When Greece was at the height of its debt crisis, which threatened to unravel the eurozone and devastate its citizens’ living standards, Australia assisted with knowhow from our successful experience of productivity-enhancing reforms.

This included briefings by long-term Productivity Commission chairman (then dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government) Professor Gary Banks to the Greek prime minister, cabinet and Hellenic Parliament. In exchange for European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout loans, Greece was subjected to one of the strictest programs of austerity measures and structural adjustment, from which the country has only recently emerged.