Our Prosperity is Slipping Away | Michael Stutchbury

In this inaugural edition, CIS Executive Director and former Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Financial Review, Michael Stutchbury, outlines how Australia once enjoyed extraordinary prosperity, built on bipartisan reforms of the 1980s and 1990s that liberalized markets, cut tariffs, and opened the economy to global competition.

Yet, since prosperity peaked in 2011–12, signs of decline have mounted: stagnant productivity, shrinking real incomes, persistent deficits, mounting debt, weak business investment, soaring energy costs, and a lower growth potential as estimated by the RBA.

The problem is not simply cyclical, Stutchbury says. As politics shifted from creating wealth to redistributing it, spending grew while reform stalled. New entitlements and universal programs have expanded government outlays, crowding out private investment.

To restore prosperity, Australia must pursue the four reforms outlined in this episode.

Australia has reinvented itself before; it must find the courage to do so again.