**Check against delivery**
Good evening.
May I please ask everyone to provide a warm welcome the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese and Jodie Haydon, who both join us this evening – thank you to the Prime Minister and many members of his cabinet for crisscrossing the country to join us.
I’d like to acknowledge the Treasurer, with whom we’ve worked closely on initial steps to cut unnecessary regulation and ahead of his productivity package, and also in relation to the initial response to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Thank you for your engagement.
Minister Ayres and Assistant Minister Charlton with whom we’ve worked on AI, data centres and the R&D review into Australian innovation.
Minister Farrell, who has made significant progress on trade, including the recently concluded EU trade agreement. We’re working closely with the Minister to try and achieve a further agreement with India and we appreciate this engagement.
Andrew Leigh, who we continue to engage with on competition and productivity.
Representing NSW, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, with whom we’ve had some good and constructive back and forth this year – we welcome in particular the NSW Government’s significant planning reform agenda.
And representing the Coalition, Senator Jane Hume – particularly for her engagement on productivity. We appreciate the opportunity to engage with Senator Hume and her team.
I would also like to acknowledge other parliamentarians, departmental secretaries and members of the diplomatic corps and the press with us tonight.
And finally, thank you to all of you — particularly our members — for joining us this evening.
Let me start tonight with a simple proposition.
Australians want to get ahead.
They want rewarding jobs and they want to be able to afford a home.
They want their wages to rise and living standards to improve.
They want good schools, hospitals and public infrastructure.
And above all, they want their children to have even greater opportunities than they did.
But right now, for too many Australians, getting ahead is becoming harder.
They see it in the rising cost of everyday essentials.
They see it in the difficulty of buying or renting a home.
And they feel it when their wages and living standards simply don’t keep up.
Now, we all know that these problems have something in common.
And that’s that, ultimately, our living standards depend on our ability to grow the economy and create more prosperity.
And the simple point is that Australia cannot tax, regulate or redistribute its way to higher living standards.
We have to grow and we have to become more productive.
And, to do this, we have to create the conditions for businesses to invest, innovate, expand and employ more Australians.
As you know, the good news is that Australia starts with advantages most countries envy.
We have abundant natural resources.
… strong institutions and political stability.
… smart, creative and hardworking people.
And we sit on the doorstep of the fastest-growing region in the world.
There’s no reason Australia shouldn’t be among the most attractive places in the world to invest.
But those advantages don’t guarantee success, and right now other countries are competing more aggressively for capital.
Put simply, we cannot assume investment will come here simply because it has in the past.
A Top 10 investment destination
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s precisely why the Business Council has set an ambition for Australia to become one of the world’s Top 10 destinations for investment.
Earlier this year, we launched the Global Investment Competitiveness Index, measuring Australia against the countries we compete with for capital every day.
Australia ranked 21st of 42.
For a country with our advantages and our spirit of competitiveness, we can do better.
To be clear, however, the ranking itself isn’t the point and nor is investment the end goal.
Australians getting ahead and staying ahead is the objective underpinning our approach.
… But increasing business investment across the board – seeing companies build here, employ here, develop new technology here and expand here – is the single most impactful way we make that possible.
That investment builds homes and energy infrastructure.
It develops our AI capability and supports advanced manufacturing.
It gives Australian workers access to better technology, equipment and skills.
It secures government the revenue needed to fund the infrastructure and services Australians rightly expect.
And most importantly, it drives productivity as the foundation for sustainable real wage growth.
… And that’s why becoming a Top 10 investment destination matters.
A plan and a way to measure it
But setting an objective is the easy part – we also need a plan to get there.
… And we need to know whether that plan is working.
That’s why this evening we’re releasing the next stage of the Business Council’s work: our national roadmap for making Australia a Top 10 investment destination.
You’ll find it on your tables tonight.
At its centre are 18 key performance indicators designed to track us as we strive to improve.
We’ll measure whether we’re addressing the core challenges that stand between us and building more homes.
… Whether Australian businesses and workers are adopting AI and other innovative technologies at pace with the rest of the world.
… Whether we have the skills our industry requires.
… And, ultimately, if we are fixing our productivity problem and improving living standards.
Importantly, we’ll track progress against these metrics – and check where impact is being delivered, where we’re falling behind and where we need to do more.
At the end of the day, and as every one of the 80 chief executives in this room will tell you: what gets measured gets done.
Working together
To that end, ladies and gentlemen, it’s clear there are many areas in which government and business can work together to make Australia a Top 10 investment destination and lift living standards.
Prime Minister, your approach to how we harness artificial intelligence is one such area.
