Speakers: Business Now, Host Edward Boyd; Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Bran Black
Date: 3 March 2026
Topics: BCA Global Investment Competitiveness Index, Productivity, Iran conflict
E&OE
Edward Boyd, Host: Let’s bring in here Bran Black, the CEO of the Business Council of Australia. Bran, thanks for your time.
Bran Black, Chief Executive: Thanks so much for having me.
Edward: I just want to start quickly with the Iran conflict. I mean, how are big businesses reacting to this? What are they doing at the moment?
Bran: Well, as your previous guest was saying, there is a lot of uncertainty that we’re seeing at the moment. And I think the simple point is we don’t know how this war is going to play out, and over what period of time.
So what that really does is emphasise, for every country, including Australia, is that we should concentrate on controlling the things that are within our scope to control, those are the settings that help us attract investment, which brings us to the report that we’ve released today, because that really does underline the steps that Australia needs to take in order to boost its ambition. We encourage Australia to be a top 10 destination for investment.
Edward: We’re 21st place at the moment. Looking at the positives, one of our strong points is trade. Why are we so good at that?
Bran: Well, the government has done an exceptional job in terms of lifting our trade performance. And let’s remember here that back in 2019, our position was 11th. So we’ve moved from 11th to second in just six years.
My point in emphasising that is that with the same approach and the same diligence, we can do that in those areas in which we don’t perform so well, like regulation and tax. But in terms of trade, where we have performed really well, we’ve of course stabilised our relationship with China, we’ve established a fair trade agreement with the UAE, we’ve continued to strongly advocate for free and open trade in the face of global tariffs, we’re looking at trying to establish a fair trading agreement with the EU, we’re taking steps with respect to nuisance tariffs.
All of those points add up, and they show the world that we are an open trading environment. And let’s remember here, one in four jobs and 45 per cent of our GDP is trade-dependent, so this ranking matters a lot.
Edward: We’re good on trade, but you mentioned tax, regulation as well, I think we’re ranked 37th out of 42 countries. Cutting regulatory costs seems like a pretty easy thing for the government to be able to do, but why aren’t they doing that?
Bran: Well, our simple position would be, you get what you measure. And so we propose, and we very strongly argue for, together with 28 other industry associations, that we’d like to see government adopt a 25 per cent regulation cost reduction commitment, achievable over five years.
That’s the same sort of target that has been put in place in the EU and also in the UK. And we see, of course, that the United States has a major program of reducing the cost implication of regulation. That doesn’t mean making things less safe, it means being smarter.
Now the cost of regulation at the moment is $160 billion each and every year in Australia. That’s between six and seven per cent of our GDP. So let’s start with the target, let’s have a regulatory stock take to figure out what the real cost is.
We know that projections are about $160B, but a government report in this regard, the first since 2014, that would be a huge difference. We can take those steps. It’s a good way of getting started.
Edward: On complexity, we’re speaking to the boss of Qantas later. They’ve got 57 separate enterprise bargaining agreements within the Qantas group. I mean, is there a way to streamline the awards system to make employing people a bit easier?
Bran: What we’d love to see is that there is more scope for streamlining awards. That’s something that we’ve consistently advocated for. Within the labour settings more broadly, we rank 17 out of the 42, but we have seen in recent times that there have been some changes that do not bode well for us into the future.
The recent changes on intractable bargaining, the changes with respect to multi-employer bargaining, the changes that we have seen with more union access to premises. All that does is drive up the scope for disputation, which is ultimately poor for productivity.
Edward: Say you’re a big global investor, when you look at Australia, what are they thinking of? Are they thinking of the hurdles to invest here, with regards to tax and things like that?
Bran: The consistent message that I get is that they still see Australia is a good place to invest because of the quality of our rule of law, as we’ve said in our own report, the trade settings that we’ve got, the rule of law settings that we’ve got, the skill sets that our people have, the type of institutions that we have and their strength, all of those things count in our favour.
Where we do see consistently companies saying, “We’re just not sure that we can come to Australia,” is with respect to the complexity of our regulatory environment, and I guess the onerous nature of our taxation system. As you noted, we rank 38th out of the 42 countries that we measure.
What we’ve got to be doing is thinking about how we can drive ourselves up the rankings. There are at least 37 countries that have got the message that if you have more competitive settings, you’ll get more investment, and ultimately that means a better quality of life for everybody in their country. If we could do it, it’s a better quality of life for all Australians.
Edward: Yeah, I think Finland’s number one, US two, and Estonia three. So they’re just doing things a lot better than us?
Bran: It depends on the country. If you look at the small European countries, what they tend to do really well is have high-quality regulatory environments, they also have competitive tax settings.
If you look at the United States, very well performing in terms of energy settings, also in relation to tax, also on regulation as well. Now the US does fall down, as you’d expect, in relation to trade, but it’s because it does so well in those other areas that it’s been able to, I think, sit at number two.
Edward: And how much are you hoping you’re going to get some changes before the Federal Budget?
Bran: Well, the reason why we’re putting this into the public domain in the timeframe that we are is that we hope it does give us a little bit of a push for that national ambition to achieve that top 10 position.
Now, as I mentioned before, with trade, we did that. We were 11th, we’ve come to second, we’ve done that in six years. We like to think that if we take a similar diligent approach to those areas where we don’t do so well, we can encourage Australia to really move up the rankings and get the investment that comes with that, that improves life for everyone.
Edward: Bran Brack, thanks so much for your time.