We are in uncharted waters in Australia. There are deep cracks in both the political and economic foundations that have shaped this country for decades. For 80 years we had a stable two-party system, where the main centre-right and centre-left parties together attracted more than three quarters of the primary vote. In recent years there has been a political earthquake. Support for the major parties has fallen below 50% of the primary vote. A party that sat at the margins of Australian political debate for 30 years is suddenly the most popular party in the country. This political earthquake isn’t occurring in a vacuum. “It’s the economy, stupid.” A lot has changed in recent decades. One thing hasn’t. Australians reasonably expect that economic prosperity will be the non-negotiable foundation of the Australian promise, and that each generation will be better off than the one before it. That is no longer our reality. Productivity growth is the foundation of national prosperity, and it has been anaemic in Australia for over a decade. Real income per household is still below pre-Covid levels and the cost of living is soaring. So why are we in a post-productivity era, and why are Australians doing it so tough? There are many reasons: low levels of business investment, excessive red tape, fewer new businesses being created, and plummeting business dynamism, with fewer people moving from established, low-productivity companies to newer, more dynamic ones. There is plenty of blame to share. Our current federal and state Governments inherited many of these challenges. They have been decades in the making, as the benefits of the great economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s wore off and were replaced by poor policy settings. This is the reality we are operating in. We desperately need an economic reboot, and pro-productivity, pro-growth policies. The Government’s response is a budget that does the opposite. It destroys the incentive for companies to invest. It destroys the incentive for companies to hire. It destroys the incentive for people to start something new. It is exactly the wrong set of policies at exactly the wrong time. There is a silver lining. For the first time in a long time, we are having a real debate about the kind of country we want to be. Australians are making their voices heard, advocating for an Australia where ambition and aspiration are admired and encouraged, not denigrated. We are a remarkable country with a great standard of living and quality of life and high levels of social cohesion. It is time to stop taking these things for granted and fighting for a better Australia. That is the conversation we need to have.