A leading business group fears Australia is on a path of complacency that could lead to European-style mediocrity and decline in 20 years' time.
The president of the Business Council of Australia, Graham Bradley, will warn on Wednesday that the economy's current path will lead to lower growth and an inability to fund high-quality services from government over the next two decades.
"The commodities boom has made it possible to paper over weaknesses in our economic policy settings and to delay decisions that must ultimately be made," Mr Bradley will tell an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney.
"Australians would, I believe, feel more confident if we were on a better path ... that would make our economy more resilient in the face of international headwinds, better manage our economic transition and firmly pursue productivity as the basis of our future prosperity."
In excerpts from his written speech, Mr Bradley points to four pillars where government action influences underlying productivity - tax policy, labour market flexibility, infrastructure delivery and better regulation.
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He says an alternative path is one with a comprehensive reform plan that will encourage competitive industries to grow by providing a supportive regulatory and taxation environment.
With an ageing population, and fewer workers each year supporting every retiree, Australia runs the risk of becoming a country "forever playing catch-up" on social and economic infrastructure.
"Unless we take steps now, we risk seeing thousands of higher value-adding jobs drift overseas and our economy become less adaptable, less diversified, less resilient,' he says.
"This is the path to mediocre growth and declining opportunity. It is the path European democracies chose a decade a go."
He says the sheer size of planned investments in the resources sector is bound to have a positive effect on Australia's future productivity.
"But the Australian Bureau of Statistics measure of multi-factor productivity reports that our national productivity has been negative for the last six years - an unprecedented period of negative growth," Mr Bradley says.
The council represents the CEOs of the country's top 100 companies.
