Speakers: Business Council Chief Executive, Bran Black
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Good evening, everyone.
Welcome to the Business Council’s 2025 Annual Dinner.
Thank you, Yvonne, for your generous welcome to your country, which we accept with great respect.
I’d also like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their Elders past and present.
Thank you all for being here for the Business Council’s 2025 Annual Dinner.
And a special welcome to our guest of honour this evening, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Anthony Albanese.
Prime Minister, thank you for joining us, and thank you also for our work together in the last 12 months.
We also appreciate your leadership with respect to our recent visit to Beijing, which is such an important—sometimes challenging—such an important relationship for us. And we appreciate the way you lean into that.
Thank you also to the Treasurer, the Hon. Jim Chalmers for your attendance this evening and your engagement throughout the year.
Thank you also to the many members of cabinet, the many departmental heads, and the many members of the diplomatic corps who have joined us.
And thanks also, to the Shadow Treasurer, the Hon. Ted O’Brien for joining us here tonight on behalf of the Opposition.
And thank you to our members – it is always good to see you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll deliver some opening remarks in a moment, but before I do, I’ll walk you through this evening’s run sheet.
Entrees will be served shortly, after which I’ll introduce our President, Geoff Culbert, to make some remarks.
Geoff will then introduce our guest of honour, the Prime Minister, to deliver his address.
And we’re fortunate to have Telstra’s CEO, Vicki Brady, deliver the vote of thanks after our main course.
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Ladies and gentlemen, on an occasion such as this, it’s important to remember why the BCA was established.
We act as the unified voice for the chief executives of Australia’s most consequential businesses.
We’re not here to defend the interests of any single sector.
Rather, we were established to put aside special pleadings and serve the nation’s economic interests by lifting living standards for all Australians.
And that national economic interest is what drives us still today.
Over the past year, we’ve made a very deliberate decision to re-target our advocacy and focus every single thing we do on the biggest questions – the most consequential questions – that matter most to Australians each and every day:
- How do we increase productivity and lift living standards?
- How do we tackle the housing and infrastructure crisis?
- How do we affordably and reliably deliver Net Zero by 2050?
- How do we develop a skilled workforce for the future?
- How do we deliver the health and care services Australians need?
- And how do we make the most of future growth industries?
We’ve done this because clarity matters.
Indeed, if we want to cut through the noise, we must be clear about what we stand for and what we want to achieve.
And on your tables this evening, you can see a snapshot of the policy contributions we’ve made in each of these areas in just the last 12 months.
This includes our report on what we need to do if we are to achieve our net-zero ambitions in the medium term, because we know that business needs to plan with certainty if it’s to have the confidence to invest.
This report is designed to inform the national discussion with a clear message: ambition matters, but so, too, does delivery.
And I stress that that delivery is no more important than with respect to getting the project approvals process right with effective EPBC reform.
As the significant capital investment required will amount to nothing if it gets bogged down in the current approval delays.
Ultimately, everything we are pushing towards is for the delivery of a more productive Australia.
Because that’s what lifts living standards.
That’s what creates well-paid jobs.
That’s what delivers better hospitals, schools and services.
That’s what allows us to innovate and compete.
And that’s what we know will ensure the Australia we leave to our kids is even better than the Australia we enjoy today.
We’ve been banging this drum for a long time now.
And it’s been encouraging to see our calls echo across the Australian policy landscape over the last year.
And even more encouraging to see broader recognition of the simple reality that business investment and productivity are the bedrock of national prosperity.
And the lynchpin that connects every major issue facing our country today – from the cost of living, to health and aged care, to climate action, to housing affordability, to skills development and to future growth.
Ladies and gentlemen, on 18 June this year, Treasurer Chalmers addressed the National Press Club and made the point that to deliver higher living standards, the Government recognises three blunt truths:
“Our budget is stronger, but not yet sustainable enough.
Our economy is growing, but not productive enough.
[And our country] is resilient, but not resilient enough.”
As someone who’s worked at the most senior levels of government, I can tell you that these truths are easy to speak to from Opposition, but harder to do so from Government.
And so doing so was a risk, and the Treasurer deserves credit for taking it.
The simple fact is that we are underperforming –
Investment is still only moderately above the thirty-year lows of June 2022.
Regulatory friction is too high.
And our tax system isn’t competitive.
Now, none of these challenges emerged yesterday – indeed, they’ve been building for decades, and under both sides of politics.
However, these challenges collectively represent the reason why last month’s Economic Reform Roundtable was so important.
And while fixtures of this nature might be easy for cynics to dismiss as talkfests, the truth is that nothing happens without a conversation.
And I tip my hat to the Treasurer for the constructive way in which he chaired the Roundtable and the steps he’s already taken to move on some of its recommendations.
Of course, when it comes to productivity, our objective must be making sure the rubber actually hits the road.
When we walked into the roundtable, we were very clear about the test for success.
Do the policy ideas we’re considering attract more investment and therefore lift living standards? Or do they scare it away?
And I can tell you that the business representatives in the room consistently applied that test to every idea raised at the Roundtable.
And we had to – because we all know that capital scares easily.
It runs fast.
And coaxing it back takes time and effort.
Yet that’s precisely the task to which we must dedicate ourselves.
Fortunately, the BCA is not alone in doing so.
Together with our members, we’re honoured to be working with an alliance of 30 industry groups to deliver policy outcomes that drive investment and lift living standards.
Four of us were invited into the Cabinet Room for the Roundtable, but together, we represented the many other groups within our alliance who weren’t in the room.
From pharmacists to farmers.
Bankers to builders.
Coders to contractors.
Miners to manufacturers.
And every hard-working businessperson in between.
In the classic sports film Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino makes the point that life’s a game of inches.
Well, with that in mind, the most important thing the Roundtable did was sift through the clutter and prioritise the inches we need to move the dial on our country’s economic performance.
Policy for which the BCA has long advocated.
Tariff reform.
A proper front door for investors.
FIRB reform.
Paperless trade.
Work-integrated learning.
Recognition of prior learning.
A national AI skills plan.
EPBC reform that doesn’t stall investment.
A pause on the National Construction Code.
And principles for tax reform – which must track through to increases in business investment across the board for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Our focus — and the focus of our 29 partner groups — is now on making space for this positive reform to happen.
And a good place to start is red tape reduction, which is now very much on the national agenda for all the right reasons, but which would benefit from a clear target to cut cost impact by 25 per cent.
How is it, for example, that in a modern economy such as ours, you need 36 separate licences and approvals just to pour a cup of coffee at a café in Victoria?
Or that the Commonwealth regulatory burden on businesses in Australia is conservatively estimated at $110 billion, which is about 4 per cent of our GDP.
By the same token, we’ll also stay resolutely opposed to policy ideas that scare business investment away.
Inflexible, unbalanced workplace relations settings, such as multi-employer bargaining and legislatively mandated work-from-home settings.
Uncompetitive and ill-conceived tax ideas, such as a cashflow tax.
AI regulation that condemns us to be a technology taker.
The kind of policies that push away capital.
Because every time we lose investment, we lose jobs, tax revenue, dividends, superannuation contributions, supply chain spend … and productivity.
We condemn ourselves – and our kids – to eating smaller slices of a smaller pie.
So let me finish with this – the Business Council was founded to progress our national economic interests to lift living standards for all Australians.
That means speaking with clarity and acting when it matters.
Well, the time for action is now.
And we’re encouraged to see some useful first steps.
And, Prime Minister, on behalf of the business community, I can unhesitatingly confirm that we look forward to working with you and your team to take action to bring our collective ambition for the country to life.
Thank you.