Event: BCA Chief Executive Bran Black and COSBOA CEO Luke Achterstraat interview with Laura Jayes, AM Agenda, Sky News

Speakers:

AM Agenda, Host Laura Jayes;
Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Bran Black;
Council of Small Business Organisations CEO Luke Achterstraat

Topics: Business Debate, productivity, IMF Report

E&OE

Laura Jayes, AM Agenda Host: Joining now is the Business Council of Australia, Chief Executive, Bran Black, and from the Council of Small Business Organisations, the Chief Executive Officer, Luke Achterstraat. Gentlemen, great to see you here in Melbourne, I'll see you a little later on today, we'll get these questions to the Treasurer and the Shadow Treasurer.

But Bran first to you, what is the most important thing to hear from the Treasurers today, the world is rapidly changing, it can't just be business as usual, can it?

Bran Black, BCA Chief Executive: I think that's absolutely the point, the world is changing and just those statistics that you referenced with the IMF just earlier, what that shows is that the world is uncertain, and in those situations where we have so much uncertainty, we've got a demographic challenge as well, and low productivity, we know that the solution is backing business to do what it does best, and that is to support Australian growth, Australian prosperity, real wages growth, which ultimately benefits all Australians.

So what we're hoping for today is to hear from both men who would be Treasurer on May 4th, what their plans are to support businesses to drive national prosperity.

Laura: Luke, small business don't need an IMF Report to tell them that it's getting harder to do business in this country for small businesses in particular, or make their lives easier. What would make it easier to employ more people essentially?

Luke, COSBA CEO: Look the IMF report does match up with the lived experience of small businesses, we know it's an uncertain time, but why are we as an Australian economy making our life more difficult? So things like red tape, things like industrial relations, things like being one of the least competitive tax destinations in the world, these are all things we can control. We can't control Donald Trump, but we can control the policies that are put through the Australian Parliament.

So what would make life easier for small businesses, less complexity, more simplicity and a fair go, really giving small businesses the chance to spend less time on paperwork and more time on their core operations, to actually employ, train and grow their business.

Laura: Luke, when you talk about less complexity, are you talking about industrial relations, or when you talk about red tape, what are you talking about exactly?

Luke: Well, a good place to start is the 1500 page Fair Work Act, which even many of Bran’s members with their internal HR teams and legal teams tell us, is quite complex, so you can only imagine the impact that has on a small business owner, a mum and a dad who is the head of HR, the head of sales, the head of operations, and so forth. So certainly IR Laura, but also the broader cost of doing business, the way in which small businesses need to navigate different agencies, the fact that there's not even a consistent definition of small business in this country. There's a lot of red tape that could be removed and a lot of certainty we could put back into the system for small enterprise.

Laura: Yeah and that's before you even get to small business if they want to grow their business over state lines, and how complex that gets as well. But Bran, we hear the buzzwords every election campaign, don't we, red tape, productivity. If we had to narrow that down today, make it easy for the leaders, what is it? What are the number one issues when it comes to those buzzwords?

Bran: Well, look, there are some key things that we think are really important. We do need to look at our tax system, but we need to look at that holistically so that we can get a sense of what's sustainable, what is going to be competitive, what's going to drive investment. Of course, as Luke says, we've got to look at our industrial relations system, and we need to look at deregulation.

But the key things that we've been arguing for, the specific policies, particularly in the lead up to the election, we've been looking at investment allowance, a broad-based investment allowance applicable to all businesses, we'd love to see planning reform with the EPBC, specifically, a single desk...

Laura: That's a common complaint, isn't it?

Bran: Absolutely it is, but you know that you've got a problem when a system like this is described by an independent law firm as the single greatest impediment to the green energy transition, something is fundamentally wrong there.

So what we'd like to see is a single desk approach to determining approvals, and then you've got to look at, as I mentioned, industrial relations, but key issues like multi-employer bargaining and intractable bargaining, those things take away what makes a business, a business, its uniqueness, its competitive offering to the world.

Laura: So are you saying, given the IMF Report, the actions or lack of action from Donald Trump, it's the examples of the world getting a bit more complex, little less predictable and are you saying perhaps we're not in the best position to have that flexible labour market, to be able to respond to global shocks?

Bran: We've seen from both sides in this election policies that will improve productivity if implemented.

Laura: If implemented is key there.

Bran: We've also seen policies which wouldn't have that effect. What we're saying is that one way or the other, we need to be more ambitious, and that ambition has to account for the extent of the challenges that we have, the global uncertainty, the demographic time bomb that we have here in Australia as well and of course, our existing low productivity.

Those three factors, in our view, necessitate being really bold in terms of our reform agenda so we can provide for the prosperity that our kids should enjoy in the same way that we have it.

Laura: We haven't seen a bold reform agenda for quite some time, and those that have tried to be bold, like Bill Shorten in more recent times, haven't been rewarded for it.

So Luke, I put to you that this is a populist campaign, but what would you say to the leaders and how important reform is. It's become another buzzword, but the spending, it's big, it's being matched by the Coalition.

Luke: I think Bran and I would both agree that good policy actually makes good politics. Now we're talking about supporting the engine room of the economy. We're talking about policies that support six in seven private sector jobs. I don't think structural reform, long-term plans that really boost small business should be controversial or should be seen as daring. They should be seen as sensible, they should be seen as strategic and in the interests of the nation.

So I think we're putting a bit of a gauntlet down today, Laura to the leaders of the economic debate, who wants to dive in and actually address some of these challenges, because we're talking about our children and their living standards and the sort of Australia, that we live in, in the next 20 and 30 years.

Laura: Really looking forward to it, a couple of hours from now. Bran, Luke we’ll see you soon.