Australia has managed to avoid a recession for the last 30 years and may well dodge the next one, with a leg up from the current spike in commodity prices. But what matters much more for long-term growth and jobs are productivity and global competitiveness, especially in the industries and technologies of the future. The latest Productivity Commission report reminds us that Australian productivity growth lags both past performance and the performance of comparable countries. What it does not do is explore the related decline in the competitiveness of advanced industries, let alone what to do a...