Thirty-six forward thinkers recently gathered at a private symposium hosted by the Melbourne Economic Forum and re-questioned the purpose of government policy as we move into the second quarter of the 21st century.

Tom Bentley, a vice-president at RMIT University, pointed out that for an entire generation from the 1980s, a highly successful policy consensus dominated Australia’s economic decision-making, achieving sustained growth in living standards.

This consensus was built around a floating exchange rate, free trade, privatisation of selected government business enterprises, and enterprise-level bargaining for wage increases.

Sharing the gains of productivity growth widely across the Australian community was achieved through social investment in policies such as Medicare, a leap in the proportion of school students going onto university, superannuation for all workers, and paid parental leave.

But the symposium observed that in the mid-2020s there are clear signs that this consensus has run its course.

Productivity growth has been responsible for almost all the increase in Australian living standards since Federation. But it has now slowed to a crawl. Worse, Australia is........

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