Automatic dispensing machines would replace pharmacies, low-value healthcare procedures would be defunded, people with real-world skills would be made teachers, and drivers would be charged for the use of roads under a series of audacious proposals the Productivity Commission believes could add $80 billion per year to economic growth - an amount it says would grow over time.

The five-year program, requested by the Treasurer Scott Morrison, is designed to jump-start innate, or so-called "multifactor" productivity, which the commission believes has barely grown since 2004.

The productivity boost brought about by economic reforms in the 1990s produced almost all of the decade's spectacular lift in living standards. Since 2004 innate productivity growth has produced almost none, with most of the productivity growth that has been achieved the result of investment spending and most of the income growth the result of the mining boom.

Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris said the slowdown in Australia's capacity to "do more with the same" was puzzling because scientific and technological knowledge had seemingly advanced. In 2003 there was no "cloud", no "internet of things" or smartphones and music and software were provided in physical forms.