STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (13:49): Donald Horne referred to Australia as a 'lucky country run mainly by second-rate people'. Well, I guess he wasn't wrong, was he? Under this government, this Albanese government, we are in danger of becoming the Argentina of the Pacific.

The Business Council of Australia has just delivered an awkward reality check for Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Australia is now staring down the barrel of its worst decade of productivity since comparable records began in the 1960s. Just think about that for a second.

The Treasurer has managed to preside over an economic productivity performance so bad that even the 2010s are embarrassed by us. And what is Treasurer Chalmers's answer? More spending, more regulation, more workplace rules and more tax complexity.

Meanwhile, the RBA has repeatedly downgraded its productivity forecasts, and this matters. Productivity is how we get richer without simply working ourselves to death. If we produce more, wages can rise, businesses can invest, prices can fall, and living standards can increase, but, if productivity stagnates while government spending and debt and regulation continue to march upward, eventually someone's going to get the bill, and that someone is the Australian people, each and every time.

First, we borrow a little more, we regulate a little more, and we tax a little more, all the while patting ourselves on the back for having the world's most compassionate welfare system. Then, if we don't see change soon, we will one day wake up to discover that our country is poorer, our government is bigger, and everyone is completely confused as to where all of our productivity and our prosperity went.

The tragedy is this. It's that Australia still has every single advantage of a prosperous nation, but—this is the problem—we have a government with the habits of a poor one.