Event: BCA Chief Executive Bran Black interview with Laura Jayes, AM Agenda, Sky News

Speakers: AM Agenda, Host Laura Jayes; Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Bran Black

Date: 26 March 2025

Topics: Federal Budget, non-compete clauses, productivity

E&OE

Laura Jayes, AM Agenda Host: I’m joined by Bran Black, he’s here in the studio with me. This has just happened of course; the tax cuts a centrepiece of this election. They are meagre or modest, as the Treasurer describes them. Is this where you want the election fight to be, Bran?

Bran Black, Business Council Chief Executive: No, it’s not. We've said right from the outset that we want the election to be about how we can grow the size of pie for all of us, that's about how we create business opportunity, how we can invest in productivity-enhancing initiatives. We've put forward ideas around deregulation, around business investment allowances, what we can do to focus R&D efforts in Australia, and how we can streamline approval processes.

Those are just a smattering of the ideas that we put forward, but that's what we need to do. At the moment, we're talking about tax cuts as being a really important component of this election, because people are feeling cost of living pressure. If we're intent on driving that down, we've got to drive a larger pie, which ultimately means that everybody benefits.

Laura: What in this Budget document, if anything, shows you that Labor is focused on business rather than the public sector?

Bran: Look, there are some things in the Budget that we are impressed with and that we support. We've called and the Treasurer has responded to our call for a National Productivity Fund. That's important, because back in the 90s and the early 2000s a similar initiative saw states rewarded for undertaking difficult reform, and what that meant was that our GDP increased each and every year by $60 billion.

Laura: Reform? Have you seen any of that?

Bran: Well, we've seen, with respect to occupational licensing, funded through this National Productivity Fund that that will make it easier to become an electrician and to utilise those skills all the way around Australia. That is a good thing.

Laura: Yeah, that was a good thing. This is basically so electricians can work across state borders without having had - I mean, this should have been done ages ago. It's an obvious point to make in the Budget, and pretty cheap to do so. There's much more they can do in that space, across different occupations. I wonder what business think about the non-compete clause for those earning $175,000. Has that been a big problem is small business a bit wary about that?

Bran: Look, small business has certainly raised some concerns. Our primary concern with this is that we think that this is an unnecessary impost of regulation. So, we've said right from the outset that we understand that there are sometimes issues here that arise, and indeed, in Treasury analysis, they've said that there are, I stress 5 per cent, only 5 per cent of employers who have said that they've either relied on or thought about or sought to rely upon these types of causes.

Laura: Okay so people have been saying that this covers about 3 million people, but you say it's way less than that?

Bran: Well, if you're accepting the idea put forward by Treasury that employers are only relying upon these causes in a limited set of circumstances, the question that we've got is, is this the appropriate response. We've always said when this issue was first raised, that the better approach is to educate rather than regulate.

So that's to enable people through an easy access advice line or a better website service to understand what the law actually says, what their rights and entitlements are, as employees, but also as employers, what they can and can't do. I suspect that to the extent that mistakes are made, they're honest mistakes, they're not instances in which employers have sought to go out of their way to create unnecessary hardship for their workforce.

Laura: An election is always a good time to get things done Bran, you know that, we're waiting for Peter Dutton’s Budget in reply, tomorrow night. What do you say? They're being tempted to be brave here, particularly when it comes to tax. What would you say, where should they be brave?

Bran: We've said right from the outset that we need to see genuine solutions from both sides. This isn't just an ordinary Budget, this is an election Budget, and it's an election Budget in reply. So, it gives us a sense of what both sides of politics see as their agenda for Australia for the next term of government. So we've said we need genuine solutions to addressing the cost of living, to reducing the housing crisis, to how we achieve net zero, to what we can do to deliver the skills that we're lacking, one in three occupations reporting shortages, and, of course, providing for the healthcare that we've come to know and love, but which will become increasingly difficult as our population ages and our workforce gets smaller.

Laura: Bran Black, good to see you.

Bran: Good to see you too.