We need to rediscover a real productivity agenda in our budgets. In the past, Australia built a vastly successful nation, and it was not achieved purely by spending.

What would a real productivity agenda look like?

First, benchmark personal taxes and company taxes against comparable countries and follow that benchmark. Use a national conference of invited participants to develop a new model. ALP governments could manage the politics of this through trade unions and charities; a Coalition government would need greater use of parliamentarians and business chambers. The focus would be on agreement. And cut personal taxes.

Second, in the event of a Hung Parliament, in which neither major party reaches a majority, the major parties would need to unite to defeat the minor groups who would cripple the Australian economy with unrealistic ‘green’ demands. If the major parties united to support the party with the most seats, and support a national conference and agreed reform, the headlock on the economy that minor groups have would be avoided. This is an idea already raised by retired MP Joel Fitzgibbon.

Third, most immigration and mining approval court litigation is pointless. Similar results would, on average, be achieved through a simple administrative decision, guided by written submissions. With a strict time limit. And almost no appeals.

This would be much kinder on the public purse in many cases. Or more.

There is little to stop people continually litigating to delay a major mining project that offers enormous benefits in jobs and taxation revenue.

Only objectors on a formal list should be able to object. No overseas donations.

It should be enough if a party is sent an email. A decision should not be overturned by a court because a printed hard copy was not posted by registered mail at taxpayers’ expense etc.

We have Rolls-Royce procedures when an old Fiat is enough. Certainly enough for a small business owner who funds the nonsense by selling enough coffees to pay for it in taxes. After rent, wages, and power bills.

Fourth, audit the public service, including Aboriginal organisations. It would have to be done without reducing service delivery so as not to antagonise people.

Fifth, our immigration policy should be refocused on business sponsorship i.e. productive immigration. Our housing and hospitals are under severe strain.

Sixth, we need to spend more on defence, given our drastic geopolitical threats. This should be paid for by cuts to the foreign aid budget, following the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in the UK. Unless the foreign aid is in service of defence.

Finally, moderate workplace reform is still possible. For example, we could introduce a new procedure to reduce the number of wage rates in Awards, which number in the thousands. One level in each classification structure could be removed and the scope of the other rates increased (‘broad banding’) to cover the work.

Careful streamlining of agreement approval procedures or small business can be addressed.

We should repeat the successful reform program of 1983-2007, under governments of all political persuasions, which reformed taxes and workplace relations. Mistakes of the past such as a failure to have regard to the interests of all, which destroy a government and reform, should be avoided.

Nor are we helped by the range of very bad modern ideas common today. Such as ‘renewables are the cheapest form of energy’. Given the level of subsidies, they are not.

We should repeat the acknowledgement by John Howard’s Aboriginal Intervention, that health, education, employment, and violence levels in remote Aboriginal communities became and stayed worse than in 1970. If it is still applicable, as it seems to be.

Who could possibly object to reducing taxation and government costs? Or to eliminating bad ideas?

A lot will try. If there are budget ‘cuts’ the Senate will be uncooperative and demanding. Others will tell us we are ‘evil’.

Interest groups will be very vocal. One of the Queensland Premiers once said that it was easier to get your child back from a Rottweiler than from a social worker. They expected complaints from social workers. What they did not expect was complaints from the Rottweiler community.

But how do we respond? Three hundred years ago a Tory cleric published a ‘modest proposal’ to solve Irish poverty – the Irish would sell their children to the rich for food.

This shocked everyone. Jonathan Swift wanted fresh thinking on Irish poverty. At least he tried!

Swift was kidding, but Australia cannot just give up or we will limp through the next decade gradually declining and falling. Or we can try fresh thinking.

And build again Australia’s green and pleasant land.

Reg Hamilton, Adjunct Professor, School of Business and Law, Central Queensland University