The public debate about ‘productivity’ has been a perennial in Australia for decades. Productivity is an interesting and ultimately a very important issue, but it’s also a complex issue and there is a great deal of imprecision, misunderstanding, misinformation, political bias and economic theory associated with the concept. Public discussion and debate over productivity is, in principle, a good thing, but it’s not an issue that politicians and vested interests should be able to just glibly drop and run in media grabs and interviews, let alone be able to turn into mindless slogans. One of the things that we could all try to do for productivity in Australia is rescue the concept from politics.

So, what does ‘productivity’ mean? How do we measure it? Can we measure it? What is Australia’s productivity record? This Q&A booklet-style publication is a plainly written primer on productivity. It was drafted by Christopher Sheil in collaboration with John Quiggin, Carmen Lawrence and Frank Stilwell, and produced by the Evatt Foundation in conjunction with ‘The Productivity Zombie’, a public forum hosted by the Foundation in association with Sydney Ideas at the Sydney Law School on 24 June 2013.