When Australia’s most influential voices in business, unions, government and academia meet at Parliament House this week for the Economic Reform Roundtable, the conversations on fiscal repair and economic resilience will dominate the schedule. But tucked inside the Session 3: AI and Innovation, may lie the critical change to productivity and industrial (IR) relations that happens without an official IR shake-up.
The session will feature Robyn Denholm, chair of the Strategic Examination of Research and Development, an independent panel charged with advising the government on how science and research can bolster manufacturing, support national priorities, and strengthen Australia’s competitiveness. She will be joined by CSIRO chair Ming Long. While their recommendations remain unknown, the broader debate around AI’s impact on work is already intensifying.
The Jobs and Skills Australia Chief Commissioner, Barney Glover, noted that AI adoption is early and varies across industries, with many workers using tools independently in their work,” with grassroot adoption outpacing formal policy. Unions are pressing for a greater role in shaping the technology’s rollout, and recent reports suggest AI is more likely to augment roles than replace them outright, a shift that could redefine productivity without the upheaval of traditional industrial relations reform.
The Productivity Dilemma
The numbers are stark. According to Treasury data, Australia’s average productivity growth in the 2010s was the lowest in 60 years. In 2022, Treasury downgraded its long-run annual labour productivity growth assumption from 1.5% to 1.2%. And the 2023 Intergenerational Report warned that if that rate slips further to 0.9% per year, per-capita real incomes could fall by more than $10,000 over the next 40 years.
This is not simply an economic statistic; it is a direct threat to our living standards. As Michael Plumb, Head of Economic Analysis at the RBA, reminded an audience earlier this year, productivity is “how efficiently capital and labour are employed across the economy to produce goods and services.” That efficiency is the lever that determines our future prosperity.
AI’s Role in Rewriting the Equation
Across the Gold Coast and Australia, AI is already influencing workflows in ways both subtle and transformative. In the legal sector, Derek Cronin, Partner at Cronin Miller Litigation, notes that his firm is seeing efficiencies in “basis letter-writing” and marketing. However, he points out that the courts remain cautious of its utilisation in more formal legal documentation and court proceedings. “The Courts are resistant to the use of AI and are starting to implement processes whereby lawyers actually have to confirm that they have not used AI in the preparation of documents. I think it is a ‘watch this space’ environment in the legal profession.”
In banking, the transformation is more assertive. Ash Wijey from Bendigo Paradise Point and Pimpama-Ormeau Community Bank explains that their use of AI is focused on accelerating loan decision time and enhancing compliance outcomes. The broader goal, he says, is not just to streamline application processing, but to anticipate customer needs more effectively.
Education may be where the long term impact of AI proves most profound. Jack Williamson, Vice-President (Strategy and Technology) at Southern Cross University, describes AI as “a profound shift that will redefine every profession,”. The university is actively integrating AI into its teaching model to ensure graduates enter the workforce “confident in their ability to use the technology with skill, creativity, and integrity.”
A National Imperative
The Economic Reform Roundtable’s AI session will not deliver an overnight transformation, but it has the potential to shape Australia’s long-term approach to emerging technologies, whether we remain cautious adopters or embrace being a leader. For young professionals on the Gold Coast, the message is clear: AI literacy is quickly becoming as essential as digital literacy was two decades ago.
After all, productivity isn’t an abstract chart in a government report, it’s your next pay rise, your business’s growth trajectory, and your city’s economic future. This week in Canberra, we may be witnessing the first quiet steps toward a productivity revival, driven not by legislation, but by innovation.
