The Business Council of Australia (BCA) welcomes this opportunity to respond to the draft report of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Review (Report), and its recommendations. The BCA represents and advocates for its members, who comprise more than 130 of Australia's largest and best-known employers. We are a member-led organisation, and our submissions are the result of the engagement with those members, and the expertise and practical experience they share with us.

Growth in Australia's economy has fallen to just 0.8 per cent (its lowest since the 1990s recession) due in part to lagging productivity. There have been seven consecutive quarters of falling real GDP per capita. Private business investment is close to three-decade lows as a share of GDP.

Whether the SJBP Act amendments have helped to grow productivity is relevant, as the Government stated the amendments were designed to achieve that, and it is central to the objects of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act). Therefore, it should be a critical criterion used to assess whether the SJBP Act amendments are appropriate and effective.

In our November 2024 submission (First Submission), we noted that the SJBP Act was intended to implement outcomes of the 2022 Jobs and Skills Summit (Summit), which emphasised productivity, creativity, and genuine agreement in Australian workplaces. How the Secure Jobs, Better Pay (SJBP) amendments are said to have achieved these outcomes and, therefore, met their policy intent, is not reflected in the Report. Neither does the Report make clear how the amendments have met the objects of the FW Act (identified in our First Submission).

Rather, the Report preferences academic theory, devoting pages to the theoretical dimensions of collective bargaining, over the practical experiences of businesses most impacted by these amendments. While the Report cites data issues, there appears to have been no attempt by the review panel or the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) to obtain any fresh data of its own beyond three round table sessions which sought to cover all of the changes made in just four hours (only one of which was held with business, the other two being with unions and academics) and a call for submissions in an extremely limited timeframe. Similarly, allowing just nine and a half business days to review and respond to the 409-page draft Report is too short a period to allow for the BCA to meaningfully consult with its membership and prepare this response.

Given the data gaps cited by the review panel and the omission to deal with the significant experiences provided by employer organisations, including the BCA, the Report's conclusions on the appropriateness, efficiency and unintended consequences arising from the SJBP Act are, in our view, fundamentally unsound and academically flawed. As such, this Report is economically dangerous, for its findings risk compounding and further exacerbating the reduction in Australians' living standards.

Read our full submission here.