacking any evidence or realistic prospect. They cited a small academic study whose authors concede they can't verify there would actually be economy-wide productivity gains. This isn't the serious and good faith discussion required at next week's Roundtable. This followed on from the Victorian government plan to give employees a legislated right to work two days a week from home. It seems the union movement and some in government don't want Australians to work at all. They want to turn back time, cut productivity and make Australia less attractive to much-needed investment. It also comes at a time when the country is desperately short of workers with the right skills for our needs. More than 340,000 jobs currently sit vacant - around 100,000 more than normal - and a third of the labour force work in occupations classified as in national supply shortage. Standing down 20 per cent of our workforce capacity will only make the skills shortages cruelling our industries - particularly in regional Australia - that much worse. This is reckless and irresponsible and seeks to prioritise feel-good headlines over sound policy and economic management. It would have serious impacts across the country, in particular in our regions, harming working people, businesses of all sizes and local communities. It also comes at a time when the Australian government is rightly trying to focus on doing the opposite - lifting productivity, which is the ultimate source of higher wages and prosperity for generations to come. The importance of reversing Australia's productivity crisis could not be clearer. The Reserve Bank of Australia, a day before the ACTU announced its "plan", said Australians faced declining living standards because of falling productivity. This threatens to be an intergenerational failure of epic proportions. The leaders of today should not betray the legacy of preceding generations by failing to bequeath an Australia in which each generation can build on the hard work and smart decisions of its forebears. Countries around the world are fighting tooth and nail to improve their competitiveness, including in the race to successfully seize the opportunities created by changing technologies such as artificial intelligence. The RBA is warning us that Australia is on a fast track to going backwards unless we can increase our productivity. We need to take notice and work smarter together to meet this challenge. The ACTU and governments at all levels should be reckoning with these issues and - with the productivity challenge the government has called out through next week's Economic Reform Roundtable - not indulge in luxury beliefs and fanciful notions which will only harm working Australians, their families and communities.
