Anthony Albanese has rejected accusations that his government is strangling Australian businesses with red tape, telling a corporate dinner that Labor is “proudly pro-business and pro-worker”.
The Prime Minister was greeted like a fish in a sea of sharks at the Business Council of Australia (BCA) annual dinner in Sydney on Tuesday night, with both the BCA chief executive and president saying the federal government was regulating business to the point of exhaustion.
There was some muted applause in the dimly lit ballroom as Mr. Albanese entered the ornate room.
Despite the tense atmosphere, Mr Albanese struck a cordial tone in his speech, telling them he was “optimistic that government and business” could tackle economic challenges together.
“Recognizing each other’s strengths, respecting each other’s opinions and valuing each other’s contribution,” he said.
“We have different responsibilities that require different approaches, so it is inevitable that we will occasionally have differences of opinion.”
Anthony Albanese heard a scathing speech from Business Council of Australia boss Geoff Culbert
The Prime Minister said “points of disagreement have never defined or diminished” the engagement between his government and the business community because the Labor Party “serves all Australians”.
“We are proudly pro-business and pro-worker,” he said.
“And we don’t see this as a point of tension, we see it as a question of logic.”
Executives sitting at the Prime Minister’s table included Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian, Matt Comyn of Commonwealth Bank and Cecile Wake of Shell Australia.
Sitting next to Mr Albanese was BCA chairman Geoff Culbert, who made scathing comments about the government in a speech shortly before the Prime Minister’s address.
Mr Culbert highlighted the government’s decision to cap international student numbers as part of a plan to tighten rules in the international education sector, one of Australia’s biggest export markets.
Business Council of Australia Chairman Geoff Culbert has backed the Albanian government’s decision to limit the entry of international students.
The proposal is intended to stop the upward spiral of property and rental prices, with the large number of students – many of whom never leave – being a significant part of the growing demand causing the price spiral.
But the business community is benefiting from rising property prices and other increases in consumer demand brought on by mass migration, and Mr. Culbert spoke out against restrictions on student numbers.
“Over the past two decades, our university sector has built a product that is truly world-class and is now our second-largest export market, behind mining and resources,” he told dinner attendees.
‘But instead of celebrating that success and supporting our most globally competitive industries, we seek to hold them back.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the narrative for doing business in Australia cannot be: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.”
“But that’s the direction we’re going.”
Culbert’s comments echoed those of BCA CEO Bran Black, who also said that “many CEOs feel like we’re losing our way” and “taking gradual, but noticeable steps backward.”
He said chief executives across the country had told him they were “much, much more cautious about hiring following the recent raft of workplace changes by the government”.
“And this underscores the fact that for a good job to pay well, it first has to exist,” Black said.
“Instead, we are steadily increasing, rather than eliminating, regulation, making it harder to run a business.”
The Coalition has promised to repeal some of the Albanian government’s workplace changes if they win next year’s election, including the recently imposed “right to disconnect” that prevents bosses from expecting staff to monitor work communications outside of working hours.
But Mr Albanese said his government understood that job security and decent wages depended on good business performance, just as it understood that productivity gains depended on “skilled workers and safe workplaces”.
He said his government had “confronted some pretty extreme anti-business policies” emanating from independent MPs, in a thinly veiled attack on the Greens.
“We have stood up for some of Australia’s largest employers when others have attacked them for having a different view to theirs,” Albanese said.
He went on to say that in democracy there is “room for everyone’s opinions” as well as a responsibility to ensure that those opinions “are defended on their merits and withstand public scrutiny.”
“You have to be prepared to make your case, stand by your priorities and demonstrate how the proposals you’re putting forward will benefit the lives of the people whose support you’re seeking,” Albanese said.
Atlassian director Mike Cannon-Brookes was at Mr. Albanese’s table
‘Because economic and social change is not achieved through an ultimatum, it is built by consensus and strengthened by the mandate of the people.’
The Prime Minister said he was not at the dinner to “demand” the BCA to defend its agenda like “many” of his predecessors.
“Tonight I encourage you: keep moving forward towards your goal,” he said.
Mr Albanese’s comments on democracy appeared to take aim at the BCA president, who has previously warned of a “growing danger of populism”.
Mr Culbert said populism was undermining “trust and respect for the institutions that run our country”, a problem facing countries across the western world.
“I don’t think I’m the only one who says I’m concerned about the state of democracy in Western countries,” he said.
“You only have to look around the world to understand what I’m talking about.”
Mr Culbert said he wished he could share the “popular wisdom” that problems seen elsewhere in the world would never reach Australian shores, but that “what we are seeing around the world provides an important lesson about how quickly unity can fragment when self-interest trumps national interest and populism takes hold”.
“A robust and respectful debate is essential,” he said.
“It is the cornerstone of functional democracies. No one would disagree with that.
‘But the aim of this debate must be to find solutions that will benefit the country in the long term.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be trapped in an endless cycle of short-term thinking and blame.”
