Agility starts with GST shareout and workplace reform

The virtues of agility have received more attention in the political arena than the sports arena over the past week, following the release of the Turnbull government's suite of initiatives designed to boost the nation's start-up culture.

Yet in our enthusiastic embrace of all things shiny and new, we should not ignore our core economic challenges, or the continuing threat to our living standards. In short, success won't be determined solely by agility. We must also address systemic fragility. After all, it's hard to be agile if your state or your industry is hindered by the tax framework and regulatory burdens of another aeon.

At the risk of seeming parochial, my fellow Western Australians would certainly welcome a dose of agility when it comes to the carve-up of GST revenue among the states and territories.

A methodology for calculating a jurisdiction's GST revenue entitlement that results in the current year's figure being determined using data that is three years out of date is asinine, not agile. Yet that is the situation endured by WA.

My home state's 2015-16 GST allocation is calculated using mining receipts on a three-year average over 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14. The first and (arguably) second of these years were ones in which the mining boom was still in effect.

This year, GST collections nationally will be $57 billion. WA will receive less than $2 billion – or around 3.5 per cent - hardly equitable for a state which has almost 11 per cent of the nation's population, and accounts for around half of the nation's total exports.

Households do not plan their budgets based on what their income levels were three years previously. Yet the current methodology for GST revenue distribution expects WA to do just that. With WA's share of GST now bubbling under 30¢ in the dollar, the pressures are very real.

True, WA must do more to improve its own economic performance – particularly lifting productivity by abandoning archaic regulations around trading hours. Jobs data released last week underscored the urgency of the task. While the national unemployment rate is trending down, WA's jobless rate rose to 6.6 per cent.

ANYTHING BUT AGILE

The silver lining was that WA's participation rate remains the highest in the nation. People are clearly willing to work – and we need to make certain our workplace laws are allowing the flexibility they need to do so. The continued resistance of the Labor Party and union movement to a rational discussion about workplace reform is not assisting the unemployed.

Given the drastic fall in union membership, you would think union leaders might be eager to support jobs growth. After all, the unemployed don't join trade unions. At a time when union membership has plummeted to record lows of 11 per cent in the private sector, why should the nation still be saddled with a labour-market framework which was re-regulated by Julia Gillard for the convenience of unions?

The union movement's response to this new reality has been anything but agile. To give them credit, they have embraced a culture of disruption – but only in the sense union action increasingly comprises disruptive stunts that do not actually advance the interests of their members.

A prime exhibit is in Australia's construction industry, where the militant CFMEU continues to openly flout the law. When CFMEU bosses John Setka​ and Shaun Reardon appeared in the dock in a Melbourne courtroom last week on blackmail charges, their supporters in the public gallery included the ACTU's national president Ged Kearney.

Mr. Setka appeared outside the courtroom before the crowd of 5000 cheering unionists – summoned from worksites via text message – and declared the government was "trying to turn us into Nazi Germany".

Yet following his outrageous claim, nary a word of protest fell from Ms Kearney's lips. Nor have the comments subsequently been decried by Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Australia stands little chance of reaching its full potential as an agile, enterprise-based economy if it clings to taxation and workplace relations frameworks designed for a world that no longer exists.

It stands even less chance of achieving that potential if the nation's alternative government enters the election year maintaining a blanket opposition to reform of the GST, or remains dependent on a staid union movement for its financial succour.