At the Treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable, Ai Group’s Innes Willox welcomed consensus on tax, tariffs, skills, housing, and competition policy, but flagged workplace relations’ absence.
I was an enthusiastic participant at the Treasurer’s recent Economic Reform Roundtable, which brought to the fore challenges Australian Industry Group had advocated for leading into the event. That included tax, productivity, deregulation, skills and training, research & development and artificial intelligence.
Going into the Cabinet Room, I didn’t know how strong the Government’s appetite was for the sort of reform this country needs to ensure a better future for the generations to come. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find consensus in the room around the kinds of issues affecting many organisations to varying degrees.
Further, we managed to agree on some reform priorities for the Government to pursue. The Treasurer announced 10 major areas for reform. These included tax, regulation, workforce development, housing construction and tariff reform. He also announced what he called “quick wins” on competition reform, abolishing non-compete clauses and expanding economic opportunity for women.
Of course, the extent to which these can be regarded as wins will be contested. Certainly, the proposals around non-compete clauses are seriously contested by businesses. A lot of this will be grinding work that will involve Canberra and the states needing to work together and, in some cases, drop positions held and protected for more than a century. Don’t think this will be quick or easy. There are no silver bullets to solve what is now a deep-seated and entrenched productivity malaise in this country.
Nonetheless, we have already seen things come to life – including an announcement that the Treasurer would eliminate around 500 ‘nuisance’ tariffs. The ‘nuisance’ tariffs name speaks for itself. These charges generated a relatively tiny amount of revenue while at the same time imposing unnecessary compliance costs and time on businesses.
As the Treasurer pointed out, for tyres it raised $80,000 but cost the sector $32 million in compliance. The swift action to continue eradicating these tariffs is both timely and welcome with businesses grappling with rapidly changing global trading conditions and local cost pressures. We will be part of the consultation Treasury will run around the issue.
There has also been quick action on pausing and rethinking the operation of the National Construction Code, which has been a blocker for housing development. And we have seen a breakthrough on finalising the environmental approvals process for housing, energy and critical infrastructure projects.
The value or proof of the Roundtable will emerge over the coming months as the Government works towards the next budget and beyond. I certainly saw it as worthwhile to focus attention on some of the key issues impacting business.
However, it must be acknowledged that, disappointingly, industrial relations was not on the policy reform agenda. Indeed, the Government made it clear going into the process that it was off the table. There is a screaming need to tackle the minefield of complexity, prescription and impracticality that our workplace relations system has become.
We are realistic about the dynamics in parliament, given the last election result, and we are aware that industry is still reeling from waves of retrograde changes – changes that in various ways have pushed the pendulum much too far away from the interests of industry.
Memories of the Jobs and Skills Summit loomed large over the Roundtable and in the approach of industry groups. There was a strong recollection of the extent to which that process, harnessing the naive and misguided support from some industry groups, laid the platform of an expanded suite of negative regulatory changes in the last parliamentary term.
The last thing industry would have welcomed as a product from the Roundtable would have been an expanded problematic Government agenda on workplace relations. The Government already has a substantive, albeit narrow, agenda on further workplace relations changes, and there will be plenty of pressure from unions and from within the parliament to expand this.
Nonetheless, it is not possible to have a discussion on making our workplaces more productive without being brave enough to discuss the rules governing the terms and conditions under which our national workforce operates.
Our intention is to continue to unashamedly make the case for sensible and reasonable changes to IR laws. It is not time to wave the white flag on genuine workplace relations reform. Certainly, it is important to emphasise the Government has maintained a constructive relationship with Australian Industry Group and has listened and acted when we have been able to clearly demonstrate unintended consequences of proposals or in the drafting of legislation.
It is of course unrealistic to expect that the labour movement will not continue to press for change. Legislative changes are only the tip of the iceberg as workplace relations policy developments continue to be a major focus of the advocacy work of Australian Industry Group.
We will continue to participate in the public and private conversations to try to address the challenges and take part in opportunities for the manufacturing sector, no matter how large or small you are, to make Australia a more attractive place to invest and more globally competitive.
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