AI has the potential to lift productivity, attract enormous investment, create new industries and improve the way Australians work and live.
And so you were right to put AI at the centre of Australia’s economic agenda, and to recognise the scale of the opportunity in front of us, in your recent Sydney University address.
And we were pleased last year to see your government adopt 13 of our 16 recommendations in finalising Australia’s first AI strategy.
In a similar way, we recognise Australians need confidence that AI will be introduced safely and responsibly, and that they will have the skills to take advantage of it.
At the end of the day, delivering on these two objectives is a question of balance.
And, Prime Minister, the Business Council is confident that continued opportunities for open and frank discussion will help us get there.
In saying that, we recognise that we won’t always agree – on AI or in relation to other policy matters.
For example, while we were very supportive of the Treasurer’s productivity package and grateful for the opportunity to work with him and his team in that regard, we’ve made clear our opposition to elements of the Budget, including taxation measures we believe will make Australia less attractive to investment.
… We remain concerned about an industrial relations system that’s now too complex and fundamentally out of balance, actively making it harder for employers and employees to have discussions that result in both getting ahead.
… And our members continue to tell us that the accumulated weight of regulation, with a cost equivalent of $160 billion per year or a staggering 6 per cent of GDP, makes it harder and slower to get investment moving.
Where we believe policies are taking our nation in the wrong direction, the Business Council of Australia will say so.
But we will always be prepared to roll up our sleeves and work together, because when it comes to the broader task of attracting investment, lifting productivity and improving living standards, we believe that government and business both have key roles to play – and play together.
And that brings me to something you said in this room last year.
Making the case to Australians
Prime Minister, when you spoke at our dinner last year, you made an important point about how economic reform happens.
You said:
“This is how we make the case for future economic reform, by showing people where they fit in.
“By giving people that sense of agency and ownership – and importantly, optimism.
“We have to prove that measures which boost productivity, drive business investment and cut red tape, bring real and lasting benefits to our nation as a whole.”
Prime Minister, we agree.
Too much of our nation’s economic discourse occurs between governments, business groups, unions, economists and commentators.
Meanwhile, Australians are trying to pay the mortgage or find somewhere affordable to rent.
… And work out how they can possibly afford for their kids the same opportunities they had while growing up.
Put simply, we know that the often-referenced Betty from Blacktown doesn’t care about our rate of productivity, but we know she does care about her cost of living.
We talk about productivity, regulation and the importance of investment.
All of that matters.
But too often, we – collectively – fail to explain why it matters, and critically, why its absence or reduction affects people’s lives day to day.
That has to change, and to do it, we must do a better job making the case to all Australians.
If we want Australians to support the economic reform needed to become a Top 10 investment destination, they need to be able to see and understand why it helps them and, conversely, why its absence hinders their prosperity.
That’s why the Business Council has come together with around 30 of Australia’s leading national organisations under the banner of the Alliance of Industry Associations.
Together, we represent businesses large and small across almost every part of the Australian economy, from pharmacists to farmers, and from tradies to accountants.
And we’re united by a simple objective: to help build support for reforms that will allow all Australians to get ahead.
That means changing the way we have economic conversations.
It means teasing out the real drivers of cost pressures Australians are feeling.
It means listening to workers, families, small businesses and communities.
And it means doing a better job connecting what’s happening in their lives with the economic choices we make as a country.
Simply put, business cannot ask government to be ambitious for Australia if we’re not prepared to help build that support ourselves.
… And that’s the work that the Alliance of Industry Associations will take forward.
Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen …
Australia has the resources. We have the talent and the ideas. And we have the institutions that other nations look to with envy.
But none of that’s a guarantee.
… Because right now, we’re in a race – a race with other countries for the investment, the
technology and the skills that will drive the next generation of growth.
… And in that race, standing still means falling behind.
… Meaning we must be determined to compete. And we must be determined to win.
Our ambition to make Australia a Top 10 investment destination is how we do that.
As I’ve said this evening, this isn’t setting a number for its own sake.
It’s what sits behind the number that matters:
… More homes being built.
… More businesses willing to bet on Australia.
… More Australians in well-paid jobs.
… A stronger economy, better services, and a fair shot at the future for the next generation.
And it means something for Australians doing it tough, too.
It means they don’t have to hear “productivity” and “investment” as words that belong to someone else’s conversation.
It means making sure they see themselves in this story – not as statistics, but as people who get ahead because Australia did.
There’s a lot of work still to do to get to this point, and while government must do its share, so too must business.
And let there be no doubt that the Business Council is committed to doing ours.
Thank you.