Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned, Australians must become more productive or risk losing their famously relaxed lifestyle as the population ages and the workforce shrinks.
While Australians were urged in the past to "populate or perish", Rudd said the country now needed to boost productivity as the population becomes increasingly elderly and the tax revenue from workers falls."It is productivity growth that must play the central role in building Australia’s future economic growth," Rudd said in a speech delivered in Melbourne late Monday.
It is estimated that Australia’s population will grow from the current 22 million to 36 million by 2050 thanks to surging birth rates and rising immigration.
At the same time, increasing life expectancy means the proportion of those citizens aged 65 or over will jump to almost one in four by that time.
These demographics mean that public finances will be burdened with the increased costs of looking after the elderly at the same time as a smaller proportion of Australians will be contributing to tax revenues, Rudd said.
"With a smaller proportion of Australians in the workforce, the size of the national economic pie will grow more slowly, and as a result, average family incomes will grow at a slower rate than we’ve become accustomed to," he said.
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Rudd said productivity growth had fallen to 1.4 percent in the first decade of this century.
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Source-AFP
TRI