QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:29): I welcome the question on the economy from the senator. What I would say first is that I think we all recognise the challenges that we face as a nation in increasing productivity. We know that we had a very large productivity push a number of decades ago.

As the Treasurer has said, many what we would describe as low-hanging fruit reforms have been done, so we have to focus on more of a multifactor approach to how we increase productivity in this country, because the senator is— Senator Hume: Lower taxes; lower energy prices. Senator WONG: I'll take the interjection from Senator Hume. The senator for higher taxes is now interjecting to say, 'Lower taxes.' The incoherence of the economic policy of those opposite is quite remarkable, really.

What I would say is that productivity, as the RBA has identified, has been a longstanding challenge in the economy. That's why it was such a focus in the budget. In the budget, we delivered the broadest productivity push for many decades, with 15 reforms in the budget which are all about trying to increase productivity, trying to attract and absorb more investment, making it quicker and easier to build and slashing compliance costs.

These include the better targeted research and development tax incentive and the incentivising investment and innovation package, which had $3½ billion in new measures that lowered taxes for business. I'm happy to go on reducing red tape by about $10 billion a year— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Blyth, first supplementary?