BCA Workforce Participation Roundtable

Council president Michael Chaney said there was no single solution for raising participation rates in the workforce. “Having an overarching policy is not the most efficient way to solve these sorts of problems,” he said. “You need to get down to a regional or sub-regional level.” For example, he said, 25 per cent of Australia's unemployed lived in just 5 per cent of its postcodes. BCA has identified raising the labour force participation as the key to sustaining economic growth.

From ‘Jobless Rate Can Fall Further: BCA’ by David Uren, The Australian, 24 May 2007, p. 20.

‘We think it is important to get it out to the community more generally … because a broader understanding of this issue and the importance of higher participation will allow policies to be introduced in a more positive context.’

From ‘Business Wants More Workers’ by Joanne Gray, The Australian Financial Review, 24 May 2007, p. 6

‘It is not in anyone’s interests to have this untapped resource, especially given some of the social problems that arise from unemployment, and business increasingly will have a need to access that pool of labour. Jobs are people’s passport to being part of their community.’

From ‘Big Firms Spearhead Jobs Push’ by Misha Schubert, The Age, 24 May 2007, p. 8.