Nine new ways to make us richer, safer and happier

Sydney Morning Herald

7 days ago

Prizes have been used for more than a century (Charles Lindberg won the $US25,000 Orteig Prize for flying non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927) and were recently used to encourage private businesses to send people into space.
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Set a target – be it a new breed of drought resistant wheat, a cure to a debilitating disease, a new form of transport – and offer a huge prize.
Pay the states to reform clogged bureaucracy
Just as a financial prize should encourage innovation in the private sector, offering the states and territories money should unclog some of their bureaucratic processes.
National competition policy, effectively payments to the states to open up their economies, started under Paul Keating and ran for a decade. It transformed the economy and is credited as one of the key factors behind the productivity surge of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The current government has created a $900 million national productivity fund for the next 10 years. But to really get the states moving in areas such as housing approval reforms the cash on offer to the states has to be increased to a level that only an idiot would ignore it.
A carbon price is still good policy
Some might argue this ship has sailed, but we need to bring back a carbon price.
But given how much this country is spending to reduce its carbon emissions (this year's federal budget contained $4.3 billion in new expenditure on net zero), the idea of protecting our environment in the most efficient and non-discriminatory way has not altered.
And that system remains a carbon price.
Fix terrible taxes
While tax will take up a lot of the roundtable's time, it could deliver a huge win to all Australians by axing one.
Stamp duties on insurance are possibly the nation's worst taxes.
Insurance is something that should be encouraged, not taxed. Yet, every state and territory bar the ACT imposes stamp duties on insurance.
In NSW, an emergency services levy sits on top of the insurance stamp duty, delivering residents a tax double whammy.
It's one reason why 13 per cent of NSW households are uninsured, double the rate of Victoria where taxes on insurance are a third of their northern neighbour.
Removing taxes on a public good like insurance would only add to the economy's productivity level.
Don't give unions a veto on AI
Lifting productivity depends largely on new technology, enabling more efficient use of our resources. But if you limit those technologies, you limit the benefits.
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The union movement is already demanding that workers have a say in the use of AI with an effective veto if it is deemed to ' not be in the public interest '.
You can imagine the English textile workers of the early 19th century arguing that automated machines to spin yarn was not in the public interest, when in fact they were talking about their personal financial interest.
If the Luddites had secured their own veto over those machines, the history of the industrial revolution would have been very different, with many, many more poor people trapped in menial and dangerous work.
While AI and the use of big data by businesses and researchers scares many, that can't be an excuse to over-regulate what could be the next productivity step up for the economy.
Audit airports to speed up travel
Anyone trapped in the hell that passes for security at the nation's airports knows what a drag it is.
Jacket on or jacket off, walk through a metal detector or stand still, laptop out of its case or tucked away in your bag with that dangerous container of deodorant.
An entire industry has grown to service this single point in our airports.
Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, the amount of security law passed is beyond comprehension - all at a huge economic and productivity cost.
An audit of our security systems, be they private or public, is needed to see how we can do things better.
Fix Australia's broken employment system for job seekers
Two years ago, Labor MP Julian Hill handed down a report into the nation's employment services system, warning that it would be 'absolutely nuts' for any country to adopt Australia's privatised approach to getting people back into work.
He was correct then and, with no meaningful reform to the nation's employment service system since his report, it remains correct.
Presently, with unemployment at 4.3 per cent, there's around 65,000 people who have been out of work at least two years. There are hundreds of thousands more who have been unemployed for less time than that, or who have dropped out of the job market entirely.
The median length of time searching for a job for this group is an astonishing 179 weeks. Twenty years ago, it was around 180 weeks.
The country spends more than $7 billion a year on the employment services system with the stated aim of getting people into work. Making the system work would deliver a benefit to hundreds of thousands of people – and the economy.
Share healthcare data to stop doing so many low-value procedures
In 2017, the Productivity Commission identified the health system as ripe for improvement.
The health sector – including aged care – is the country's largest employer and a huge call on our finances, both private and public.
Making the health system work better could turn around the nation's overall productivity performance.
Some of the commission's 2017 proposals should be re-visited. This includes the creation of small funding pools for primary health or local hospital networks aimed specifically at dealing with chronic conditions and reducing hospitalisation.
Our doctors and other health practitioners carry out too many low-value procedures – from knee arthroscopies to hysterectomies. Better information for clinicians would be one way to reduce this expense while improving patients' outcomes.
That leads to its most important proposal – make the patient the centre of care. This includes more data to medical colleges, hospitals and patients about what is working and what isn't.
Unify maddening train communications
Some productivity problems have plagued this nation for more than a century. It took until 1962 to join NSW and Victoria with the same rail gauges.
But more than 60 years later, the nation's rail systems are still beset by productivity-sapping differences.
Trains moving across the inter-linked rail network carry up to six different radios because state communication systems differ.
If you carry out some work on a rail line in NSW you wear a hi-viz vest with a cross on its back. But work in Victoria, the vest must show parallel lines.
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Signal lights mean different things depending on which state you're riding the rails. A green/red signal in NSW means caution, in Victoria it means all clear ahead, while in Queensland the signal doesn't exist.
The federal government, to its credit, has started work on unifying the radio communications system. But it could take years to resolve.
Billions of dollars could be saved, for businesses, customers and state governments if the nation's rail line system was dragged out of the 20th century.