Albanese flags tax reform, climate agenda as key govt priorities at BCA Dinner
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More news: Speaking at the Business Council of Australia’s (BCA’s) annual dinner on Monday evening, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese affirmed the need to build a more “dynamic, resilient and productive economy” while making it “easier to deal with government, at every level.” Albanese also called on corporate Australia to rally behind Labor’s agenda on climate change ahead of the government’s 2035 emission reduction target announcement.
Referencing last month’s Economic Reform Roundtable, Albanese said that “breaking down barriers to investment and job creation” and “clearing away unnecessary regulation that has accumulated over decades” will allow the country to “fully grasp this generational opportunity.”
As part of the red tape reduction, the PM said the government is fast tracking the assessment of over 26,000 homes that have been awaiting approval and the government is also freezing the National Construction Code for four years as it is streamlined.
Albanese said the government is also “abolishing around another 500 nuisance tariffs, which will mean we have eliminated nearly 1,000 tariffs in the past two years.”
He added that the government wants to keep the dialogue on tax reform going, “leading into future budgets…looking at fair and affordable ways to incentivise greater business investment and capital deepening.”
Regarding the climate agenda, on which the private sector is pushing clarity around policy settings, Albanese said that “Business has seen, firsthand, the damage done to Australia’s international relationships and to our economy by the ideological conflict of the climate wars.”
He continued that “energy policy became untethered from reality” over the past decade, and that even as 24 out of 28 Australia’s coal-fired power stations were “announcing their timeline for closure, there was no coherent plan to replace them.” “Business and industry don’t have that luxury of pretending change is not occurring. You have to deal with the real world – and you have to be able to plan for the long term.”
Business Council of Australia urges govt to reduce red tape
The news: Business Council of Australia (BCA) chief executive Bran Black has called for "positive reform" to reduce red tape and "uncompetitive and ill-conceived tax ideas", during a speech at the BCA's annual dinner on Monday evening.
The context: Black said principles for tax reform "must track through to increases in business investment across the board for businesses of all shapes and sizes".
"And a good place to start is red tape reduction," he said, "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%".
Black also said the BCA is "resolutely opposed" to policy ideas that "scare business investment away." These include "inflexible, unbalanced workplace relations settings such as multi-employer bargaining and legislatively mandated work-from-home settings," he said on Monday.
In his own speech, BCA president Geoff Culbert warned that "Australia is on the wrong side of the competitiveness equation, and we are losing investment to our overseas competitors".
He said that Australia needs "some clear lines in the sand", rejecting "any increase in taxes on business".
The big business lobby group last month urged for greater deregulation head of the federal government’s Economic Reform Roundtable, releasing a report warning of the impact of costly red tape and calling for a reduced regulatory burden on companies.
What they said: "Indeed, even the spectre of an increase in taxes makes it very hard to underwrite long-dated projects that need certainty," Culbert said.
"We need to close down that conversation as quickly as possible.
"Any further regression on industrial relations doesn’t pass the test, and winding back some of the recent IR changes that hurt our competitiveness and discourage investment should not be off the table.
"Conversely, the discussion around cutting back on red tape and green tape has been very encouraging, and we wholeheartedly support it. We can’t move fast enough on this."
The sources: Business Council of Australia, Office of the Prime Minister of Australia
