Labor’s Industry Minister, Ed Husic, told The Australian Financial Review AI Summit that Australia needed lower company taxes to help businesses free up capital and drive investment in AI technologies.
Husic believes Labor “needs to consider how we do that, either through corporate tax reform or the way we provide investment allowances for the uptick in manufacturing capital”.
With Australia’s capital stock having shrunk by $190 million over the past decade, and the average age of capital rising from 11 to 13 years over the same period, the “slowing down of the pace at which industries are replacing ageing assets and embracing new technology” has also contributed to Australia’s past two decades of lagging productivity growth.
