This week's Economic Reform Roundtable ensured a new focus on key drivers of Australian business investment, including cutting red tape, speedier approvals, tackling skills shortages through better recognising qualifications, streamlining trade and cutting nuisance tariffs.
Business Council Chief Executive Bran Black said the Roundtable provided a constructive process to boost business investment and lift living standards for all Australians, and action was now needed.
"The Roundtable delivered support on many steps to help lift investment, and together with my business colleagues, we pushed back on proposals to put higher taxes on business," Mr Black said.
"We will play a constructive role in the tax process, and it's now time for the rubber to hit the road and deliver on the positive steps taken this week.
"The test for this and all future reform will be simple - will it lift the business investment needed to drive higher living standards for all Australians?"
Progress was made on:
- Cutting red tape, with the Treasurer signalling a new national push to reduce the regulatory burden.
- An assessment of how the National Construction Code might be responsibly simplified to ensure more homes can be built faster.
- Support for reforming the EPBC Act and implementing the Samuel Review.
- Delivering momentum behind a national agenda to tackle skills shortages by recognising more qualifications from overseas and across borders, targeted migration, enhanced work-integrated learning, careers counselling, mutual recognition of qualifications nationally, micro-credentials to assist in the ongoing uplift in skills, and an emphasis on AI digital skills training.
- Cutting even more nuisance tariffs and other frictions to international trade, as proposed by the BCA in the Better Regulation report.
"There was a clear consensus that Australia must do more to lift our national productivity and unlock the private investment required to boost living standards," Mr Black said.
"We're realistic about what this is, a good start, and thankful to the Government for pulling us together on cutting the red tape holding back our nation."
"It's kicked off a movement to grow Australia's competitiveness as a destination for investment, and the scale of our economic challenge demands we urgently run with this opportunity."
There is also an encouraging appetite to keep the conversation going on broader tax reform and long-term economic competitiveness, based on three objectives: addressing intergenerational equity, affordably incentivising business investment, and making the tax system simpler and more sustainable.
"We will be clear on the tax process: first and foremost, it must lead to a package that lifts investment for all businesses, so we grow the size of the pie for all Australians rather than just redistributing it," Mr Black said.
The Business Council will continue to champion the policies that help grow investment, productivity and opportunity for every Australian.
Key areas of progress on BCA advocacy objectives:
- Trade, regulation and competition:
o Fresh national ambition to cut red tape.
o Further leveraging the National Productivity Fund to remove state-line frictions for goods, services, and labour.
o Abolishing more nuisance tariffs.
o The framework to begin testing an investment "front door" for business.
o Acknowledgement of the continuing challenges created by FIRB and a need to further improve processes.
o Pushing for further trade engagement.
- Environment and planning:
o Progressing EPBC reform based on the Samuel Review recommendations-this will help unblock critical investment and balance environmental stewardship with national development, including a single desk for federal and state approvals.
- Skills and migration:
o Agreement to advance practical reforms on careers education, recognition of prior learning, Work Integrated Learning (WIL), and highly skilled worker visas.
o Recognition of the need to move skilled Australians more freely across jurisdictions, addressing licensing and qualification roadblocks.
o Greater focus on skilled migration visas and improved recognition of overseas qualifications.
o Rejection of new levies on business to fund skills programs-a welcome sign of pragmatic reform over punitive redistribution.
- Housing and investment:
o Reaffirmation of the important national goal to build 1.2 million homes and an assessment of ways that the National Construction Code might be responsibly simplified to ensure more homes can be built faster.
o Momentum on investment attraction priorities, including in housing, clean energy, R&D, and digital infrastructure such as data centres.
o Reforms to RG 97 for superannuation to better support investment in residential property.
- AI and the future economy:
o Agreement to finalise an AI capability plan.
o Agreement on the importance of R&D, innovation, AI, and data centres to lift productivity.
o Conducting a gap analysis to assess the implications of existing legislation for AI, as a basis for determining whether and, if so, the extent to which regulatory intervention is needed.
