Submission—Productivity Commission’s Five pillars of productivity inquiries

On 22 September 2025, the Academy made a submission on the Productivity Commission’s Five pillars of productivity inquiries.

The Academy:

Urges the Productivity Commission to consider solutions to drive business investment in R&D alongside corporate tax reforms.
Emphasises that clean energy project approvals must maintain strong standards required for environmental protection.
Recommends coordination and investment in climate and weather science, and in the high-performance computing and data that underpins the best available climate risk information.
Does not support the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to pause implementation of the mandatory AI guardrails for high-risk settings, and recommends that Australia acts quickly to build sovereign AI capability and support responsible and ethical adoption and development of AI.
Recommends that the proposed national platform for school lesson planning resources include an enforceable national quality-assurance framework to ensure high-quality, evidence-based resources are provided to teachers.
Recommends that the Job-Ready Graduates reforms to university fees be scrapped.
Recommends that Australia adopts a national STEM workforce strategy to create a strong, diverse and mobile STEM workforce to be able to create and adopt productivity-boosting innovations.
Recommends that the Prevention Framework Advisory Board include scientific expertise in its membership.

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