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Flexibility had been reduced, he said, because of the government’s overhaul of industrial relations with little emphasis on the importance of workers and bosses finding better ways to operate.
“The biggest bang for your buck is going to be labour productivity as it’s gone backward so much in the last two years,” he told this masthead.
“I think a fair bit of it is due to workplace culture.”
In his budget reply speech, Dutton said increasing the work bonus – the amount retirees and veterans could earn before it compromised their pensions – from $300 to $600 a fortnight would benefit more than 80,000 who chose to work.
He also committed to expanding the work bonus, which was put in place by the Albanese government and made permanent at an annual cost of $14 million in last year’s mid-year budget update.
Taylor said pensioners and veterans faced “draconian” effective marginal tax rates of more than 50 per cent if they worked a few hours.
“The aim is to take away this disincentive as much as possible,” he said.
Despite the introduction of the work bonus, employment of age pensioners remains quite low.
Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed the proportion of people aged at least 65 in the workforce has remained relatively stable over the past five years. During that period, the access age for the pension has increased to 67 while the country has enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate since the 1970s.
The employment-to-population ratio of women over 65 is just 12.2 per cent. Among women in their late 50s, the ratio is more than 70 per cent.
Experts say that among older women, employment drops in part because they take care responsibilities either for their partner or for grandchildren.
Jim Chalmers says the Coalition’s migration policy would hurt the economy.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Taylor admitted getting large gains in total employment or working hours out of pensioners and veterans would be difficult, but they should not have a financial disincentive that effectively made them worse off if they chose to work.
“We think we can get some mileage out of it,” he said.
But Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the Coalition’s approach to migration would harm the economy, leaving hospitals without staff or slowing down the construction of new homes.
On Thursday, deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley said the Coalition’s cuts to net overseas migration would be “ongoing”. By the end of the decade, an ongoing cut would reduce migration by 210,000 people between 2027 and the end of the decade.
Chalmers said Ley, Taylor and Dutton were struggling to explain their policy which would cause economic pain to all Australians.
“You don’t solve a housing shortage by making the skills shortage worse. You don’t solve the issues in our hospitals with the shortage of nurses by making the skills shortage even worse, and that’s what his shambolic ham-fisted approach to migration will do,” he said.
“Their position on migration is a smoking ruin. They can’t explain the most basic details of what they’ve been saying about migration.”
