Australia business leaders urge cooperation as inequality and weak productivity raise pressure for reform
Sydney’s business elite spent much of last week talking about one thing: Australia’s weak productivity. The message from the Business Council of Australia’s ...
Sydney’s business elite spent much of last week talking about one thing: Australia’s weak productivity. The message from the Business Council of Australia’s annual dinner was blunt — government and business will have to move together if the country wants higher living standards.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the gathering that his focus was a “positive partnership between government, business and the community to keep our economy strong.” BCA president Geoff Culbert struck a similar tone, saying government and business needed to work together to explain why change is needed.
A rare show of unity
By all accounts, the dinner at the Wentworth Sofitel Ballroom on Tuesday night had the feel of a political group hug. Labor ministers were there. So were the business leaders who spend much of their time arguing for lighter regulation, steadier policy and a more competitive Australia.
Bran Black, the BCA chief executive, thanked a roll call of ministers he has been working with — all of them present at the dinner — and said there were “many areas in which government and business can work together to make Australia a top-10 investment destination and lift living standards.”
That is the language of alignment. And, for one night at least, it held.
The difficult question underneath
But the room also had an awkward truth sitting in it. Australia’s productivity problem has sharpened the debate over reform, and rising inequality has added pressure for change. That leaves business in a more exposed position than it may have been in past reform battles.
The mood, according to those present, was cordial but tense. The broad agreement was easy enough: productivity has to improve. The harder part is what follows next, especially after the budget tax changes, which appear to have left some in the business community with gritted teeth.
That tension matters well beyond one dinner in Sydney. Across advanced economies, weak productivity has become a political and economic fault line, feeding arguments over tax, wages, investment and who should bear the cost of change. Australia is now having that debate in public, with government and business sounding unusually close — and yet still circling the same hard choices.
As Culbert put it, the task is not just to agree on reform, but to explain it. “The government and the business sector need to work together to explain why change is needed,” he said.
